MELFORT, Sask. — SaskTel today announced it has partnered with the city of Melfort to launch a “smart city” initiative focused on delivering practical and innovative solutions to improve the city’s current operations and to optimize future community development.
With a population of more than 6,000 the city, which is about 180 kms northeast of Saskatoon, started working with SaskTel last year to explore and research possible solutions for issues facing the community, says the news release.
Through a Memorandum of Understanding, SaskTel and Melfort have adopted what they are calling a “Smart City Innovation Sandbox” model where they hope to spur innovation and allow both parties to rapidly evaluate new technologies, tools and software products in a collaborative way. The partnership has already helped to uncover ways for the community to find cost savings and reduce energy use, says the release.
“From the beginning, we have focused on making the lives of residents better by taking a people-first approach,” said Ryan Danberg, Melfort’s city manager. “This is not just about implementing new technology; it’s about engaging our citizens to create a better quality of life and more prosperous future for Melfort. This project will offer our city and residents lasting benefits, all while showcasing innovative systems and technologies from Saskatchewan.”
In addition to putting forward ways to improve local connectivity, SaskTel has leveraged its existing relationship with Saskatchewan’s Greenwave Innovations to pilot an integrated platform for environmental and resource monitoring in Melfort.
“Much like SaskTel, we entered into this project to find problem-solving solutions that would offer tangible benefits for the community,” said Dean Clark, president of Greenwave Innovations, in the release. “As it turns out, SaskTel’s expertise in connectivity, data storage and software services were a great match with our knowledge in energy management and conservation.”
In the next stage of the initiative, Melfort and SaskTel are collaborating on new ways to improve digital citizen engagement and other aspects of community life.
In addition, the provincial Crown Corporation says it also plans to launch LoRaWAN, its new low-power, long-range wide area network, locally in Melfort, to further enable an array of smart city use cases for the community.
