Samsung SDS, Telensa Partner to Enable Smart City Infrastructure, Data Solutions

Smart street lighting, IoT sensors and data trust platform will help cities deploy smart city projects and retain control of their urban data assets

Samsung SDS, the digital arm of Samsung, and Telensa, an enabler in smart street lighting and smart city data, are working together on smart city projects.

The two companies are collaborating on smart streetlighting, in which Telensa is the global leader with more than 1.7m lights deployed, and the Urban Data Project – a cloud platform that creates a trust infrastructure for urban data, that enables cities to collect, protect and use their data for the benefit of all citizens.

The first collaboration will be in city projects in Korea, with wider deployments following across Asia Pacific and in the United States.

The initial area of collaboration is smart street lighting, where Telensa is the world market share leader. By combining the Telensa PLANet streetlight control application with Samsung SDS Brightics IoT platform, cities will be able to enjoy energy savings and can access a vast ecosystem of sensor applications.

Samsung SDS will provide its Brightics IoT, a powerful data collecting platform specialized in retrieving and analysing big data, powered by AI. B Telensa will also leverage Samsung SDS’s deep expertise in other areas such as 5G technology and blockchain, which require streetlight access for ubiquitous deployment.

Samsung SDS will also be working with Telensa on the Urban Data Project, a collaborative solution that creates a trust infrastructure for urban data, one that enables cities to collect, protect and use their data for the benefit of all citizens. This collaboration will involve integrating Brightics IoT with Telensa’s City Data Guardian, part of its wider Urban Data Project.

Urban data is the mosaic of street-by-street, minute-by-minute information that makes up a city’s digital twin. It includes mapping how people use the city, the mix of traffic on the roads, the hyper-local air quality and noise levels. This data is incredibly valuable for designing better city infrastructure, delivering more efficient city services, and making everything more transparent to empower citizens. It is also potentially valuable to industries such as retail, real estate and insurance.

To date the use of urban data has been limited by two barriers. The first is trust – how can a city’s Chief Data Officer apply best-practice privacy policies to data and provide transparency to citizens on how that data is protected and used. The second is the cost of single-purpose sensors and the related cost of moving raw video data to the cloud.

The Urban Data Project aims to solve these problems. The City Data Guardian is the trust platform that enables cities to apply transparent privacy policies, comply with data regulations, and make data available to improve services and drive future city revenues. Multi-Sensor Pods installed on streetlight poles, combine video and radar working together to provide a more complete picture. The pods employ AI and machine learning to extract detailed real-time insights from the raw data.

Sean Im, Senior Vice President of Solution Business Division at Samsung SDS, said: “We are delighted to be working with Telensa to enable cities to harness and protect their urban data assets on behalf of their citizens. Brightics IoT will provide effective data collection and analytics, which will lead to improved quality of life for citizens. By combining the capabilities of both companies, Samsung SDS plans to further explore new possibilities to adopt the latest information technologies including AI and blockchain.”

Will Franks, CEO of Telensa, said: "We've been working with cities around the globe to make millions of streetlights smart, and now we’re providing Chief Data Officers with the tools to protect and use urban data and engage with new technologies like 5G mobile. We are excited to be working with Samsung SDS, who bring global reach, product innovation and deep expertise from IoT to 5G.”