02/11/13
Hit the Lights - Global Green Lighting
Picture this scenario: it’s 11 pm and a group of suspicious looking characters are hovering around a car parked on the street under a streetlight. One of the guys starts trying to break the window of the driver side door. What if the streetlight overhead started flashing alerting a nearby police officer on patrol or catching the eye of the violators to prevent them from continuing the crime?
In Chattanooga, Global Green Lighting (www.globalgreenlighting.com) has created a unique partnership between technology and the city’s lighting system with the goals being to measure energy savings and help keep Chattanooga’s parks secure and its citizens safe.
GGL started with the concept in 2009 and launched its first order last March deploying the lights in Chattanooga. The lights are controlled by an AMI (Automated Metering Infrastructure) system, which allows for energy savings to be measured and reported, and each light has a solid-state switch (replaces a photo cell) with memory and meter. The data and the control of the light is communicated along a private bandwidth network system to a transmitter located in the city.
Not anybody can access the lighting system, as the operating system is hosted on a homeland-secured encrypted cloud server. It can only be accessed with a user name and password. And in the case of an event similar to the one mentioned above, dispatch or police officers on patrol can (from their vehicles) connect to the city’s Wi-Fi, log in to the system to access certain lights in their area and activate them to dim, brighten, or flash.
To test the technology, these lighting control systems were implemented in Coolidge Park in Chattanooga with participation from the Chattanooga Police Department.
“We have tracked the crime rate in the public park (where) we did the first deployment. It has gone from gang-related violence, such as stabbings and shootings, to zero violence,” said Global Green Lighting Founder Don Lepard.
Lights throughout the city are also outfit to flash in instances of campus lockdowns or as an alert for weather. This example set by Coolidge Park illustrates how the convergence of technology and public safety can result in a positive experience for the community as a whole.