(Augsburg Germany — 11.02.2018) Taipei City Government has recently approached the problem of transitioning into a smart city with the idea of “Using the city as a living lab.”. This approach has turned into the acceptance of many POC projects to provide results through small implementations. One of these POC projects was implemented by TWO IOT ltd. and was focused on solving the waste management issues that Taipei City Hall was facing.

With this blogpost we are aiming to introduce our case study which came out of our proof of concept that we did with the City of Taipei.

With over 168 total waste bins located inside the building, the Taipei City Hall had challenges with not knowing the status of their waste bins and had no way of managing it. The absence of data is first and foremost the most common problem with any waste management system whether indoor or outdoor. Taipei City Hall did not have adequate data on its current waste system, and this was ultimately resulting in inefficiencies.

At the beginning of the POC period, sensors were installed into 24 waste bins in Taipei City Hall building. Our data immediately showed us that some very informative figures. The average fullness of the waste system during the morning pickup and evening pickup showed that in most cases, the collections at these times were not necessary. However, on some days, some bins were over 70% full at the breakfast waste pickup time. On those days the pickup was required. This resulted in a need to pickup the waste of the entire building. Hence, Taipei City Hall was changing the waste bins too often. This resulted in spending of resources where not needed.

lidbot is an IoT hardware device that measures real-time fill levels of waste bins. lidbot substantially lowers costs and resources used in the waste management process through IoT and DLT autonomy. lidbot’s solution is both cost effective and easily integrated. lidbot can optimize waste management in large buildings like airports and can also be scaled to smart city level deployments and is therefor the perfect solution for the problems in waste management which the City of Taipei is facing.

IOTA Integration

For Taipei City Hall Building, it was requested to also develop a solution where the management staff could ensure bins were being changed thoroughly. The following integration was made using an API provided by Biilabs ltd to send our sensor data to IOTA’s DLT The Tangle.

In conclusion, it is imperative for waste data to be stored on a DLT to promote an environment where trust is not needed. IOTA also enables various micro-transaction processes that are most fitting for the waste management industry and could help ignite a competitive landscape where multiple private parties can participate and be rewarded dynamically. IOTA’S blockless ledger will serve as the perfect tool to ensure security and scalability in the waste management system. It will also allow all parties to view the contract history in any stage of its process. This will also be 100% tamper proof and secure. With this system, our clients can not only keep a complete ledger of the contract but be also able to manage micropayments effortlessly through the settlement service.

For a detailed report on our findings from the Proof of Concept with Taipei City Hall, please download our Case Study