On Monday January 20th, Kelowna council discussed the City's first Intelligent City Strategy.
Their vision is to find ways to improve the lives of residents through access to online services, technological innovation and collaborative problem-solving, to creating local solutions to local problems.
The presentation outlined opportunities for innovative technology to create better cities, all with a goal of increasing efficiency and user convenience.
In creating the strategy, six themes were identified as areas of focus: Team, Systems, Data, Mobility, Community and Security.
A key initiative underway this year is a CCTV camera registry partnership with the Kelowna RCMP.
Intelligent Cities Manager, Andreas Boehm said it will help the police access video surveillance more efficiently after a crime occurs.
“Businesses register their camera location with us and we provide this information to the RCMP when they need it so they don’t have to go knocking on doors. So, if successful, we’re looking at scaling this project up, maybe rolling it out to other parts of the community, maybe including our residents and their cameras as well,” said Boehm.
He added it is a great example of how the City can use partnerships to improve community safety.
Staff are also examining the impact new technologies can have on Kelowna's current systems.
“We're working with our partners at the airport to pilot an artificial intelligent chatbot that can answer important questions immediately. So questions like: is my flight on time, what’s the lineup at security like, how much is parking and where do I park.
“ This frees up a lot of staff time so they can focus on the bigger issues that they’re dealing with and it provides that consistent 24/7 customer experience.”
By monitoring how this project works, Kelowna can start exploring scalability and in future the City could use this tech to guide residents through processes at City Hall, Boehm told council.
Councillor Brad Sieben said the move in this direction is a logical next step but a security lens has to be placed on any new technologies the City implements.
“Sometimes in the quest of being innovative you become vulnerable. I guess, I would have liked to have seen in here breach response plans because the notion that there's going to be incidents, we aren't going to be impenetrable and to make sure that that's part of the security, it's not just building the walls,” said Coun. Sieben.
And although the efficiencies will be great Sieben says the City will have to keep resiliency top of mind.
Additional Intelligent City initiatives already underway include: