Brilliant design: intelligent lighting and sensors in Smart Cities

The idea of ‘Smart Cities’ is one that’s becoming familiar to engineers. Partly an adaptation to more diverse sources of electricity, including small-scale renewables, partly a development of the so-called ‘Internet of Things’, allowing household appliances to adjust their electricity consumption to take account of fluctuations in prices, the concept is being trialled in many cities around the world and is of particular interest to countries building new cities, such as those in the Middle East and China.

But while a lot of attention has been paid to the components that make up the smartness of the cities — the electronic brains in appliances, electric vehicles, the electricity-distribution hubs, and the smart meters that are intended to allow domestic and business users to monitor their electricity consumption in detail — there has been less information around about the nervous system that connects all these processing centres. How will the smart components talk to each other? And what effects might that have on actually living in a smart city?