Metropolis: Urban OS

Smart cities with devices chatting to each other may dot the planet in the near future.

Cities could soon be looking after their citizens all by themselves thanks to an operating system designed for the metropolis. The Urban OS works just like a PC operating system but keeps buildings, traffic and services running smoothly. The software takes in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what is happening. 

In the event of a fire the Urban OS might manage traffic lights so fire engines can reach the blaze swiftly. The idea is for the Urban OS to gather data from sensors buried in buildings and many other places to keep an eye on what is happening in an urban area. Sensors monitor everything from large scale events such as traffic flows across the entire city down to more local phenomena such as temperature sensors inside individual rooms.
The OS completely bypasses humans to manage communication between sensors and devices such as traffic lights, air conditioning or water pumps that influence the quality of city life. Channelling all the data coming from these sensors and services into a over-arching control system had lots of benefits, said Steve Lewis, head of Living PlanIT- the company behind Urban OS.

Urban OS should mean buildings get managed better and gathering the data from lots of sources gives a broader view of key city services such as traffic flows, energy use and water levels.
"If you were using an anatomy analogy, the city has a network like the nervous system, talking to a whole bunch of sensors gathering the data and causing actions," said Mr Lewis.
"We distribute that nervous system into the parts of the body - the buildings, the streets and other things.
Having one platform managing the entire urban landscape of a city means significant cost savings, implementation consistency, quality and manageability, he added.

"And it's got local computing capacity to allow a building or an automotive platform to interact with people where they are, managing the energy, water, waste, transportation, logistics and human interaction in those areas."