Smart Cities
Open-format urban telemetry - traffic, parking, lighting, air quality, waste - built for procurement, not for vendor lock-in.
IoT-WorkS builds urban sensor networks for councils and public bodies covering traffic, parking, street lighting, air quality and waste. Data is exported in open formats - JSON, CSV and MQTT - into whatever GIS or open-data portal is already in use, so procurement is not buying a closed platform.
Where we deploy
3 typical use casesTraffic & parking telemetry
Magnetometer + camera-counted vehicle flows feeding adaptive signal timing and live parking-availability maps.
Street-lighting + air-quality nodes
Sensor pods on lamp-columns combine PM2.5/NOx monitoring with adaptive dimming. One install, two services.
Open data, open formats
JSON + CSV + MQTT exports to whatever GIS or open-data portal the council already runs. No proprietary backends required.
What can a council actually monitor with urban sensors?
The recurring four are movement, air, light and waste. Traffic and parking sensors show flow and occupancy rather than modelled estimates, air-quality nodes report particulate and nitrogen dioxide levels at street scale, lamp-column nodes enable adaptive dimming, and fill sensors turn waste collection from a fixed round into a demand-led one. Each is useful alone; the value comes from running them through one data layer.
- Traffic flow and parking-bay occupancy at street and zone level
- PM2.5, PM10 and nitrogen dioxide monitoring on lamp columns
- Adaptive street-lighting dimming with fault reporting
- Waste-container fill levels for demand-led collection rounds
How do you avoid vendor lock-in on a public contract?
By making the data leave the platform in formats anyone can read. Every deployment exports JSON, CSV and MQTT, and the sensor network can be pointed at a different backend without replacing hardware. That matters at re-procurement: the authority owns the data and the estate, so a future tender is a genuine competition rather than a renewal negotiation with the only supplier able to read the format.
How does street-scale air-quality data compare with official monitoring?
They answer different questions. The national network provides reference-grade measurement at a small number of sites, which is what regulatory assessment depends on. Street-scale sensor pods provide much denser coverage at lower individual accuracy - the right tool for spotting hotspots, comparing before and after an intervention, and evidencing school-street or low-traffic schemes. We calibrate against nearby reference sites where one exists.
Defra UK-AIR air quality information (defra.gov.uk)What does a first phase usually cover?
Most authorities start with one corridor or one problem: a school street, a congested junction, a set of car parks or a waste round with unpredictable fill. A phase of that size proves the data flow into the existing GIS or open-data portal and produces a defensible before-and-after, which is what unlocks the next tranche of funding. Expansion then reuses the same gateways.
Every vertical runs on the same engines: AI Telemetry for sensor data, Engineering services for hardware + firmware + integration, the same platform for dashboards, alerts and compliance exports. The vertical changes the asset class and the regulatory frame; the stack underneath doesn't.
Frequently asked questions
- What data formats do you export?
- JSON, CSV and MQTT as standard, into whatever GIS or open-data portal the authority already runs. There is no proprietary backend requirement, so the data stays usable if the supplier changes.
- Are your air-quality sensors reference grade?
- No, and they are not intended to be. Street-scale pods give dense coverage for hotspot detection and before-and-after comparison, calibrated against nearby reference sites; regulatory assessment continues to rely on the national network.
- Can sensors mount on existing street furniture?
- Yes. Nodes are designed for lamp-column and pole mounting, which is what keeps installation to a single visit and avoids new civils work or ground-mounted cabinets.
- How is the network powered?
- Lamp-column nodes take power from the column where available; standalone sensors run on multi-year batteries over LoRaWAN or NB-IoT, so locations without a supply are still coverable.
- Does the data belong to the council?
- Yes. The authority owns the data and the deployed estate, and exports are in open formats, which is what keeps a future re-procurement genuinely competitive.
Tell us about your smart cities project.
A local engineer will reply within one working day with a recommended sensor mix, gateway architecture and a rough deployment timeline.