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Washington DC to deploy 7-foot kiosks for Wi-Fi, data analysis

September 13, 2016

Washington D.C. is planning to roll out 30 kiosks in its downtown area to offer free Wi-Fi and advertisements. DowntownDC Business Improvement District, a non-profit, partnered with New York-based Smart City Media to deploy the kiosks, according to areport by The Architects Newspaper.

The 7-foot kiosks will feature 55-inch screens, which provide advertisements for local businesses and  gather key environmental information for research.

The kiosks will utilize an Internet-of-Things technology called a Low Power Wide Area Network to monitor various weather conditions such as temperature, air quality, humidity, barometric pressure and noise levels, according to the report.

BID will provide this information in the future to analysts for use in a variety of studies such as looking at the connection between the environment and health or tracking sustainability efforts.

"Once this data becomes available and collaborative cities provide data in the same way, it creates an opportunity for app development that is cross-city which has not existed until now," Wilfred Pinford, CEO of Urban.Systems, a company working with BID said in the report.