“The future will belong to cities that use digitalization actively in all areas of life to create added value for their citizens” – says Mayor of Solingen Tim Kurzbach. The “City of Blades” in the Bergisches Land area of Germany is one of thirteen municipalities that have been selected by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community (BMI) for the Smart Cities Model Project.

Public street lighting in the smart city Solingen plays a strategically important role. For a model project, the multifunctional urban lighting system Lif by Selux has been selected. In addition to different lighting tasks, the modular system luminaire performs various smart functions. Lif has been equipped with a weather sensor and was also fitted with a wi-fi module with a Bluetooth beacon function. This enables information to be sent to mobile device users in the vicinity of the light columns via push notifications – for instance about an artwork at the location. Soon will functions like this will be integrated into the Solingen app.

In addition, the city of Solingen is testing an emergency call system with a video camera on the Lif – if the alarm button is pressed, a voice and video connection will immediately be made to an emergency call center. Another idea under consideration is retrieval of relevant local audio information at the press of a button – for the visually impaired or for children who cannot read yet.

Part of the model project is also to implement sensors like weather sensors, but also environmental sensors that measure air quality based on parameters like particulate matter, CO-content, etc. in the near future.

client: City of Solingen

photographer: Stefan Schilling