Introduction to Smart Cities

For quite some time now, there’s been great interest in smart cities. While there is no such thing as a universally accepted definition of a wise city, the final word aim is to supply improved citizen services and a greater lifestyle to urban dwellers. In the hunt to remodel this ambitious plan into reality, governments, urban planners, engineers, and designers are collaboratively strategizing and leveraging new-age, digital technologies.

How Technology Contributes to Smart Cities

Big data, AI, IoT, and cloud are a couple of of the technologies that may contribute to creating this initiative a hit. While these technological tools assist in accomplishing smart city success, augmented reality and virtual reality in smart cities can improve residents’ self-reliance and decision-making. Immersive technologies that either immerse users into an altogether different, interactive and digital environment, or superimpose digital content right into a physical world, have unique and compelling uses in smart cities.

Augmented Reality in Smart Cities

With the supply of high-speed, consistent network connectivity, AR technology has matured enough to affect cities in becoming smart, digital, and connected in several ways:

Navigation

Navigation apps are one of the crucial vital tools for commuters in urban cities. These apps recommend the shortest routes, helping people to simply commute from one location to a different in less time. However, AR guarantees to supply a fair more compelling and unique experience for those in need of navigation help. Rather than presenting users with an advanced map, AR uses the phone camera to get information on the user’s location, augment navigational content on the mobile display, and help them navigate while they walk, etc.

Disaster Response

When a disaster hits, first-responders must have seamless and clear communication with others, involving proper details about current conditions, and prompt decision-making capabilities to supply appropriate guidance and help. AR tools can provide the most effective assistance and support for his or her needs. Imagine when floods occur and persons are stranded and have to be rescued. The rescue officers must be quickly and safely guided to the destination since wires that get submerged in water can pose serious risks to them. Scenarios like these might be handled well by AR.

Medical Services

Along with maintaining the lifestyle, smart cities also give attention to improving the resident’s well-being and mental health. While digital technologies have all the time been impactful within the healthcare sector, AR’s potential within the medical sector is actually novel and revolutionary. Nowadays, patients have gotten an increasing number of health-conscious and predict to be continually updated on their health conditions and complications. However, despite doctors explaining their health conditions to them, there sometimes stays communication gaps, which can later give rise to conflicts. AR can solve this issue for us.

Virtual Reality in Smart Cities

VR, a technology that immerses users into an altogether different world by showing them an illusory version of reality, has the next potential uses in smart cities:

Education

Traditional learning approaches are deemed boring by 60 percent of scholars. These approaches usually are not only boring but in addition ineffective. The use of VR provides an exceptional and revolutionary strategy to increase knowledge retention for college students at reasonably priced prices. Imagine students getting a chance to travel to distant geographic locations or to World War scenarios. Imagine them attending to touch a human organ in anatomy class or visiting another planet within the solar system for physics lessons. That’s only possible with the facility of VR.

Urban Planning

Smart cities incorporate sensors, cameras, and actuators while constructing recent structures or infrastructures. Smart cities give attention to optimized use of space, making transportation easier, and likewise emitting less greenhouse emissions from buildings. All of those require extensive planning before the event process. With the assistance of VR, city planners can effectively check whether the built model matches the present infrastructural constraints and space. If not, then the engineers could make the required alterations to the model.

Police Training

It is vital to ascertain effective training programs for novice law enforcement officials. Exposing them to real-life high-stakes situations and allowing them to take care of the identical will help officers to develop into more confident during an actual crisis. However, providing such a real-life training setup will not be only expensive, it’s time-consuming. VR, alternatively, can immerse the law enforcement officials right into a training world, where they shall be put into real-life locations and threat situations.

Conclusion

With the supply of reasonably priced hardware and consistent Internet connectivity, augmented reality and virtual reality have gotten easily accessible for transforming city-related plans into reality. Having the potential to supply engaging experiences to users, augmented reality and virtual reality in smart cities have an incredible ability to remodel and revolutionize residents’ lifestyles. As technology continues to evolve, we are able to expect to see much more revolutionary applications of AR and VR in smart cities, making urban living more efficient, sustainable, and enjoyable for all.