Imagine the most powerful and far-reaching controls system you’ve ever seen. Now make it smarter, more self-sufficient and more all-encompassing; that’s what you get with GE’s Intelligent Environments For Cities and Intelligent Environments For Buildings. With these platforms, GE is combining their phenomenal LED lighting technology with state-of-the-art sensor systems to create an extraordinarily advanced analytics and controls system with staggering benefits for cities, governments, businesses and individuals.
GE’s Intelligent Environments For Cities essentially enables the city around you to listen to you and give you feedback, whether you are a driver, pedestrian or city planner. LED street lighting installations first gather and analyze data regarding vehicular and pedestrian traffic flow, emergency vehicle movement, environmental conditions and even parking availability. Then, this data is then gathered and communicated via products like GE’s LightGrid (click to see our LightGrid Featured Product page), GE’s Predix – their amazing cloud platform software – to create a vast network of information. This data is then quickly synthesized and analyzed and then turned into usable information; for instance, the newly-intelligent city can tell your smartphone where free parking is available or the least-crowded route to your office. It can also tell city employees which areas are having unhealthy smog problems due to traffic congestion – and then offer solutions to said traffic problem. It can even make traffic lights smarter; they can react in real-time to traffic patterns to give green lights where they are needed most. Basically: it makes every aspect of moving around a city better and more efficient.
Intelligent Environments For Buildings operate in a similar way. Based in the LED lighting, the sensors can interact with a person’s smartphone to guide and enhance their experience. Imagine you’re shopping at your favorite grocery store, and it’s equipped with GE’s platform. If you enable it, your smartphone will greet you and immediately tell you where everything on your shopping list is located, with GPS instructions. Then, it will present you all the relevant coupons, and make suggestions for other purchases you may like that are on sale. And if you’re a store owner, you can see which display purchases are working well, how people move through your store and figure out how to optimize your point of purchase displays. It can also turn on lights when you enter an otherwise deserted aisle or control the temperature based on people’s movement throughout a structure. The possibilities – and energy and money savings – are endless.
We are extremely excited about what GE is doing with their Intelligent Environments platforms. For more information, feel free to check out their website or contact us directly.
“GE’s Intelligent Environments for Cities platform uses LED street lighting and wireless sensors to connect, collect and analyze data, harnessing the power of the Industrial Internet to enhance quality of life for city residents and visitors.”