Case introduction
Södertälje is an urban area in Stockholm County and the municipality have approximately 97,000 inhabitants. Lake Mälaren is close to the urban area and is connected to the Baltic Sea by Södertälje canal. Since 2000 it is the largest urban area entirely located in the province of Södermanland, Sweden.
The challenge
Society’s consumption of natural resources today is unsustainable. Digital technology will be a necessity for streamlining and optimizing businesses that in the future need to consume significantly less resources. Södertälje municipality strategy is to take a comprehensive approach and utilize today’s technology by using smart sensors and connected devices. The smart sensors can contribute to more efficient logistics, and new ways of communicating with those who generates waste.
The solution
To build their connected and interconnected society, Södertälje municipality have built a LoRaWAN network together with Telge Nät. LoRaWAN is short for low-power wide-area network, which is a wireless radio technology with bidirectional communication. The communication distance can stretch as long as 15 km in urban environments and even longer in rural communication setups.
The technology facilitates the communication between smart sensors, transmitting data into a SaaS environment. The complete solution enables the municipality to monitor waste volumes, map waste and material flows.
The result
At present, Södertälje have 160 smart sensors connected to wastebaskets in the central of the municipality and the work of scaling up connected devices are in progress.
Smart waste management is beneficial in many ways including;
- Route optimization and reduction of CO2 emissions
- Decrease in street cleaning
- Decrease in overflowing litter bins
- Cost effective collecting of waste
- Optimized workflow
Anthony McCarrick Digital Strategist at the Municipal Board Office
The work with Internet of Things is an important part of our digital ecosystem and we see many possible synergies with other processes that we run, such as open data to further increase the added value to our citizens.