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Building Smart Cities technology in a Smart Stadium setting

Have you ever been to a game and wished you could view a touchdown or goal from a better angle?  Have you ever wondered what your friends in other parts of the stadium are saying about it?  Have you ever wished you could have access to all the player stats that you normally get when watching television coverage? How about ordering a hamburger or a team shirt from your seat?  These fan experiences can be made possible in the near future as part of a unique transatlantic alliance between ASU and DCU teams in collaboration with Intel and the Gaelic Athletic Association.

In a novel transatlantic collaboration, this Smart Stadium initiative will use ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium renovation project and Ireland’s Croke Park Stadium as the venues for deploying pilot ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) technologies to test their capabilities in these unique environments.  As venues managing several tens of thousands of people they provide unique opportunities for exploring innovative ways in which large, medium and small companies can beta test and pilot new ideas and solutions.

A research team, led by Dr Sethuraman Panchanathan, Director of ASU’s Centre for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing and Professor Noel O’Connor, Director of DCU’s Information Technology and Digital Society Research & Enterprise Hub, will use ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium for the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, with the GAA’s Croke Park Stadium as the European twinned facility.

Professor Noel O’Connor explained,

“The Internet of Things will provide a whole range of exciting possibilities around the general concept of smarter living environments. DCU and ASU aim to significantly advance research in this direction by using two world-class stadia as living labs for trialling novel IoT technologies. The smart stadium concept will help academic researchers and both large and small companies to bridge the “research to practice” gap that currently hampers the translation of IoT innovations out of labs into real deployments.”

In the medium term, an array of IoT technologies for smart stadium applications are being explored, including scene replay, athlete performance monitoring via wearable sensing, fan experience and in-stadium engagement, safety and emergency response, crowd movement and control and traffic management. 

Intel’s end-to-end IoT portfolio, including Intel® IoT gateways based on the Intel® Quark processor, will be used to facilitate the research and pilot deployments.  Successful application of the technologies in both stadia, as a microcosm of a smart city, will create a platform for future innovations in smart living, sustainability and smart cities. 

Highlighting U.S. Ireland collaboration, Intel IoT Vice President Philip Moynagh said “This is yet another example of IoT transformation resulting from world class US-Irish partnership applied across the research, development and business continuum.”

Sun Devil Stadium is home of the Arizona State Sun Devils.  As a leader in sustainability education, research and leadership, ASU will be exploring ways to ensure that Sun Devil Stadium’s renovation project not only embeds sustainability practices but also engages the stadium as a live-in laboratory to research, design, test, validate and deploy new sustainability technologies and practice.

“We are excited to collaborate with Intel and our colleagues at DCU on this smart stadium project to envision and pilot innovation solutions to enhance fan experiences and crowd management,” said Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, senior vice president for Knowledge Enterprise Development at ASU.  "This is an excellent example of how industry and academia across multiple continents working together can bring new applications and methods through transdisciplinary research that is focused on improving and enriching peoples’ lives."

DCU will draw on its multi-disciplinary expertise in data analytics and experience of a series of innovative partnerships with the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).  The university has close ties with Croke Park Stadium through a number of high profile ICT research projects currently in progress with the GAA.  Croke Park Stadium holds 82,300 spectators and is the fourth largest stadium in Europe.  This project offers a unique opportunity for Croke Park Stadium to provide a rich spectator experience through fan engagement and connections, retail options, the promotion of sport and healthy behaviours for younger spectators, all delivered in a secure environment.

Peter McKenna, Croke Park Stadium Director said,

“At Croke Park we are very focused on the fans’ experience at our events and delighted to be involved in this exciting project with Intel, DCU and ASU.  We’re looking forward to working with all parties on this unique opportunity to explore the technologies that will enable us to bring our fans experience beyond the next level.”

DCU and ASU have been collaborating since 2006, developing international cooperation in education, research and economic development, based on their shared values of innovation and entrepreneurship, technology-enhanced learning, research and discovery.

Irish Times Business & Technology - Thursday 18th December 2014 - Croke Park testing ground for smart city apps by Pamela Newenham