The city of Moers is building an intelligent infrastructure in cooperation with the IoT company Alpha-Omega Technology
Berlin and Moers, 4 December 2019: In Moers, everyone involved is pulling together for a smart city based on a city-wide LoRaWAN (Long Range Wide Area Network). With the participation of citizens, the city administration, the central building management and the municipal utility ENNI started a two-year test phase in summer 2019 in which concrete applications are being tried out. The IoT experts at Alpha-Omega Technology now want to support the city in successfully implementing the first projects. Intelligent energy management for school buildings is currently being planned.
The potential of LoRaWAN technology was first discussed in 2018 at the Hackday Niederrhein, when a participant brought the first gateway to Moers town hall and reported on small data packets, long transmission ranges and interesting applications. With citizen participation, the city of Moers' digitalisation unit developed the first use cases at the beginning of 2019, which were tested shortly afterwards. The technology enables a comparatively inexpensive infrastructure, bridges longer distances, consumes very little power, and is particularly suitable for the wireless communication of sensors and thus for the use of lightweight battery- or solar-powered devices.
Successful test phase with concrete LoRaWAN applications
"We have now installed eight gateways. They receive the data from the respective transmitters and pass it on to the servers. Four more will be added in the coming months. Our goal is to offer city-wide coverage next year," explains Marvin Halle from the central building management of the city of Moers. "We look for locations as high up as possible so that we achieve a long range." The municipal cooperation partners have had positive experiences with the new technology so far: for the first time, LoRaWAN was used productively to transmit the water temperature of the Bettenkamper Meer natural swimming lake. The city also equipped a mobile stage at the moers festival with a tracking module, so visitors could follow the vehicle's location via the festival app and experience the concerts there.