A citywide tech project will change the border community of Yuma. City officials tout the economic benefits and improved public safety. Others worry about their privacy. Maya Springhawk Robnett of the Arizona Science Desk reports…
Cyberville. Wired City. Teletopia. They’re strange names for a strange new idea burgeoning across the United States: so-called “smart cities.” Like smart phones, these city infrastructures are technologically advanced.
Two companies—Siemens Industry and anyCOMM Corporation—partnered on an upgraded city fixture: the streetlight. Siemens built the LED light assembly; anyCOMM made it high tech.
Greg Wilkinson, the City Administrator for Yuma, stood in his office as he opened the packaging for a “node.” “It’s like a four-by-four-by- maybe inch-and-a-half deep box,” he explained.
These “nodes,” will sit on top of the streetlights, which will replace the current ones around town, and they’ll do more than provide light. They’re outfitted with everything from citywide WiFi and 360-degree cameras to microphones that can detect gunshots.
“There are a lot of things in here, though, to prevent Big Brother,” Wilkinson said. “The video isn’t like streamed and captured at a different location and held. It’s just at the node and no one can get to it without the permission of the city.”
The city hopes the tech will attract businesses as well as provide evidence in crimes or accidents.
But some city residents aren’t convinced.
The Yuma City Council recently voted on whether or not to green-light the project. At the meeting, one concerned citizen, John Patch, a Marine veteran who came to Yuma in 1969, wondered where these high tech cameras will point.
“One pointing down behind maybe in somebody’s back yard and can see in their back window?” he suggested. “ It’s none of their business. That’s taking out my privacy. That’s the same as going in my home. I don’t know if you people ever heard of the book 1984 or not.”
"I don't know if you people ever heard of the book 1984 or not." - John Patch
The cameras, city officials explained to Mr. Patch, will only hold video for 28 days and they have promised not to point cameras into homes.
Rob Praske, CEO and founder of anyComm, attended the meeting. He’s heard these concerns before. He said his company provides the technology, but doesn’t decide how to use it: “By offering a camera or a gunshot detector and proving that capability to the city, it makes sense to do that while you’re installing this new wireless network, so there’s no additional cost from a manufacturer’s point of view.”
Praske said it will ultimately be up to the City of Yuma to turn those functions on or off. “If, in the future, the city creates policies to use those devices,” he explained, “you don’t have to go in and rewire the entire city to do it.”
Other than the cameras, the devices can detect sound—like spray cans, gunshots, and car crashes—and can tell law enforcement which direction those sounds came from. The brightness of the LED lights can be adjusted remotely to aid police at night. The nodes will eventually be used to create a city-wide 5G cellular network, possibly replacing cell towers in the future.
While anyCOMM is investing $10M in the project, the cost to the city will be $3.71M, which at least two councilmembers thought could be better spent on the city’s roads. But city officials said the project will save the city more than $3.85M in energy and operational savings over the next decade.
In the end, the Council voted to approve the project.
Yuma will be one of the first two cities in the country to have full deployment of a city-wide streetlight network designed by anyCOMM and Siemens. The other is San Jose, California.
How residents react to these hi-tech eyes and ears on their streets will be closely watched.
Yuma’s streetlights go online in six months.