CitiAct – REDtone IOT’s First Smart City Application
REDtone IOT Sdn Bhd (1117341-V) is a subsidiary of REDtone International Berhad, a company that has over 20 years experience in providing telecommunications services in Malaysia.
On November 11, 2014, REDtone IOT Sdn Bhd. was incorporated in Malaysia, to focus on providing Internet of Things services and solutions. Our headquarters are in Puchong, Selangor, Malaysia.
Our goal is to provide Smart City solutions that enable cities to monitor its most valuable assets such as rivers, buildings, parking lots, transportation, roads, drainage, environment, etc. using Internet of Things (IoT).
To transform cities through connecting, aggregating and deriving insights via city’s sensors data. We help cities to visualize their city’s data via our smart city hub called CitiSense.
REDtone IOT pairs creativity, innovation, and knowledge with the right technology. It has resulted in a citizen engagement application called CitiAct. This application enables citizens to report and track issues, while the local councils can respond to the reports in a more timely manner.
Synopsis of Product:
CitiAct is a smart city solution that enables citizens to report issues such as unattended garbage, illegal parking, dengue, vandalism, potholes, water leakage, crime, etc. to their local municipality through the Internet of Things (IoT) CitiSense platform. Participating public services departments of different cities then resolve the issues in the city to make the city better for the citizens.
Users are required to snap a photo of existing city complains and classify them under different categories of the complaint system. Rest of the contextual information is automatically gathered by the smart city application before the report is submitted to relevant municipalities. Once a complaint is submitted to the complaint system, it will be marked as acknowledged, resolved or false by the public services departments.
The smart city solution comprises of the mobile apps for the citizens, case management system and dashboard system for the municipalities. Citizens of this smart city solution will be able to check their score via the game engine and will also be able to trace the status of their reports from within the app. Thus, allowing two-way communication between the municipality and citizens.
A supporting portal is also available for viewing the reports by the people around the world. This portal can be accessed within the smart city application and can also be seen in a web browser at Internet of Things (IoT) CitiSense platform: http://citisense.com.
CitiAct is a service provided by REDtone IOT in making “Better City Better World“. Download CitiAct mobile app from iOS App Store or Google Playstore
Internet of Things (IoT): CitiAct application is powered by our Smart City IoT Hub (CitiSense). This Hub can support various IoT Applications that involves communication between sensors, actuators, and humans. This Hub can connect to any IoT device that supports RESTful interface.
BigData: CitiAct application employs BigData technology for processing large amounts of data that are produced at tremendous speed from sensors.
Sensing: CitiAct uses sensing technology built into the user’s mobile phone to capture real-time data about the city.
Analytics: CitiAct uses analytics tools such as “R” to interpret and correlate different types of collected data for producing dashboards.
Benefits to public/Government: CitiAct mobile application enables structured teo-way communication between the public and the government. It allows the public to complain about the issues in their city by simply taking a picture and submitting. The CitiAct Case Management System (CMS) then takes over and automatically routes the complaint to the right city council. CMS further allows the relevant city councils to view, assign to the contractor, and resolve the jobs. Throughout the entire process, the reporter/citizen is updated about each milestone directly on the mobile app. Our solution also has a dashboard that provides a summarized view of the entire city complaints and their status. It also has historical information for reference.
How is it better: current complaint systems employed are through call centers, online portals or SMS. Some citizens also prefer to complain through social media such as Facebook and traditional media such as Newspapers and Radio. These systems are very chaotic because the data were received in inconsistent formats and missing information that prevents automation of prioritization and deter detection of correlation for issues. Furthermore, it causes resentment amongst the citizens and the general perception is that the city council is “not doing its job”. With CitiAct, the information is well organized, the process flow is streamlined, and the user is regularly informed.
Increased efficiency: CitiAct automates much of the process flow in receiving and solving citizen complaints. Thus, reducing the unnecessary red tape. This results in a much faster response to the citizens.
Accountability and Transparency: CitiAct plots all reports and their status on a map portal. This allows citizens to interact with all the reports made by them and the other citizens. It also shows how effective a city council has been. Hence, improving the image of the councils and the city on the whole.
CitiAct solution is motivated by the famous reporting solution named SeeClickFix. However, the CitiAct solution has been painstakingly tailored to suit the City Councils and the type of problems they are interested in. Furthermore, there are various unique features that have been added to the application that makes it unique. Some of these features are:
Powered by IoT Smart City Hub: CitiAct is not just an application. Under the hood, it has state of the art technology components that allow CitiAct to be highly future proof. The IoT Hub allows various sensors to connect to it and can share information between sensors. This gives CitiAct the edge because it can correlate data with various applications.
Ability to send broadcast push: CitiAct application can send push broadcast messages to all devices. This allows the city authorities to announce quickly and events, emergency in the city.
Citizen-centric portal: CitiAct has a portal that can be accessed by all citizens. This allows for a greater level of transparency in governance.
Big data analytics for the citizen: Analytics is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, CitiAct simplifies the analytics process by designing a user interface where the citizens simply need to click a few things to understand the city. Conclusions like what’s the dirtiest part of the city or how does garbage affect dengue etc. can be easily drawn.
Able to report when no Internet access: CitiAct has a feature to allow users to submit a report even when there is no Internet access. Hence, allowing citizens in the most report parts to file complaints.
Analytics dashboard: CitiAct has analytics dashboard at the City level, State level, and even country level. It will allow the city council head, the chief minister or the prime minister to monitor the health of the city, state or country.
Simplified process flows: CitiAct has simplified the process flow that makes it very fast to resolve citizen complaints.
Quality / Recognition:
CitAct has been developed by following the latest programming standards and tools that are widely being used by leading software developers. CitiAct application has further gone vigorous testing during the development phase and has also been tested formally by internal test teams twice
The R&D staff that has developed this application have several years of experience in Internet of Things technology. Some of the staffs pioneered the Internet of Things development in their previous company.
Throughout the lifecycle of the CitiAct application, it has been enhanced several times based on the input from the stakeholders and customers. CitiAct has been improved to incorporate feedback from the staff of the city councils
As of today (August 29, 2016), there are 47 major towns and cities in Malaysia that have been covered with CitiAct including 6 major cities in India, 2 in Indonesia and 1 in Portugal.
REDtone IOT has been named Malaysia Innovative Smart City Solution Provider of the Year by Frost & Sullivan, through its Smart City application called CitiAct.
Potential:
Growth of CitiAct can be seen in following areas:
National Market: we are currently in the midst of discussing with the local councils for adopting CitiAct as their tool for solving a city-wide problem that has been reported by the citizens.
International Market: CitiAct has been recognized by various countries around the world. We are in discussion with our various partners around the world for distributing CitiAct to their local councils. Some of the countries that we are making inroads are India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Australia, Portugal, Indonesia and several other countries in Southeast Asia. CitiAct application also officially supports English, Bahasa Malaysia, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia and Hindi.
Other Industries: The is a vast potential for CitiAct to operate in other industries such has housing development, facilities management, construction site management and building management. We are also in discussion with this player.
Further Enhancement: CitiAct is not just an application. It is, in fact, a part of the entire smart city puzzle. CitiAct provides the citizen component of the smart city while the Smart city Hub can be used to support various applications such as Smart Parking, Smart Waste Management and much more. So, alongside the enhancement of CitiAct, we are also developing new and exciting applications.
Employment Potential: Growth of CitiAct will open up more opportunity to hire new engineers and train the existing engineers in the field of Internet of Things.
CitiAct – Global Users
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