Amplifying the city's ability to serve its community

To shape the city of the future, you need insights into its present. What do residents and visitors need? Why do they behave the way they do? And what can you create to enhance their experience and connect the city to them? The answers lie in understanding a colossal amount of data. NTT DATA Smart Solutions “think” and assess multiple data sources, perceive current conditions and allow officials to plan, decide and act on those conditions — leading the way to smarter decisions.

“In the past, we had to rely on incident reports or somebody physically counting the number of incidents. And watching the area could only happen for a short period of time,” says Deputy Director of Innovation and Technology, City of Las Vegas, Chris Craig. “Now, we're able to gather analytics and data 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and have a much more robust set of data to make smart decisions.”

While the solution behind the smart city processes the data, finding the appropriate location to store so much information had to be considered. The pilot project kept data on-premises, but a more flexible solution was needed as more of the city became smart. Microsoft Azure, managed by NTT DATA, provided the ideal location for this sensitive information.

The right way to end wrong-way driving

Traffic management is a vital function for every modern city, and eliminating wrong-way driving was one area the city targeted early on. Michael Sherwood, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Las Vegas says, “We have the ability to look at traffic patterns and flows, using camera and imaging technology. Machine learning and AI turn traffic data into insights, and these insights can be used to answer questions that will ease traffic congestion and improve safety.”

The connection at the root of smart parks

The city’s parks provide spaces for residents to relax, enjoy themselves and spend time with friends and family. To keep those spaces safe, they’ve adopted a smart park strategy that detects people, keeps track of park occupancy and assists in crowd control by alerting the team as the park reaches capacity. It also detects incidents, allowing humans to respond more quickly.

Las Vegas has seven smart parks. “The project aims to not only increase public safety but also provide dynamic new insights into how park assets are used: what time of day people visit, when the park is closed, and manage it after working hours,” says Sherwood. These insights help officials make intelligent decisions on what services to provide at specific parks, based on who uses them, such as which parks need playgrounds for small children and which don’t.

Expanding connections beyond fiber

In downtown areas, Las Vegas relies on the city’s fiber backbone. As the project expands, serving residents creates a greater need for wireless connection solutions. The organization has been working with NTT DATA partners, such as Juniper, to start creating a wireless backbone with ultra-reliable, low-latency communication for smart connected parks — and a more connected community.

“One of the areas we’ve been focusing on is the new world of connectivity, looking for new ways to connect devices to scale into our environment,” says Sherwood. “And one area that we’ve piloted has been Private 5G.”

They’ve already put the expanded network to use to provide connectivity to students and schools in the Clark County School District. “This began as a result of the pandemic, providing internet access to students who needed to shift to virtual learning,” says Sherwood. “More than 1,000 students and families have been connected already, and this number will grow as we continue to expand the reach of the wireless network.”

Outcomes

• Improves park safety for residents and visitors
• Uses data-driven insights to shape planning
• Creates opportunities for future growth

Improving safety in real time while planning for the future

The Smart Solution gives the City of Las Vegas real-time visibility of potential incidents, which is invaluable to first responders and public safety decision-makers. Response times have improved since they receive alerts instead of having to check cameras or send a patrol. Insights into how an area is being used can also help make planning decisions. It allows officials to integrate other edge systems (like those that monitor air quality) and public data sources (like weather information) to enable better decision-making.

“Not only has NTT DATA brought an end-to-end ecosystem into our environment, but they’ve also worked with the systems we already had in place,” says Sherwood. “Allowing us to forge new partnerships with other organizations as we continue to create great solutions that are improving our efficiency and building our community in a new and safe way.”

Creating cost efficiencies

Las Vegas expects to save up to a million dollars a year by avoiding wrong-way accidents and lowering the resource costs for continuous patrolling. These savings can then be redirected into other priority areas.

Improving traffic and road safety

Studying incidents of wrong-way driving informs decisions to replace stop signs with traffic lights on busy streets. “Wrong-way driving incidents have gone down significantly where we’ve done this. The data shows that we used to have approximately 40 incidents a day,” says Craig. “Now we're seeing, on average, only three or four a week.”

Creating opportunities for future growth

“The awesome thing about having the Smart Solution on Microsoft Azure is that it now scales much quicker. And we can start to leverage cloud-native services as we move forward with NTT DATA, deploying more cameras, more sensors and more use cases across the city,” says City of Las Vegas Network Administration Specialist, Allen Tyson.

Expanding the number of smart parks

Extending the network ecosystem across Las Vegas through the deployment of private 5G enables them to explore new connected services. More smart parks, even in areas that weren’t accessible before, allow Las Vegas to deliver the most appropriate services to each community. The optical sensors help them improve the safety of the parks and gather information on how people use them. In turn, those usage patterns allow for better planning.

Creating a sustainable city is paramount for Las Vegas. In Sherwood’s view: “The cities that learn, understand and invest in technology will be the cities of the future. Las Vegas is and will continue to be the city where citizens live, work and play.”