Boffins invent an operating system for cities

BOFFINS have envisioned an operating system for cities, which works like a PC OS keeping traffic, buildings and services running quickly.

According to the BBC, the Urban OS software will take in data from sensors dotted around the city to keep an eye on what's happening. This means that if there is a fire, it could manage the traffic lights to get fire engines to the event quickly.

The sensors will be able to monitor large scale processes like traffic flow or more specific events like temperature sensors inside individual rooms. The Urban OS concept was unveiled at the Machine-2-Machine conference in Rotterdam.

It completely bypasses humans to manage communications between the sensors and can give a city the means to realise significant cost savings, implementation consistency, quality and manageability, indicated Steve Lewis, the head of Living PlanIT, the company behind Urban OS.

He said, "If you were using an anatomy analogy, the city has a network like the nervous system, talking to a whole bunch of sensors gathering the data and causing actions. We distribute that nervous system into the parts of the body - the buildings, the streets and other things."

McLaren Electronic Systems, which creates sensors for Formula One cars, developed the underlying technology for the Urban OS.

It has also developed an extensive set of application services that will run Urban OS, called Placeapps, which are like apps on a smartphone.

It could be an opportunity for developers, who will also be able to build their own apps to get at data and provide certain services around a city.

As interesting as it sounds, we don't think they've actually built it yet, and frankly it does sound not only very blue-sky, but also a bit scary. µ