SenSen: Unlocking Urban Prosperity - The Las Vegas Model of Live Awareness and IoT Innovation

If city leaders around the world want to know how to maximise their prospects of an economic revival, there’s no better role model than Las Vegas.

That’s the opinion of Smart Cities expert Subhash Challa who has spent 15 years studying what drives prosperity and efficiency in a modern metropolis.

Lately, he’s been focused on Las Vegas, a city which leads the way in harnessing the power of the Internet of Things for community good.

By gathering data from thousands of sensors scattered around the city and combining the data – data fusion – into information, city managers make decisions that are far more insightful than any single source of data on its own.

Best of all, Las Vegas is an early adopter of video as the highest value-add source of data in the entire IoT. Video and the emergence of AI are the game changers that mean insights are backed by solid reliable evidence to change behaviour in the long term.

To describe this phenomenon, Challa has coined a new phrase: Live Awareness.

“For the first time the world has ‘live awareness’ which has been the Holy Grail of computer vision and AI scientists for the best part of two decades,” Challa said during a tour of Las Vegas’ downtown digital nerve centre.

“We have entered a new world where a variety of sensors can deliver streams of data that are fused together so an AI can interpret the real-time context and environment. This combination can detect patterns and make decisions. Live Awareness is being used on city streets as well as in shops, airports, sea ports, casinos, universities, schools and retail oulets.”

Challa, founder of Australian company SenSen which works with more than 80 Smart Cities and communities on four continents, says the phrase ‘Live Awareness’ was invented when he couldn’t find any technology writing that truly described the real power of IoT. There were plenty of phrases for the underlying tools that made it possible– deep learning, machine learning, large language models – but no one was able to describe the overall benefits to the owners and manager of large assets.

Suddenly, in a city like Las Vegas where some of the world’s smartest tech companies are rolling out new solutions, Live Awareness is a reality.

“I define Live Awareness as an emergent capability of an AI system which receives sensor data from physical spaces fused with contextually relevant digitally-originated data, often from an enterprise source. This Live Awareness allows the AI to find accurate signals within the hybrid real world and digital input, identifying patterns and delivering insights that are otherwise impossible to obtain,” Challa said.

“Live Awareness, of course, occurs in humans. Our brain fuses together some of the sensory data it has access to and brings it together in our conscious mind. Animals, using different senses and varying degrees of consciousness, also have Live Awareness. It creates a unique ‘umwelt’ for each organism – the way in which a species perceives its environment.”

In Las Vegas, Challa applauds the way city managers scour the best technology advances globally to select those that fit their local vision.

“It’s an incredibly energetic hive of smart people with truly ground-breaking ideas, everyone from NVIDIA, Cox, VMware and NTT Data is here. Las Vegas is tipped to be the nation’s second fastest-growing city expecting to add a million residents by 2045, so urban planning and digitization dominate the city’s agenda.

“City leaders embrace innovation – in fact they have a Curator of Disruptive Innovation – whose job is to ensure public safety and mobility and be at the forefront of change. His focus and passion are on the safety of both citizens and visitors, and on how they get around. When you hear him speak, he emphasises the extreme importance of understanding how people use the city’s infrastructure and amenities, and how technology can increase the effectiveness and the efficiency of government and access to services.”

Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort and entertainment city, with over 42 million visitors annually. It is the most populous city in the State of Nevada, USA, and serves as the leading financial, commercial and cultural centre for the state. The city of Las Vegas has a population of about 650,000 residents while the larger metropolitan area has a population of more than 2 million.

In Las Vegas, SenSen technology is used by mobile patrols – car & scooters – to ensure motorists obey road rules and parking limits.

Challa sees tremendous opportunities for growth.

“Of all the cities and communities, I’ve worked with, more than 80 of them, Las Vegas is a stand-out. Here they have made a tremendous effort to show how IoT can work across an entire city – from reducing traffic congestion and improving the shopping experience to increased productivity in manufacturing and health care.”

About SenSen:

SenSen is a pioneer in developing the world’s first Live Awareness AI Platform to make business operations safer and more efficient. The system works by using AI to analyse data from cameras and sensors that are monitoring physical spaces and combine it with contextually relevant digital enterprise data to create a more efficient & safer world. 

SenSen solutions are reducing congestion, improving road and personal safety and enhancing quality of life in leading cities around the world including Chicago, Las Vegas, Vancouver, Calgary, Singapore, Adelaide and Brisbane. It is also saving millions of dollars every year for major fuel retail brands including Ampol, Chevron, Liberty and Woolworths

For more information on SenSen's innovative live awareness AI solutions, please visit www.sensen.ai.