Australia’s largest smart city project, “Switching on Darwin” has been completed.
The smart city project which was aimed to be a “smart, liveable, productive and sustainable capital city” involved changing streetlights to 912 LED lights and installing around 138 CCTV cameras for surveillance as well as adding 39 new hotspots for free Wi-Fi access throughout the city. 24 environmental sensors and smart parking sensors were installed along with an audio system within the shopping centre.
The project was worth $10 million and was funded by the Northern Territory, federal governments and the city of Darwin itself, all of which contributed $2.5 million, $5 million and $2.5 million respectively.
“Completion of this project positions Darwin as a leader in innovation. We now have the tools to improve the liveability of our city, the delivery of services to our community and to better understand our local environment,” said the Mayor of Darwin, Kon Vatskalis.
He added, “A fully integrated dashboard is being developed which will display trends in the data being collected, including temperature, rain and humidity, noise and dust, wind speed and Co2 levels.”
The project is expected to deliver a great deal of benefits to the community of Darwin and will be advantageous to the city’s environment. It is also expected to enhance safety, improve council services and ensure efficiency.
Some of the benefits include: great sustainability through the reduction of energy consumption and carbon emissions and smart planning which enable data to inform the planning and design, ensuring greater efficiency and accuracy, as well as improved public spaces through the widespread availability of Wi-Fi, better street lighting and smart parking services.
The testing phase is now in process and it is expected to be fully available and integrated by the end of June this year.
“This project simply would not have been possible without the $5m investment by the Morrison Government and I’m proud to see the completion of this great initiative,” said Sam McMahon, senator of the Northern Territory. “The completed ‘Switching on Darwin’ project is an important part of the Morrison government’s commitment to keeping Darwin residents and visitors safe and improving amenity of our public spaces.”