Construction complete on Darwin’s Smart City project

The construction of Switching on Darwin, the nation’s largest smart city project, has been completed on time and on budget. The project aims to make Darwin a world-leading smart city with the addition of 912 new LED lights, 138 new CCTV cameras, 39 new hotspots to extend free Wi-Fi, 24 environmental sensors, smart parking sensors, along with an audio system in the Mall.

The $10 million project, which received $5 million funding from the Federal Government and $2.5 million each from the Northern Territory Government and City of Darwin, was launched in July 2018.

Switching on Darwin will deliver many benefits to the community and the environment, including enhanced community safety; improved and more efficient Council services; greater environmental sustainability by reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions; smart planning where data will inform planning and design; innovation with data available to the community and business sector; and improved public spaces through Wi-Fi, lighting, smart parking and better understanding of pedestrian movement.

Lord Mayor Kon Vatskalis stated “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 understanding our local environmental.” 

Local Member for Port Darwin Paul Kirby said the Esplanade is one of Darwin City’s most pristine and popular exercise areas, advising "since being elected I’ve been having discussions with people about making it brighter and safer for exercise in the evenings."

With construction complete the focus has now moved to testing and implementation, with the aim of a fully integrated system being available by the end of June 2019.

Lord Mayor Vatskalis 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."

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