Improving Infrastructure: How HiveMQ Drives Smart City

Smart cities utilize digital technology to connect and improve infrastructure, making city operations more efficient and improving citizens' lives. HiveMQ enables this digital transformation by providing robust data integration from disparate systems such as traffic lights, public transit, and environmental sensors into centralized cloud and enterprise platforms. This integration supports advanced analytics and smart applications, driving significant improvements across urban mobility, public safety, energy management, and environmental monitoring.

Why MQTT is the Backbone of Smart Cities

Smart cities are built on the efficient exchange of data between a variety of connected devices and sensors, and cloud-based applications for analytics and monitoring. MQTT excels as the protocol of choice for this data exchange, in environments where reliability and timely delivery are essential, even over low quality networks. 

MQTT is a lightweight messaging protocol ideal for the IoT applications that smart cities rely on. It offers low bandwidth consumption, high reliability, and secure data transfer—essential features when real-time data is critical such as urban traffic or emergency services. 

MQTT simplifies the communication architecture within smart cities. When a publisher, like a retail sensing people counter, has new data, it sends a message to the MQTT broker, which then distributes this information to all subscribed clients, such as apps indicating bus occupancy levels. This publish-subscribe model ensures that data is only sent to interested parties, enhancing the efficiency of network resources and reducing unnecessary data transmission.

Key Smart City Applications Powered by HiveMQ

HiveMQ enhances MQTT's capabilities with features like robust security protocols, scalable architecture, and event-driven communication, making it ideal for critical infrastructure and services in smart cities. These case studies illustrate some of the customers HiveMQ has helped to build Smart City applications.

Paxton – Securing Smart Building Access

Paxton, a global leader in secure access control systems, utilizes HiveMQ to enhance the security and efficiency of their building access solutions. They design and manufacture access control solutions to track and control when someone enters a building.

By implementing MQTT, Paxton ensures real-time data movement across secure channels, enabling instant access decisions and continuous system monitoring. This capability has led to increased operational efficiency and heightened security in 30,000 buildings across 60 countries. Thanks to the Paxton and HiveMQ partnership, customers can enter buildings securely, 24/7. 

LEC – Enhancing Water System Management

LEC empowers communities by providing advanced industrial automation and IoT solutions for water management systems. With HiveMQ, LEC has revolutionized how water usage is monitored and controlled, delivering millions of dollars of cost savings and environmental benefits. In situations where public safety could be compromised, like potential water contamination or loss, HiveMQ's fast and reliable data transmission capabilities enable LEC and its clients to respond quickly, safeguarding public health.

By leveraging HiveMQ’s efficient and reliable data transmission capabilities, LEC has enhanced its ability to detect and manage leaks, significantly reducing water waste and ensuring safer water supply systems. Together HiveMQ and LEC are securing a very precious resource: water.

SWM – Optimizing Public Transportation

Stadtwerke München (SWM) employs HiveMQ to provide real-time passenger information across Munich's extensive public transportation network including more than 2000 tram and bus stops . HiveMQ's capacity to handle vast amounts of data in real time ensures that commuters receive up-to-the-minute updates about bus and tram schedules, disruptions, and other critical information, vastly improving the commuter experience and operational efficiency of Munich's transit systems.

By partnering with HiveMQ, SWM is able to reduce commuter times for their citizens, reduce costs and complexity, and provide the accurate data needed to help both smart cities and residents make better decisions based on that data. 

Looking Ahead

MQTT’s strengths—efficiency, reliability, and security—make it indispensable for the critical infrastructure and services in smart cities. By enabling real-time, dependable communication among diverse systems and applications, HiveMQ’s MQTT platform ensures that smart cities can thrive and adapt to new challenges, driving improvements in urban life and operational efficiency.