Santiago says its smart city challenges not technology-related

Technology is not a problem when it comes to developing smart city projects but rather getting local authorities to cooperate, Claudio Orrego, mayor of Chilean capital Santiago told BNamericas.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Do Smart Cities conference on Thursday, Orrego said that the implementation of several initiatives have been held up by issues of cooperation between public bodies.

One such project is the creation of a centralized criminal data base that is implemented by the interior ministry. The system is currently at pilot stage and integrates data from the judiciary, the Carabineros police force, the police investigation unit (PDI) and the ministry of the interior

"Technologically speaking building the data base is trivial. The challenge is getting the police and intelligence agencies to share their information with other institutions. The difficult part has been inter-institutional management," Orrego said.

The same has been the case with the Everything Improve project consisting of an application through which local residents can report practices that impact the environment in the city, in particular the burning of wood stoves, which contributes greatly to smog levels. The problem is that not all municipalities have agreed to take the responsibility to follow-up on reported incidents.

"What we're seeing more and more is that the problem is not the technology. The application is ready, it's fantastic. You can geo-reference the reports through camera technology. But we need to establish institutional protocols with the municipalities," Orrego said.

The official said that rather than halt the project, the app will probably initially be used for more generic reports of contamination such as illegal rubbish dump sites.

RAIN ALERTS

One project that has seen advances consists of some 25 sensors that will be installed in the Andean foothills next to Santiago to generate alerts about weather conditions. Due to deficient drainage systems in the city, heavy rains can wreak havoc in the city.

IBM is providing the consulting on the project and the sensors are due to arrive next week. A separate application allows citizens to confirm the data generated by the sensors.

"We expect this system to be fully operable by next winter," Orrego said.

In 2014, Orrego signed on behalf of Santiago an agreement with Cisco Systems to develop smart city initiatives.

One of the projects in the pipeline is to integrate more than 16 different security camera systems that operate along the Alameda traffic artery that interconnects Santiago's main employment districts. These could be embedded with face-recognition technology. One of the challenges is to overcome legal and technical barriers so that digitally stored faces of individuals can be paired with their ID numbers.

Orrego said that to date little progress has been made but that he is due to resume talks with Cisco in the coming days.

Commenting on other potential projects, the mayor said that he is studying several geo-referencing projects and a residential solar energy idea.

"I am often critical of geographical system technology, not because of its potential but because of its usability. Many of those that have these ideas haven't come up with practical uses," he said.

But Santiago's smart city projects are very much trying to be driven from the bottom up rather than top down. The municipality has an agreement with the Universidad del Desarrollo and plans to launch a local start-up innovation competition to create solutions to problems that have been identified by local citizens.

"Our program is very in line with the results of the surveys that we've carried out identifying issues related to public transport, sustainable transport, emergency systems and contamination."

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