Globalisation and industrialisation have made major cities a magnet for talent and a driver of economic growth. The resultant rapid migration, however, has put immense pressure on urban infrastructure, with public authorities having to look for ways to make cities more effective and efficient.
Recognising this, Vectolabs Technologies Sdn Bhd, an Internet of Things (IoT) company, is working on smart city implementation in Malaysia.
Smart cities are the next area of focus, especially in Southeast Asia, which is projected to become the fourth-largest economy in the world by 2050. “We made a big bet on smart cities [when we moved here from the US],” says Faizal Ali, CEO and founder of Vectolabs.
The start-up began by experimenting with smart street light controllers, embedded with narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) — a low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology — to light highways and cities as well as densely populated areas such as universities and industrial parks.
With the street light controllers — aptly named Vectolights — local authorities can optimise energy use by customising the schedules of street lights. The smart solution was deployed at the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Shah Alam campus in 2018 and has been used in the Universiti Putra Malaysia campus in Serdang as well as in Kuching and Pulau Kapas.
+INFO: The Edge Markets
