By Nicolas Ibarra, International Project Management Consultant/Marketing with Spectos.

The city I grew up in seemed to my young mind like a maze, full of mysterious and unreachable corners. All buildings, neighbourhoods and alleyways were intertwined by the pavement of the roads, but yet the city seemed disengaged from itself. Looking back to my childhood, the winters could be brutal and unforgiving. Being the youngest in my family, my older brothers would always nominate me to run outside to fetch the mail from our mailbox. My 9 year old self knew sometimes the mail was there and sometimes it wasn’t. The key was to listen to the mailman’s footsteps, crunching the snow under his boots. If you missed it, then it was a 50-50 chance that we had received any letters. In winters it was easy, in summers you had to pay closer attention. On some occasions during the winter holidays, I would kick myself for forgetting my gloves inside the house. Or worse yet, being tricked by my older brothers by locking me out of the house in -20 degree weather. Their laughter still rings in my ears till this day. Older siblings can be fun.

Today, thanks to many advancements (unfortunately older brothers still exist), what seems like an empty mailbox or empty street with uncoordinated buildings is now filled with smart phone applications. These applications can tell a person what services, either government or businesses alike, are offered to him or her.

For Spectos GmbH and its team of developers, the idea to bring together city services with the feedback of community residents is becoming a step closer to realization. The team at the company is focused on the quality of life for all residents and the community. A virtual world is gradually being threaded together, thus creating a closer relationship with the places we call home.

A COLLABORATION FOR RESIDENTS

Data4City or D4C is a research and innovation project between Spectos and the Dresden University of Technology. It is quite different in its approach from many existing smart city projects around the world, which focus mostly on one single topic or on one single industry. What is unique about D4C is the bringing together of residents and businesses: identifying needs and delivering data. The data collected is helping to build an app program that can be utilized on a mobile device or home computer. The intent is to ensure that all voices are heard in the community. On the flip side, the analysis of the responses can help businesses and local government to better respond to resident inquiries or complaints and create continual urban and interconnectivity growth.

A WAY FORWARD FOR POSTAL AND LOGISTICS SERVICES

What does this mean for the postal and logistics industry? The D4C initiative will help to bridge the growing eCommerce delivery services and the provision of data stemming from these providers. Take for example the everyday postal worker. They must traverse many kilometers throughout a city to the end location of a letter or package. In between, they are encountering detours, congestions, construction or any other kind of obstructions along their route. What the postal worker doesn’t know is that his or her ride around the city can be very valuable to the end consumers they are delivering to.

As urban populations continue to skyrocket globally, commuting is now a normal every day fact of life. But how can we see traffic conditions from the postal worker’s perspective? How can a resident benefit from this data? The Live Tracker solution is a case in point. The initial idea of the Live Tracker was to help postal and logistics companies track packages and measure processes so that organizations can improve the quality of their services. But the Live Tracker can be so much more. Data gleaned from the Live Tracker can potentially be utilized by a postal provider to not only locate a person’s package, but to show a city’s ebbs and flows. 

This can be realized through a Live Tracker attached to a delivery vehicle and constantly transmitting data. This data can be subsequently offered to residents, displaying the best routes to take. Thus, a person could easily plan their day or route by looking at the postal provider’s app, in the long run saving minutes and possibly hours off the commute per week or per year.

According to the report by the McKinsey Institute on Smart Cities, by 2025 cities that use the full range of intelligent mobility applications can help to cut a commuter’s time by 15 to 30 minutes per day or up to four full days every year. Other areas of application can also account for significant savings. A lot of money and time is lost per year in the logistics industry, mostly when it comes to stolen items from consumers or directly from a manufacturer. A Live Tracker can help to minimize this by exactly locating a package.

A MAILBOX REIMAGINED

It is with the idea of process optimization and service quality enhancements that Spectos has also developed the Smart Mailbox solution. The idea of the Smart Mailbox is to provide postal operators with information on whether a mailbox is full or empty. This helps in the strategic placement of mailboxes to better serve urban and rural residents, while creating greater efficiencies in the planning of routes for a postal provider.

For residents and local businesses alike, this can also help in better arranging when to send or pick up letters. For example, an elderly person living on the 5^th floor of an apartment building can easily see when their mail has arrived. Instead of having to check every hour by coming down the elevator or stairs, they can automatically receive a message stating when the postman has delivered their letters. The same applies for persons with a handicap which might find it troublesome to go in and out of their home during inclement weather to retrieve a delivery.

MOVING FORWARD

The D4C initiative is in its first steps in realizing of how to bring people and communities together. By utilizing technologies such as the Live Tracker and Smart Mailbox, D4C aims to simplify life for people by building a simple tool that connects people’s needs with services available in a community. My only wish is that this technology was around when I was growing up. But for the kids of the future at least they will be at a better advantage over their older (evil) brothers!

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Spectos are proud sponsors of the World Mail & Express Asia Conference (WMX Asia) 2018. You will be able to meet Spectos at WMX Asia at the Mira Hong Kong Hotel on the 16 – 18 September 2018. WMX Asia is the premier logistics and supply chain conference in Asia. Visit the conference website for more information.