Last month’s Lighting Live Annual Conference in Birmingham brought together ILP members for two days of high-level CPD, networking and engagement. At its heart was a thought-provoking panel discussion on how AI-captured data is reshaping the future of smart cities.
With 12 high-quality technical papers, interactive workshops, ILP updates, a member bootcamp, visiting students, a buzzing exhibition space, the gala dinner, and an AI humanoid robot called ‘Ada’ (after Ada Lovelace) there were very, very many highlights from this year’s Lighting Live Annual Conference.
The conference, from 17-18 June at Birmingham’s Millennium Point, saw Michala Medcalf start her term of office as ILP President. Past President Elizabeth Thomas received only the second ever ILP Centenary Medal, the highest honour the Institution can bestow.
Lighting Journal will report on more of the discussion and conversation from the conference in upcoming editions.
But one session that was a definite highlight was the high-level panel discussion held on the first afternoon on ‘shaping the future of smart cities – interoperability, standards, and adaptive technologies’.
Chaired by ILP Vice President – Technical Emily Bolt, the event brought together five leaders from across the industry to discuss how interoperability, open standards and adaptive technologies are enabling more connected, efficient and sustainable urban environments.
In essence, it drilled down into how, with all the rapid advances we’re now seeing in technology, can cities move towards truly integrated smart infrastructure?
The panel comprised Jonathan Catchpole, vice chair of Book 18, chair of the Technical Coordination Working Group at Zhaga and systems architect at TE Connectivity; Perry Hazell, ILP Past President and infrastructure and energy leader at Southwark Council; José Sanchis (known as Pepe), chair of the Certification Working Group at TALQ Consortium; Martin Nielsen, chief technical officer at Felicity Smart Infrastructure; and Michael Wilkinson, systems architect at Signify.
ROLE OF STANDARDS IN FACILITATING INTEROPERABILITY
Emily opened the discussion by asking Jonathan and Pépé how standards such as TALQ and Zhaga are facilitating interoperability across CMS. Jonathan explained the background to the development of Book 18 and its liaison with the DALI Alliance.
Interoperability, he emphasised, was at the core of everything Zhaga does. ‘We always make sure interoperability is baked in,’ he said.
‘The simplest way to think about interoperability is as a common language,’ agreed Pepe. ‘When cities deploy systems, they will implement more sensors, more devices, more waste management systems and so on. So how can we ensure that the city is going to be able to manage all the systems with one CMS?
‘When we talk about a CMS, the industry often refers to a system that manages only the lighting infrastructure, so in practice a lighting management system (LMS). From the TALQ perspective, however, a CMS is the overarching system that combines multiple systems, including hybrid ones, bringing together, for example, street lighting, traffic cameras or multiple lighting networks all on one dashboard.
‘So, there are a lot of benefits for cities; it increases flexibility, reduces integration risk and they are not locked into one single vendor. It protects your investment much better, ultimately, gives cities the freedom to adopt innovation from multiple suppliers while maintaining long-term flexibility,’ he added, emphasising that certification is central to building and winning trust by providing independent verification of interoperability.
INTEGRATION CHALLENGES
Turning to Michael, Emily asked how the industry can better integrate multiple vendors and technologies into a ‘cohesive’ smart ecosystem. ‘What are the challenges of achieving interoperability between different CMS platforms? How can cities overcome these barriers?’ she questioned.
To answer this, Michael used the analogy of buying a new mouse for your computer or laptop. ‘You can buy a Windows or Apple USB mouse, plug it in, it will work straightaway; your operating system recognises the device, there is a standardised communication method, a generic driver and functions are enabled automatically. That’s interoperability at a basic, foundation level,’ he explained.
‘You discover the difference when you start to look at more advanced features. If we stick with the mouse analogy, these could be programmable buttons or gesture control or diagnostics, battery monitoring, gaming profiles, all those sorts of things. Most of those require the manufacturer’s own proprietary drivers or systems. So, the more advanced features, that richer functionality, still lives within a closed ecosystem.
‘This is really similar to where we are with street lighting today. If we look at things like DALI D4i and Zhaga, they’re kind of the USB layer of our mouse analogy. We can increasingly now deploy luminaires with sensors and CMS nodes from different manufacturers and confidently know they will physically connect; they will communicate and support those core lighting functions. That is a really big achievement for the industry.
‘But we’re not there yet fully with interoperability, with full interoperability. We don’t have that full, feature-rich lifecycle. A TALQ-compliant CMS, for example, can successfully integrate with other systems, switch off lights, control lights, gather energy data, raise alarms, manage assets from multiple vendors. But when we start looking at advanced features – adaptive lighting, traffic integration, environmental sensing, predictive maintenance and AI optimisation – interoperability is kind of not there yet,’ Michael added.
LOCAL AUTHORITY BARRIERS
Turning next to Perry, Emily asked him to outline what he felt were the most significant hurdles local authorities in particular faced when integrating multiple vendors and technologies into a smart ecosystem.
Perry highlighted that local authorities are often innovative and already delivering a range of smart city projects, but that these are too frequently developed in isolation.
‘In Southwark, for example, we have significant EV infrastructure being rolled out, smart lighting and CMS, CCTV, parking systems, and digital twinning work being led through IT. There is excellent work taking place across the council, but too often it happens in silos rather than through a fully joined-up approach,’ he said.
Perry also pointed to challenges around governance, procurement and capacity, particularly where small local authority teams are expected to manage multiple technologies, suppliers and workstreams at the same time.
‘Data is another major issue,’ Perry explained. ‘Who owns the data? Who is responsible for analysing it? And how do we use it properly to support better decision-making? For local authorities, this is about building the right partnerships and recognising that these investments may need to deliver value over the next 10 to 20 years. That means taking a long-term view from the outset.’
IMPACT OF TRAFFIC-ADAPTIVE LIGHTING
Turning, finally, to Martin, Emily asked him to outline how traffic-adaptive lighting can have an impact on areas such as energy efficiency, public safety, and sustainability.
‘We see traffic-adaptive lighting as one of the next steps in smart city infrastructure and also in smart lighting infrastructure,’ Martin explained.
Visual AI, too, increasingly is being embedded within this technology, he highlighted. ‘With visual AI it is possible to make cost-efficient sensors and products that have a price point where you can start to look at really large deployments. So, essentially, sensors at every intersection or across very large parts of a city,’ he said.
Traffic-adaptive lighting was also enabling lighting classes to become more dynamic, he argued. ‘A lighting class that has been assigned to a road will be based on traffic volumes and a range of other parameters. But when that traffic volume changes, so does the lighting class.
‘We are using live traffic data to switch between lighting classes, down and up again. The idea is to save money, automate things and basically give a safe framework for the municipalities and lighting operators to make dimming decisions,’ he said.
What technical and logistical considerations needed to be taken into account when it came to integrating real-time sensor data into smart city systems, Emily asked.
‘First of all, in order for this to work you need sensors. That’s the first technical challenge. You’re looking at deploying a network of sensors and powerful processors that are married with a modem and advanced software that needs to be reliable. So there are lots of logistical issues in doing this, plus also the design – so where should these sensors sit and so on,’ Martin answered.
‘Also, how many sensors and what’s the distribution, those sorts of things,’ agreed Michael. ‘That can be quite important because it can very rapidly become too expensive to implement, when you’re trying to get really granular data and sensor positions. It is a fine balance between what you technically need, what data you need and how you apply that to your city and city infrastructure.
‘Going forward and looking to the future of smart cities, standards around how that level of data – whether it’s traffic data or other data, and I’m talking not just lighting but beyond lighting – I think that is something that really needs to be looked into. It is something that has to be considered, how that data is going to be dealt with in terms of governance and standards and those sorts of things,’ Michael added.
OPPORTUNITY TO RETHINK THE CITY AT NIGHT
Perry then concluded the discussion by highlighting how the granularity of data that can now be collected – especially through the use of AI – is profoundly changing the conversation around adaptive lighting.
He highlighted in particular a dimming pilot Southwark has been running, with Felicity Smart Infrastructure, on Borough High Street.
‘Conventionally, we may have set dimming profiles to start from midnight, perhaps reducing lighting by one lighting class based on expected reductions in activity. However, on Borough High Street, while we anticipated that the area would remain busy, the data showed that parts of the route were just as active at 1am as they were at 6pm. The live data we are now able to collect is incredibly valuable,’ he explained.
What this means is that, whereas historically the focus has always been on highways and vehicles – on traffic counts – there is now an opportunity to take a much more holistic view, to analyse in much deeper granularity the interaction between vehicles and pedestrians, especially in urban centres, at night. This potentially, too, opened up a conversation around whether guidance notes such as PLG08 may need to revisited in future.
‘We have an opportunity to take a step back and review the standards, publications and guidance notes produced by the ILP. With the emergence of new datasets, technologies and operational variables, we need to consider how these should be reflected in future guidance for the sector,’ Perry said.
‘These are datasets and operational factors that we have not always been able to properly understand or apply before. The work we are doing in Southwark is an exciting use case, and I think it has the potential to be valuable for other cities and local authorities looking at adaptive lighting in a more informed and evidence-led way,’ he concluded.
This is an abridged version of the article that appears in the July/August edition of Lighting Journal. To read the full article, simply click on the page-turner to your right.
Image: ILP Vice President – Technical Emily Bolt chairing the panel discussion at the Lighting Live Annual Conference
