When scientists and filmmakers shared their visions of the future in the 1960s, they imagined unmanned flying cars and superhighways sprawling across the sky. While some level of success has been achieved with aerial vehicles, it is the connected world that looks set to win the transportation race to the future.
In both the developed and developing world, huge volumes of waste are created daily. When you throw away a coffee cup or dispose of your newspaper, you might not pay much thought to how and when that waste is collected. However, it must be collected and managed efficiently and this can be a challenge for municipalities and waste companies throughout the world.
Deep beneath a manhole cover, miles away from its nearest hub, a smart meter wakes up, sends packets of analytic data into the cloud and goes back to sleep again. While this may not sound groundbreaking, the technology that drives this process is a breakthrough that is dramatically reducing costs and complexity and increasing flexibility for utility companies the world over.