Swapping out your lightbulbs could help make your city smarter

Smart cities have been described as one of the best ways that the human race will be able to address the many issues that we’re going to be facing in the coming decades, from climate change to overpopulation, but how can you help make your city “smart”? According to Cisco’s Wim Efrin, doing something as simple as adopting a new lightbulb goes a long way in making a city smarter. 

Simply swapping out the old-school incandescent, sodium or metal halide lamps with newer LED bulbs that can also contain an array of sensors can push a city on the path to becoming smarter, said Wim Efrin the Executive Vice President for Industry Solutions and Chief Globalization Officer with Cisco. According to Efrin, while cities are installing the LED lamps they often elect to put in video surveillance and even Wi-Fi access points too. “We see this as an enormous inflection point,” Efrin told me during an interview on Thursday. “This could blanket a city in Wi-Fi and enable the city to offer citizen services and we are always looking for what will be that inflection point. The simple light bulb could be it.”