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For years, cities have invested in more cameras, more sensors, and more infrastructure - yet public safety departments are still drowning in alerts, and traffic data rarely informs planning in real time. The problem? It’s not the tech. It’s the thinking.
As surfaced during FF Group’s recent Virtual Summit, the real barrier to smarter, safer cities isn’t a lack of technology or information - it’s a lack of action on the information cities already have.
“Once you start analyzing data from different sources, you’re automatically looking for the next level of information.”
That "next level" is fusion - connecting insights across data types: license plate recognition, radar, sound, weather, video. FF Group’s Data Factory platform, now integrated with Milestone’s VMS and powered by sensors from Axis and Sorama, aims to do exactly that: turn fragmented data streams into a single pane of glass.
But it’s not just about building a dashboard. As Andrea Sorri from Axis pointed out, even the best insights are useless if they don’t reach the right people - or if cities don’t have the internal capacity to act. And most of them don’t.
“Data analysts are scarce. AI must help people of all roles - not just experts - understand what’s happening and what to do next.”
This is where true Smart City thinking diverges from legacy surveillance. It’s no longer about passive data collection. It’s about designing systems that interpret, prioritize, and guide action - in real time.
Traditionally, we tend to think only about cameras as typical city sensors, but there are many more - for example, acoustic monitoring devices. Sound, often neglected in traditional urban systems, is now a key part of this shift. As Mark van den Berk from Sorama put it:
“Our tech gives cities ears, not just eyes.”
Cities using Sorama’s directional microphones can now pinpoint aggressive vehicle noise, track public disturbances, and correlate these with visual feeds - a powerful layer for law enforcement and urban health alike.
But none of this matters if city leadership keeps getting stuck in pilot mode.
“Projects start with energy but die without someone to own and drive them.”
Instead of asking What else do we need?, Karl, Mark, and Andrea offered a challenge: Use what you have. Now. Cities across Europe are hesitant to scale - even when nearby cities have already done it. Technology isn’t the bottleneck. Decision-making is.
This is the mindset shift cities need most:
✅ Stop thinking in silos.
✅ Stop collecting for the sake of compliance.
✅ Start orchestrating across departments.
✅ Start prioritizing outcomes over infrastructure.
The technology stack is ready. The data is already flowing. And companies like FF Group, Axis, Sorama, and Milestone are proving that it’s possible to go beyond “surveillance” and into predictive, proactive, sensor-driven decision-making.
Smart cities aren’t defined by how many devices they deploy. They’re defined by what they do with the data they already have.
Watch the full summit session here:
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