The city of Las Vegas and NTT Corporation (NTT) today announced the Accelerate Smart project has expanded to include two new locations – the city’s Community Healing Garden and a portion of Las Vegas Boulevard at South Main Street and East St. Louis Avenue. As part of the partnership, NTT and the city plan to further expand the smart cities project to Bob Baskin Park, Rotary Park, Stupak Park and Ethel Pearson Park this summer before adding six additional parks by the end of 2020.
Following the success of the initial pilot, which has improved traffic congestion and wrong way driving, NTT will expand the project to provide real-time alerts of safety conditions and maintenance issues to improve public safety and provide a better experience for citizens and visitors. The city’s Smart Park Initiative is designed to increase public safety, while providing awareness of activity to generate usage and operations benchmarks that allow leadership to make more informed decisions.
In total, high-definition optical and audio sensors will now be deployed at 14 locations across the city, which enable an automated system to notify law enforcement and maintenance personnel of safety hazards, such as large crowds, gunshots, breaking glass and vandalism.
“Cities that learn, understand and invest in technology will be the cities of the future, and Las Vegas is at the forefront of innovation,” said Michael Sherwood, Director of Innovation and Technology, city of Las Vegas. “Our Smart Cities pilot has been such a success that we are excited to expand the program to several new locations in the heart of our city, which will continue to improve the lives of our residents and visitors.”
The initial proof of concept provided information to city personnel to increase situational awareness and provide a foundation for traffic management. With the expansion of the smart cities project, Las Vegas will leverage a dashboard to access and view sensors, data streams and analytics. The timely alerts and predictions enable the city to monitor and review events and allow them to dispatch safety and maintenance personnel in a timely manner.
The NTT Accelerate Smart data platform is a secure, distributed platform that captures data via sensors and micro data centers in the designated areas through video and sound, while also integrating historical data sources such as crime, weather and social media. By leveraging cognitive analytics, including machine learning technologies, the system learns normal patterns and can detect and alert authorities of patterns that appear abnormal.
“As we accelerate our smart cities project in Las Vegas, it demonstrates how a more connected society directly benefits citizens,” said Bill Baver, Go to Market Leader, Smart World Team, NTT. “Cities like Las Vegas are capitalizing on successful pilots and beginning to imagine the benefits these technologies can have for their residents and visitors. However, smart is not confined to city limits, as it also extends to stadiums, shopping malls and manufacturing facilities by leveraging similar concepts that have been proven successful in Las Vegas.”
The Accelerate Smart solution deployed in Las Vegas is built on NTT’s innovative Cognitive Foundation™ architecture, which enables remote creation, management and operation of information and communications technology resources, from devices and networks to the cloud. It also incorporates hyperconverged infrastructure and IoT gateways, as well as virtualization software hosting predictive analytics applications.
The partnership with NTT is part of the city of Las Vegas’ charter in becoming a smart city to provide safe, reliable and efficient civic technology that stimulates economic growth. To learn more about the Smart Cities initiative in Las Vegas, visit NTT’s website and watch the case study on YouTube.