Kansas City, Missouri is entering the second phase of its smart city programme promising greater appreciation for sensor-generated data and its ability to fine tune algorithms to predict future behaviour.
The website RouteFifty.com reports that the city deployed more than 325 public access Wi-Fi points and 128 smart streetlights across its 54-block downtown streetcar corridor, which feeds into a data lake aggregated by Cisco Kinetic for Cities.
It adds that data resides in the Amazon Web Services cloud, which urban intelligence platform Xaqt distills into insights on everything from real-time traffic and downtown parking to the relationship between high-speed internet access and the poverty rate.
“There is a greater value to the data we maintain as a city than we anticipated,” Bob Bennett, Kansas City’s chief innovation officer, told Route Fifty.
Kansas City is a lead anchor customer, or “smart node,” on Xaqt’s MetroGraph platform, a decentralised data plane spanning clients’ metropolitan areas.
The report adds that in mid-to-late March, the city will expand its digital footprint with a request for proposals on additional kiosks and Wi-Fi access points in the eastern third of Kansas City along Prospect Avenue, where a new bus rapid transit line is planned.
