With the expansion of COR, Rio advances in the concept of smart cities

In the second half of the year, Rio de Janeiro City Hall will begin a project to expand and modernize the Rio Operations Center (COR), the largest urban monitoring center in Latin America. The expansion of the center, located in Cidade Nova, in the city center, will cover 1.400 square meters – representing an increase of approximately 50% in relation to the total area currently built. The project is one of the results of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for public lighting in Rio – the Luz Maravilha program, through Rioluz and the Municipal Infrastructure Department, which will allow access to 10 new cameras, five thousand Wi-Fi points and approximately nine thousand georeferenced sensors, among other benefits for the city.

With the expansion, after 10 years of inauguration, COR will have more cutting-edge technology, with human and technological resources capable of developing Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city solutions. The entire project will be funded 100% by the PPP, with completion scheduled for March 2022, including the construction stages, purchase, installation and configuration of new equipment, usability testing and fine-tuning.

– We are taking COR to a new level of technological services, reinstating Rio’s leading role among the smartest cities in the country. Of the 10 cameras, approximately 40% will have facial recognition technology. Our city and its people will have connectivity through five thousand free Wi-Fi hotspots. These hotspots will work with IoT sensors capable of generating data that will be processed by a technical team to transform them into services for the citizen. Our goal is to use all this technology to make the operation increasingly predictive and less reactive, anticipating crisis situations and improving prompt response to incidents – explains Bruno Ramos, COR’s chief executive.

He is responsible for coordinating this entire transformation alongside the municipal secretary of Infrastructure, Kátia Souza.

– Rio de Janeiro will be a smart city with the arrival of Luz Maravilha technology. Monitoring will take place during this expansion. We have held regular meetings and the Infrastructure Department is in charge of all the details of the project. The new building project will have LEDD Certification and will feature water reuse and energy efficiency – reveals Kátia Souza.

The president of Rioluz, Bruno Bonetti, explains how the new equipment will work.

– Luz Maravilha will allow Rio to achieve connectivity indicators in public areas. Other technologies will also be implemented, such as four thousand solid waste sensors in drains and six thousand traffic signal sensors, which will improve traffic flow.

In addition to expanding the room to house the new Luz Maravilha Operational Control Center (CCO), the expansion will include three new floors, which will be built next to the current building, occupying part of the area where the parking lot currently operates. The construction of a cafeteria and changing rooms at the back is also planned.

 

 

EXPANSION DETAILS

Control room: new 14 square meter screen and six more benches
The COR Control Room, which brings together representatives from various city departments and partners in a single space on the ground floor, will be expanded by approximately 30%. There will be six more operational benches, with 24 workstations, and 20 monitors, forming a new 14-square-meter screen, to be installed next to the current one, which has 100 monitors and 65 square meters. There will also be an additional 75-inch LED monitor above the video wall – there are currently four such screens in this position.

Data centre – The first floor of the new building will house a large data center, capable of processing a large volume of data, such as rainfall, photos and videos of incidents, and information captured by the new georeferenced sensors. The same equipment will process the streaming from the new cameras, all connected by fiber optics, and no longer via radio. Part of the Information Technology team will work in this area, supervising the structure responsible for resources such as Wi-Fi connectivity and IoT sensors.

COR.Lab: cutting-edge projects and new technologies in partnership with universities
Another new feature of the expansion will be COR.Lab, COR's innovation laboratory. The initiative, in conjunction with several partners – such as academic institutions, the private sector and other organizations that are part of COR's innovation ecosystem – will foster the development of research and new solutions aimed at increasing COR's performance in the integration of urban operations, in addition to contributing to the construction of a smarter and more resilient city.

R&D and Resilience – COR.Lab will be located on the second and top floor, where COR’s Research and Development department and Resilience Office will be located, which will once again occupy a prominent position in Rio. The R&D room will be used to design Smart City projects, plan them, and execute them with different teams from the city government, the PPP, and partners. The investments brought by the PPP should be translated into services, says COR’s CEO.
“These resources keep COR as a modern, highly technological and intelligent facility. That’s how it was when it was inaugurated and that’s how we’re going to keep it. It’s technology improving citizens’ daily lives,” emphasizes Bruno Ramos.

COLOR Challenge – The expansion should also allow investments in new editions of the COR Challenge: an action led by COR in which startups are challenged to create solutions to improve the city’s resilience to problems such as air pollution, floods, mobility, landslides, etc. The PPP resources could boost the start of operations of the startups that win the Challenge (which has already had two editions), accelerating the application of the winning ideas in the city.

LEED Certification – The new building’s design aims to secure LEED Certification – (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). This is a certification tool that seeks to encourage and accelerate the adoption of sustainable construction practices. This assessment system promotes an approach to the building as a whole, from the project’s conception to its final construction and maintenance. LEED certification provides improvements for society and the environment. To this end, the CCO will reuse water and install photovoltaic cells for improved energy efficiency.

Category:

• City
• Conservation and Public Services
• Infrastructure
• News
• Rio-Urbe
• Rioluz

June 22th, 2021

Appointments: Rio Operations Center Wonder Light City Hall of Rio rioluz Municipal Infrastructure Department Smart cities