Long Beach Offers Update on Community Technology Pilots

The city of Long Beach has implemented a slate of new technology pilot projects as part of its smart cities initiative known as the Long Beach Collaboratory (LB Co-Lab).

LB Co-Lab, established in 2021, is a “community-driven civic technology program” aimed at addressing some of the everyday challenges facing four neighborhoods throughout the city. Participants in the most recent workshop, which ran from March to October 2023, identified the real-world challenges they wanted to address in their neighborhoods as well as potential technological solutions.

The initiatives identified through the workshop process include pedestrian and cyclist safety, park utilization and safety, and access to reliable Internet service.

“Our Smart City Initiative team continues to pioneer community-centered approaches to advance our vision to address civic challenges by engaging the community, staff and private sector to explore, design and implement emerging technologies in the city,” said CIO and Technology and Innovation Department Director Lea Eriksen in a press release.

In the Willmore neighborhood, multimodal sensors have been deployed to measure pedestrian, cyclist and vehicle activity at key intersections. The privacy-compliant and anonymized data will help inform the city about safety and traffic trends. Those sensors were installed in May 2024 at Ocean Boulevard and Pine Avenue, 3rd Street and Maine Avenue, and 7th Street and Chestnut Avenue.

At the Westside neighborhood’s Silverado Park, infrared people-counting sensors were deployed in May to better identify park usage trends and shape future planning and operations needs. The data gathered through the sensors will be used to create a public dashboard.

In the Hamilton neighborhood, workshop participants identified the need for street improvements, which include smart lighting installations with people-counting and air quality analytics features. Three smart lights have been installed along the path between the parking lot and Houghton Park’s exercise area. Data gathered through this initiative will help determine whether the technology should be scaled to other parts of the city. The technology went live in July.

And finally, in Ramona Park, the city will be deploying nine high-coverage Wi-Fi routers throughout the recreation area and the adjacent community center. Those devices will be a permanent fixture in the park. That deployment is expected in the coming weeks.

“Our city team is committed to bringing together members of the community and exploring technology solutions that bring value to Long Beach residents and improve city operations,” Mayor Rex Richardson said in the press release. “As technology is a greater part of our day-to-day lives, it is our job to ensure technology and innovation projects are co-designed alongside our most traditionally underserved residents.”