The latest smart city solutions: get inspired by DOLL Living Lab in Copenhagen

The Smart EPC consortium was looking for a unique demonstration site for practices related to smart Energy Performance Contracting and public lighting. What better place to choose than DOLL – Europe’s leading Living Lab for smart and sustainable urban innovation – situated on the outskirts of Copenhagen, Denmark?

DOLL Living Lab is Europe’s leading Living Lab for smart and sustainable urban innovation. It is located on the outskirts of Copenhagen, a city well-regarded for its Smart City readiness. This lab serves as a dynamic nucleus for innovation, spans a vast 1.5 km² industrial area, and engages over 10,000 daily users. Their primary focus areas include the latest Smart City technologies, intelligent traffic systems, and outdoor lighting solutions. It acts as a unique platform, gathering public and private actors on a neutral ground, allowing them to test, showcase, and draw inspiration from cutting-edge technology. The lab is home to more than 75 real-life use-cases, each demonstrating the potential of Smart City solutions across various fields.

The DOLL team welcomed us with an introduction to their work and innovations, focusing on Smart EPC related themes such as lighting in a Smart City and IoT context, as well as on standards and interoperability.

Before visiting the sites, some of the leading equipment manufacturers and companies in innovation in this field presented us with their work:

• Lighting, machine learning and AI presented by Tridonic;
• Interoperable lighting controls presented by ObiWAN Conobi;
• Dynamic lighting controls presented by Seneco.

By taking a tour around the DOLL premises we followed a range of good practices related to the Smart EPC project. We stopped to discuss a variety of SmartLampPost integrations, including small cell 5G and EV-charging; the lighting of the C99 Cycle Superhighway,equiped with motion detectors; and the Airglow wireless outdoor lighting control device.

Felicity’s HIVE+ Traffic Sensor node were installed on the C99 Cycle Superhighway that forms part the 800 km bicycle path network in and around Copenhagen. This smart node includes a visual AI edge sensor that enables continuous and cost-efficient anonymous object detection and collection of multimode traffic data for the cities.

Airglow’s devices combine advanced wireless outdoor lighting control with unique scalability and future IoT possibilities. In the visited use case, LumenRadio’s AirGlow, a wireless outdoor lighting control device, manages Fagerhult Opalume lighting fixtures with RGB opal uplight. The lighting control nodes make it possible to control both the light towards the road and the color of the light in the opal lampshade itself. One AirGlow device can control a great number of lighting points over a long distance; this solution can be utilised in a number of urban environments and the control of the RGB uplight would work especially well for city centers, in relation to sport events, and more.

The innovations and technologies developed or showcased at DOLL are influencing smart lighting and Smart City projects in various European locations. This was an inspiring visit. We learned how municipalities, businesses, and knowledge institutions can work together to shape the mobility of tomorrow. Moreover, we were assured that the Smart EPC project development is in line with the latest innovations and modern technologies.