Business View Civil and Municipal | May 2021

163 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL MAY 2021 lighting by installing LED lights and adding CIMCON’s smart lighting controller is a safe and straightforward choice to implement during the upgrade process as it simply plugs into the top of the streetlight fixture. The lighting controls help provide a more pleasing and attractive lighting experience, improve energy efficiency, and deliver a very tangible return on investment. “One of the more interesting things about our smart streetlight controllers is they are network devices and can talk to, and through, each other. We started with solutions that build a secure and resilient mesh-based network to ensure data is delivered to our CMS application in the cloud consistently” says Flaherty. “Our cloud-based operations software, LightingGale, makes it very easy to access information, understand status and to drive real action. More recently, we’ve introduced controllers that communicate directly over traditional service provider networks like Verizon or T-Mobile and the data is sent directly into LightingGale. We are fairly unique in that we support a variety of networks and that allows a customer to choose what is right for them – we don’t believe one size fits all nor do we believe our customers should be locked into one type of network. We have a number of customers using a combination of our network options due to the varied terrain of the city and the distribution of the streetlights. Regardless of the network selected, once deployed an outdoor citywide network is now available. In essence we’ve created a canopy of data communication throughout the city just waiting to support services beyond smart streetlighting.” The question now is what cities want to do with their new network capabilities. They could monitor air quality, keep track of traffic, or pursue more left-field plans. Flaherty suggests, however, that not all kinds of data are suitable to be transferred over a street lighting network. He explains, “There are certain kinds of data you wouldn’t want to put over a street lighting network. As with all networks, you need to C IMCON L IGHT ING