Emergency service providers in the City of Hilliard are ready to help when the call comes. But they’re often waiting for a notification, such as a resident reporting a basement flood, a traffic crash victim dialing 911, or a bystander witnessing a fall.
But, what if they didn’t have to wait? What if technology could identify – and even predict – when the City needs to respond?
Ubihere, a Hilliard technology company, is partnering with the City to send an alert directly to those providers – saving time, money, headaches – and potentially lives.
Solutions to these problems and more are among those being tested as part of one of the Hilliard City Lab partnerships. City Lab is a unique public-private collaboration between the City of Hilliard and technology companies such as Ubihere.
Through the City Lab initiative, the entire City of Hilliard becomes a one-of-a-kind technology testbed. City resources are leveraged to help high-tech businesses create, test, launch and commercialize innovative solutions. In return, the goal is that Hilliard will benefit from the attraction, retention, and expansion of technology businesses, along with the creation of associated high-paying jobs. The result is a tech-friendly environment not found in other communities.
City leaders are interested in how Ubihere’s technology can improve City services, particularly in monitoring of the City’s sanitary sewer system.
Ubihere uses patented advanced positioning analytics to map an image in real time to pinpoint an object’s exact location through 2D and 3D technology, providing immediate insights to improve workstation safety, retail experience, fleet management and operational efficiency.
The company offers two product lines, Ubitrax and Ubivision, that bring together hardware and software solutions to generate a complete picture of how things are running.
“Geo-positioning, telling where things are, is the bread and butter of the Ubihere technology, but there is so much more information about the what and how that we can provide our customers,” said Chief Software Engineer Michael Karnes.
Ubitrax, the hardware solution, is like a hands-on approach to sensing. By installing the Ubitrax tags users can remotely track a wide variety of environmental conditions from vibrations, water levels, and radiation exposure.
Ubivision, the software solution, takes a hands-off approach to sensing. From a network of cameras, the Ubivision system uses computer vision to extract semantic information and then processes that information to determine if anything significant has occurred. The definition of a significant event is left up to the user. Retail customers tend to be interested in how customers move through their store. Cities are interested in knowing when roundabouts are blocked by stopped vehicles. The community center wants to know immediately when and where a fall has occurred.
So, how is this technology being tested as part of the Hilliard City Lab partnership?
Traditionally, if there’s a blockage in a sewer line, a backup can occur and might flood a resident’s basement. A call is then made to the City to make a repair, but the damage is done. With Ubihere technology, sensors are placed in manholes to measure water levels, pinpointing the blockage before a homeowner experiences a problem.
“This allows the City to respond proactively, instead of reactively,” said Duane Powell, the City’s Director of Information Technology. “Our operations team can identify the problem and fix it before the resident’s basement is ever flooded.”
The Hilliard Development Corporation (HDC) supported Ubihere’s research with a $25,000 Innovation Grant this year. The project’s first test sensors were installed in the fall at a manhole near Ubihere’s offices on Lyman Drive.
The same technology is being applied to the City’s traffic cameras to develop a process to alert first responders to crashes. Instead of waiting for a crash to be reported, Ubihere’s sensors will notify the City’s police officers when a vehicle has exited the roadway.
“Ubihere couldn’t do what it does without the City of Hilliard. We’re part of a new type of artificial intelligence technology people are trying to learn how to use, and we need collaborators,” said Karnes. “The partnership with the City of Hilliard has been a two-way discussion. The City has been open to conversation to take technology we know has potential and mold it into something value in a trusting way.”
Learn more (and connect your company) at https://hilliardohio.gov/city-lab/
