CIVIQ provides technology and services for building ‘smart communities.’ CIVIQ’s Hanan Markovich recently chatted with Mel Stott, as part of Digital Signage Pulse’s ongoing series of exclusive interviews with DPAA members.
What does CIVIQ do exactly?
CIVIQ is an innovative smart city company creating a new model of citizen engagement. We are connecting people to services, places, experiences, and to each other.Our WayPoints and network platform help city leaders innovate to achieve safer, more sustainable, more livable communities.
We have deployed over 2,000 units in 13 global cities, thus connecting more than two million people through interactive digital signage and advertising content. Our hardware is cyber-secure, scalable and urban-rugged.
How does CIVIQ use digital signage to make cities smarter?
CIVIQ understands the real goal of a smart city: to use modern technology to improve the quality of life for residents and visitors.
We use digital signage to create new ways for cities to:
- Generate new revenue streams
- Help more people get access to the internet.
- Help people communicate with the city and with each other, find their way around the city;
- Obtain feedback from residents and visitors to improve the city’s operation;
- Save time, money and hassle for cities as they “scale up” to more and better services.
CIVIQ understands that combining the new elements of digital signage—virtual and augmented reality, cameras, sensors, machine learning can help improve city services for every city resident, visitor, every university student, every sports fan.
CIVIQ’s DOOH Wi-Fi terminal
How can CIVIQ’s solutions transform cities and places? What are the ways CIVIQ’s solutions will change mobility, safety and security, social inclusion and economic development?
Our advanced smart city platform is the first and only private network operating on a public infrastructure, providing fast, reliable, private and free Wi-Fi. Our people-centered technology and on-the-street presence offer relevant information – from city news and points of interest, to emergency services, to live transit schedules. Our structures – from the WayPoint to the Totem – are customizable and rugged, fit for London fog, Boston blizzards, or Texas heat.
Together, these features improve public transit service, access to emergency services and critical public information, access to internet, and they help local businesses grow.
What are the important questions a city leader should understand about the connection between the digital and the physical world, especially around security?
Two key questions come to mind: First, we often take for granted our shared physical infrastructure – roads, lighting, running water. Today, city leaders should be equally concerned about the shared digital infrastructure that supports city operations.
CIVIQ’s Hanan Markovich has tackled this question focusing on the need for a shared digital infrastructure—a unified software, hardware and network solution that aggregates, secures, transfers and operates data from multiple IoT devices (article).
Second, with cyber security increasingly at the top of the agenda for city leaders, they should be asking: How can we implement innovative technologies that move us into the digital world AND at the same time keep our city safe from cyber-attacks?
That’s why CIVIQ is proud of its cybersecurity features, ensuring protection from the street level to the cloud and back. Our private network operating on a public infrastructure has five separate encrypted end-to-end networks – all protected by CIVIQ’s unique three layers of security – so that people and cities are connected, but not vulnerable.
What are the new opportunities for cities, universities, sports stadiums to improve efficiencies and help connect, inform and protect residents and visitors?
At CIVIQ, we are seeing that many other markets beyond cities are looking for reliable, quality products that strengthen security, wayfinding and mobility. Many venues and campuses are microcosms of cities and have similar critical challenges that CIVIQ’s solutions address.
What does the future hold for CIVIQ? How will CIVIQ and DPAA members find new opportunities to help communities grow and prosper?
We at CIVIQ see how cities can create healthier economies through effective digital signage. In fact, we consider it our mandate to “educate” cities about the power of digital signage—how it can inform, protect and engage people.
Our technology can be implemented in an array of venues—cities, universities, sports stadiums, malls, developers, etc. We are convinced that the “wow” factor of digital signage will help transform communities to impress, inform, protect and connect.
We hope that DPAA’s members will help CIVIQ pave the way for more innovative signage, better analytics and a better quality of life for cities worldwide.