It has been two weeks since we saw the exceptional unveiling of technologies showcased at TechXLR8. At the expo, Oracle surprised us with their version of a smart city. The project aims to revolutionise modern cities, and with it, the very way we work in, live in, and interact with our urban surroundings.

Oracle has unveiled its new smart city project, entitled Primavera Smart City Projects Solution, or just Smart City. It aims to revolutionise urban cities by using existing technologies that we use in our daily lives, such as height and weight sensors and smart lighting, integrating them into our cities to significantly improve the way we go through our daily tasks.

Oracle had a small Lego diorama city at their TechXLR8 booth as their means of communicating the Smart City concept transparently. It was a lot of fun to play around with, but we were interested in how Smart City will impact our lives. We asked a spokesman for Oracle at the event, who said that with various different technologies, like smart parking, we can organise our car parking much better. With Smart City, drivers can reserve a parking spot and pay for it in an app. This app uses algorithms to process the information and will tell the owner of the car park who is using their services. Plus, if a member of the public is using a reserved space that doesn’t belong to them, the owner of the car will automatically be charged for using the space, with the charge paid directly to the owner of the parking lot.

There are ideas for smart lighting, too. The project can use light sensors on our streets to cut down on electricity usage for street lights. Smart City will use weight sensors to improve waste management. By allocating a waste bin with a specific weight, technology will allow bins to be emptied automatically. Moreover, this means that cities will cut down on rat infestations and the like, and minimise the smell our waste gives off.

These ideas should be very easy to integrate into reality. By taking advantage of small processing units such as the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi, the tech should be both affordable for the home and easy to develop software for. Furthermore, the technology that Oracle will use is already on the market at a reasonable price.

According to the Oracle representative that we spoke to, the population growth in urban areas has been in the region of 65% annually in recent years. Traditional cities were not intended to hold so many people in one place, and with the rapid reproduction rate us humans are increasing the population by, it is time for a change. Oracle states that if we want to maintain our urban areas, Smart City is part of the answer to this problem.