FEATURE : EDGE COMPUTING
Security and surveillance are key digital services within metropolitan areas and will increasingly rely on Edgeenabled real-time reporting to flag up potential issues more quickly and more accurately than human beings scanning multiple security screens .
And the same is true in the retail sector – although , as many shops are located in city locations , one could argue that smart retailing is almost a sub-sector of the Smart City . Point of Sale ( PoS ) payment systems have
AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES ARE , PERHAPS , THE BEST EXAMPLE OF JUST HOW PREVALENT EDGE COMPUTING WILL BECOME . existed for many years , relying on both Edge devices and , increasingly , relatively local Edge data centres , to ensure the transaction speed and reliability , as well as efficient stock management . Customer loyalty programmes are another example of Edge technology already at work .
Smart transport , smart cities , smart retail – to this list can be added smart homes , smart healthcare , smart energy , almost every activity can benefit from the addition of some kind of intelligence and / or automation . Our daily domestic and working lives , which increasingly intersect thanks to the Digital Transformation accelerated by the pandemic , will feature literally hundreds of Edge interactions .
Infrastructure – the Edge explosion bottleneck ?
Talking about Edge applications is a great deal easier than implementing them . If autonomous vehicles , smart cities and smart retail are to become an everyday , reliable reality , then there needs to be a major build-out of the Edge infrastructure required to make them happen . Look
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