Oslo as a smart city

Smart cities in the spotlight

Oslo aims to become the smartest city in Norway. Datek Light Control has already implemented smart lighting for several sports facilities in Oslo through our cooperation with Bymiljøetaten (local environment authority). Håkon has used us as an example of a company that works with the development of smart functionality in parts of Oslo’s infrastructure.

Infrastructure

Håkon points out that the infrastructure provides both possibilities and limitations as to what kind of smart city functionality you can develop. Moreover, investments and infrastructure development choices have long term impact, because it is expensive and difficult to regret afterwards. If the infrastructure built today can’t meet future challenges, the smart cities will not work.

Platform architecture

Håkon’s conclusion in the thesis is to focus on development of infrastructure in smart cities as platforms. Håkon writes the following:

«I understand platforms in my task as an architecture, where a platform consists of three main parts. The first is a core, where there is a lot of functionality. The other are complementary components, or components that use core functionality to work. The third is the interface that allows communication between the kernel and the complementary components. To illustrate with, for example, Android, the kernel is the operating system itself and the phone it’s running on. The interfaces are the APIs that can be used by app developers. The complementary components are the apps running on the phone. Infrastructures developed as platforms will then have interfaces that enable the functionality and data in the infrastructure to be accessed from outside. The complementary components will be developed by third parties who wish to use the infrastructure.»

Håkon has examined Datek Light Control

We are pleased that Håkon has been examining our system in his master thesis. His conclusion is that our communication infrastructure easily can be used as a platform for applications other than light control. Håkon believes that if the vast majority of infrastructure is developed in this way, it is possible to make creative use of the functionality already developed in a city.

Interested in reading the entire master thesis of Håkon? You can find it here Master thesis Håkon Antonsen

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