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Using IoT and Location Intelligence to Power Smart Cities

This article explains how the Integrated Smart City Ecosystem combines Canada's fastest 5G network and largest portfolio of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions with the leading location intelligence system.

Municipalities across Canada are adopting digital transformation and smart city initiatives to enhance public services, reduce operating costs, enable community engagement and, ultimately, improve the public’s quality of life. As presented during our recent Building a Safer, Connected Community virtual seminar, Bell and Esri Canada have partnered to deliver an integrated ecosystem of solutions to power smart city initiatives. The partnership combines the strengths of each organization into this ecosystem: Bell’s 5G network and vast portfolio of Internet of Things (IoT) solutions and Esri’s location intelligence and real-time and big data analytics capabilities.

As recently ranked by Global Wireless Solutions (GWS), Bell provides the best and fastest 5G network among Canadian carriers. The GWS findings were based on 450,000 tests nationwide that examined multiple factors including network reliability, latency, speed, and video performance as well as customer expectations. Additionally, Bell was the winner of the Speedtest by Ookla® award for fastest 5G mobile network speed in Q1 and Q2 2021. As demonstrated in publicly available information from Amazon, IBM as well as Canadian carriers Telus and Rogers, Bell also offers the largest portfolio of IoT sensors in Canada.

Bell Smart Cities Product Portfolio

Bell Smart Cities Product Portfolio

As reported in the 2020 Forrester Wave Report, Esri is the market leader in location intelligence. The ArcGIS system and Esri Canada services are also the most widely used in Canada. Cities and towns that already use ArcGIS can leverage their existing location intelligence investments to take advantage of the system’s real-time and big data analytics. As Dave Monaghan, IoT Industry Manager points out, these capabilities “Ingest data from multiple (IoT) sensors in different protocols and formats and provide context to this data using the element they all have in common, location. These capabilities enable organizations to monitor and analyze IoT data at scale and against historical data. For our customers, the Bell-Esri partnership means that tapping into the benefits of Bell’s IoT solutions in support of smart city initiatives is greatly simplified within their existing Esri ArcGIS system.” 

Bell’s large portfolio of IoT solutions enables cities to securely gather data from multiple sources for a diverse range of applications according to their particular initiatives and priorities. This data is then transmitted via the fastest 5G network in Canada. ArcGIS enables this data to be consolidated, integrated, analyzed and displayed in a smooth end-to-end manner, allowing for faster and more informed decision-making. Together, the Integrated Smart City Ecosystem enables Canadian municipalities to accelerate their digital transformation and realize their own particular smart city initiatives by providing:

  • A smooth collaborative environment for multiple stakeholders
  • Enhancements to existing digital and ArcGIS infrastructure
  • Configurable views for different user personas
  • A single point of contact to manage multiple solutions and relationships

Learn more about the Integrated Smart City Ecosystem. 

View the session recordings from Connected Communities event to learn more about how IoT sensors combined with big-data and real-time analytics power smart city initiatives.

This post was translated to French and can be viewed here.