Minister of Science, Energy and Technology (MSET), Daryl Vaz says that the Ministry is “working on the development of a real time sensory network that will form part of a wider smart city concept”.

Vaz was delivering his presentation in the 2023/24 Sectoral Debate today (May 10).

“Urbanisation is occurring at an unprecedented scale and as the human footprint grows, cities have become one of the most important sources of greenhouse gas emissions. While we acknowledge that Jamaica is not a leading offender of greenhouse gas emissions, the country must make its contributions to a cleaner environment in order to address the effects of climate change,” he said.

“In our response to these challenges, we see opportunities,” the minister added, noting the real time sensory network.

He stated that it “will allow us to quantify, this fiscal year, greenhouse emissions and other environmentally malignant components in terms of time, space, and functional data, for example, what fuel is being burned and what technologies are contributing to the emissions.”

Vaz said that the information system is a powerful visualisation tool with many benefits, including the generation of robust data for better understanding of carbon cycling and offering support to the decision making process of policy makers.

“The work is supported in part through grant funding by the The Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs of the US Department of State,” he said.

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