Dijon becomes a smart city supported by digital technology

Envisioning a new kind of city

Digital technology has ushered in a new era of development within the business world. However, it is no longer limited to manufacturing plants and offices. Continuous innovation has seen digital solutions increasingly impact daily life and change the way cities are viewed.

The French city of Dijon saw an exciting opportunity in this development, envisioning a future in which all urban equipment, maintenance services, security systems, and transit are connected and function in synchronization upon a single network. To pursue this vision, Dijon launched an ambitious smart city project that included all 23 municipalities of the city’s metropole, covering a population of no less than 260,000.

Following a series of studies to learn how to group the Security, Municipal Police, CCTV, Traffic, Municipal Enquiries, and Snow Conditions control teams together, the metropole launched the OnDijon smart city project. In February 2018, Capgemini joined a consortium of organizations in partnership with Bouygues Energies & Services to address one of the primary concerns of the project: the development of a digital platform that would connect the central command center with every machine, scanner, and citizen within the metropole to form a new urban nerve network.

Creating a digital urban environment

Capgemini and Bouygues worked with the metropole to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform that connected the control center with every machine, scanner, and citizen. The partners understood that citizens are essential to any smart city design and that any technology or innovation needed to provide the people with the experiences and quality of life they wanted and needed. Together, they developed an application that allowed users to communicate with the command center quickly and easily through their smart phones. By doing so, Capgemini and Bouygues enabled a team of agents to handle a massive amount of information and in response to service needs, maintenance demands, and emergencies. This dramatically improved the responsiveness of the metropole and ensured that all actions were smoothly coordinated.

For example, in the case of a traffic accident, a witness can contact the control center, which then creates an alert for the correct team. As soon as a member of this team receives the alert, an emergency vehicle can be dispatched and traffic lights and barriers throughout the metropole are controlled to ensure the fastest possible response time. In addition, the team would then message the witness to inform them of the incoming response. Finally, a notice can be sent throughout the metropole warning of the accident so that other drivers can redirect themselves along other streets.

Throughout the project, Dijon emphasized the importance of maintaining privacy and the presence of a human element. While sensors, machines, and smart phones are now connected through the metropole, boundaries have been created to ensure that the public remain secure in their private lives. In addition, the presence of human agents ensures that alerts generated by the AI are reviewed and that a single disruption to the system does not affect every service simultaneously.

Connecting the metropole through digital technology

As a result of its new digital platform, Dijon and its metropole has realized its vision of an interconnected city. Virtually every element and service within the metropole is now connected through the platform and the command center. This has enabled more effective urban management and a 40% overall cost reduction in the services rendered through new capabilities.

In addition, as the COVID-19 global pandemic has struck across the world, the Dijon metropole has managed to maintain essential services in large part due to its development as a smart city. Even as health and safety measures have forced a reduction in staff at the command center, the team handled 18,700 calls between March 15 and May 3. During this period, Dijon also maintained critical support such as remote building monitoring, electric access point control throughout the metropole, and the management of streetlights to facilitate the rapid arrival of emergency vehicles.

In addition to these achievements and benefits, the Dijon smart city will have an even larger impact over time. In an era in which urban citizens increasingly find pollution and a lack of sustainability to be major problems, updates to the metropole’s public services and equipment have already set Dijon on track to realize 65% energy savings over the next 12 years. During this time, the metropole will be able to rapidly innovate and engage in continual improvement, ensuring that it continues to develop as a leading example of green and sustainable urban design.

One such example is the management of streetlight luminosity based on citizen traffic. In the future, by cooperating with citizens to monitor the number of people walking through each district, Dijon will be able to individually manage each of the 34,000 light points through the metropole in response to foot traffic. By doing so, the metropole will be able to cut the costs of its streetlight expenses by 65% within the next 12 years, while simultaneously achieving positive environmental results such as an increase in biodiversity through a reduction in insect destruction and preservation of local bat species.

Through this digital project, Dijon has taken the first step to becoming a fully interconnected, smart city. As the consortium continues to work together, the partners will endeavor to further enhance the system and use cutting edge, digital technology to design and create the city of the future.