{"id":35593,"date":"2024-02-23T10:03:36","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T15:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/?p=35593"},"modified":"2024-06-05T20:30:18","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T00:30:18","slug":"smart-cities-where-human-and-artifical-intelligence-meet-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/technology\/smart-cities-where-human-and-artifical-intelligence-meet-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Cities: Where Human and Artifical Intelligence Meet"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Learn how Richmond Hill is embracing the concept of a smart city through the City Rover Project.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Nestled in the center of Canada’s economic powerhouse, the Toronto Region, Richmond Hill has seamlessly woven technology into the fabric of its urban landscape, transforming the city into a dynamic and interconnected hub.<\/p>\n\n

Richmond Hill leverages cutting-edge technologies to enhance quality of life, optimize resource management, and foster sustainable urban development. From intelligent city maintenance systems to academic partnerships, Richmond Hill embodies the true essence of a smart cities, where tech innovation converges with human diligence to create a harmonious business and living environment.<\/p>\n\n

This effort is exemplified in Visual Defence<\/a>\u2019s CityROVER<\/a> project, which revolutionized the use of AI cameras in Richmond Hill and around the world.<\/p>\n\n

What is Visual Defence\u2019s City Rover?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

\u201cVisual Defence has been based in Richmond Hill for over 25 years and started as a security company. We were one of the first companies to digitize CCTV and had several CCTV projects in major airports like Pearson, Heathrow in England, and Frankfurt in Germany,\u201d said Roy Tal.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cSix years ago, we had a lot of cameras in a lot of different places and thought it would be more useful to understand what\u2019s happening in the cameras, and that\u2019s when artificial intelligence was first becoming accessible to the public, so we tapped into it early.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

One of the unique use cases Visual Defence identified was pothole detection. Richmond Hill was one of the first partners to utilize this new technology. Visual Defence added artificial intelligence capabilities to the cameras that go inside the city vehicles to detect potholes and other hazards in real-time. This eliminates the need for the city\u2019s residents to report potholes, allowing them to be detected and fixed before they can become a safety concern.<\/p>\n\n

Along with detecting safety hazards, Visual Defence\u2019s City Rover creates reports and heatmaps to help the city organize and prioritize urban maintenance. \u201cIt\u2019s an end-to-end process, the vehicle detects it, sends it to the cloud, creates a work order, and somebody goes to fix it,\u201d said Tal.<\/p>\n\n

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Depiction of Visual Defence’s CityROVER AI hazard detection.<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n

The Toronto Region\u2019s openness to tech innovation and government support made Richmond Hill the perfect launch pad to roll out such a project. \u201cToronto Region municipalities are some of the best to work with, they are very open to partnering with organizations like ours,\u201d said Tal.<\/p>\n\n

This speaks to Richmond Hill\u2019s robust academic community that partners with businesses and government to create a seamless and efficient way of life for its residents.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe met with Roy and his team to discuss some of the challenges we face as municipalities and how the work that Visual Defence is doing could support that, and that was really the start of the City Rover project,\u201d said Anthony Ierullo, Director of Economic Development with the City of Richmond Hill.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cRichmond Hill was essentially the demonstration site for this product,\u201d said Ierullo. \u201cOur ability to demonstrate that this software had utility in the sector allowed it to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cVisual Defence\u2019s City Rover is a great example of the public sector working with the private sector to advance thinking and open our lab, turning the municipality into a living lab to support innovative product delivery that not only benefits the business but also benefits the broader community at large,\u201d said Ierullo.<\/p>\n\n

In what other ways is Richmond Hill integrating technology?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

\u201cWhat came out of this is that we saw ourselves (Richmond Hill) as an incubator for tech businesses,\u201d said Ierullo.<\/p>\n\n

After the success of partnering with Visual Defence, Richmond Hill saw a reciprocal opportunity for business and government. In 2020, the city held design competitions with local businesses to pitch products and grow the opportunity.<\/p>\n\n

Richmond Hill went on to partner with OCAD University<\/a> and Centennial College<\/a> as part of the city\u2019s Centre for Local Innovation and Collaboration<\/a> (CLIC).<\/p>\n\n

The goal of this partnership is to connect businesses with local academic institutions to address challenges and research solutions. CLIC has worked with over 40 businesses since 2021, developing businesses and tech innovation.<\/p>\n\n

Connecting Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence of Smart Cities<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

\u201cThere are a lot of players in the incubator space, including well-known ones like VentureLab<\/a> and York University\u2019s YSpace<\/a>, which are doing great things for the region. A gap we identified was addressing human-centered design,\u201d said Ierullo.<\/p>\n\n

CLIC has worked with several AI-centered businesses that rely on advanced technology and human interaction to elevate the process, merging cutting-edge tech and human creativity. One example is a customer service AI business that allows patrons to interact with an avatar to centralize call center interactions, \u00a0so staff can address broader concerns.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cIt really reduces redundancy and waste, AI will not put people out of work, but it will change the way we work,\u201d said Ierullo. \u201cJust like any other transformative technology, there is an adjustment period and from that, new opportunities are being created.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

This sentiment is echoed in the outcomes of Visual Defence\u2019s City Rover project. The City Rover detects four times the amount of urban disturbances as a person searching for potholes or fielding calls from city residents. As a result, city workers are free to use 100 per cent of their day planning and solving problems.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThis technology does not replace the job of inspectors, it takes the tedious tasks away so they can focus on the most pressing tasks,\u201d said Tal. \u201cPeople are good at solving problems, and what this technology does is it gives us time to do what we do best and removes the monotonous stuff like looking at the road for hours, creating a more sustainable way to run cities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

For more information on Visual Defence visit https:\/\/www.cityrover.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Toronto Global is the first point of contact for international businesses looking to accelerate expansion, make connections and access talent in the Toronto Region<\/a>, Canada\u2019s business, tech and financial capital. Our business-driven team has provided complimentary concierge services to more than 250 companies \u2013 including Sanofi, Netflix, Infosys and Unilever \u2013 setting the stage for success in the fastest-growing, most educated and diverse market in North America.<\/em><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Learn how Richmond Hill is embracing the concept of a smart city through the City Rover Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":35596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_searchwp_excluded":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[288,285],"tags":[348],"class_list":["post-35593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","category-business-insights","tag-ai"],"acf":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35593"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38164,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35593\/revisions\/38164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/torontoglobal.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}