San José Implements Intel Technology for a Smarter City

The city of San José and Intel Corporation are collaborating on a public-private partnership to further the city’s “Green Vision” goals. The project, known as Smart Cities USA, is expected to help drive San José’s economic growth, foster 25,000 clean-tech jobs, create environmental sustainability and enhance the quality of life for residents.

“To help improve quality of life in San José, we're exploring new ways of capturing and sharing localized information to our residents”

The pilot program in San José is Intel’s first smart city implementation in the United States. The scalability of Intel architecture enables the intelligence and flexibility necessary for cities across the country to quickly deploy a range of smart city solutions for everything from air and water quality to traffic and parking management to communications systems and other city infrastructure.

The joint project was selected to be showcased this week as part of the White House SmartAmerica Challenge. The program is a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow initiative that aims to bring together research in Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things and combine test beds, projects and activities from different sectors, including smart manufacturing, healthcare, smart energy, intelligent transportation and disaster response. The goal of the SmartAmerica Challenge is to show tangible and measurable benefits to the U.S. economy and the daily lives of American citizens.

"Our city is strongly committed to our Green Vision, which is our roadmap to becoming the clean-tech innovation center of the world,” said San José Mayor Chuck Reed. “Public-private partnerships are key to creating jobs and enhancing the quality of life for our residents. By working with Intel and using its technology and expertise, we can gather critical data, identify where we can make improvements, and make good decisions to be more efficient with our resources.”

Scalability Meets Sustainability

Today’s cities consume two-thirds of the world’s energy1. To address the escalating demands of existing and future residents, cities are looking for ways to introduce more technology to become “smarter” about the use of limited resources and more flexible in responding to residents’ needs.

The Smart Cities USA pilot project will give San José residents real-time, local data that can inform their personal decisions. For example, the community will better understand how they can help "Spare the Air" on poor air quality days. When there is a local air quality alert, residents can choose to take public transit, bicycle or carpool to get to work or school and thus reduce emissions and improve air quality.

San José, known as the Capital of Silicon Valley, is installing a network of sensors to create a “sustainability lens” that uses Intel technology to measure characteristics such as particulates in the air, noise pollution and traffic flow. Such measurement data will produce meaningful insights that will lead to improvements in air quality, noise, transportation efficiency, environmental sustainability, health and energy efficiency.

This project also aligns with the San José Green Vision, a long-term sustainability initiative adopted by the city in 2007 to protect the environment, stimulate economic growth and achieve sustainability.

"To help improve quality of life in San José, we're exploring new ways of capturing and sharing localized information to our residents," said Kerrie Romanow, director of San José's Environmental Services Department. “With better information, we tend to make better decisions. We're optimistic that the real-time air quality data will help our staff understand how we can positively influence the environment right here in San José as well as regionally and globally.”

Intel Technology for Use in Smart Cities

City governments are projected to collectively invest approximately $41 trillion2 over the next 20 years to upgrade their infrastructure. With Intel technology and its more than 30 years of experience connecting and securing intelligent devices, cities can cost-effectively manage infrastructure growth and resource sustainability that can help them meet the demands of escalating population rates.

The city of San José has installed a sensor demonstration platform using Intel® Gateway Solutions for the Internet of Things with an Intel® Quark™ processor and third-party sensors. Each gateway incorporates Wind River* Intelligent Device Platform software with McAfee* security features connected to Intel’s Hadoop distribution in the cloud.