Fort Bend, Texas, has installed and deployed 140 new school beacons that use the Glance School Zone Flashing Beacon system on its streets. The cloud- and web-based system provides a cellular modem in each beacon that allows personnel to monitor and update the entire system remotely, making it the most advanced system of its kind.
A suburb of Houston, the Fort Bend Independent School District is the seventh-largest school district in Texas with 75 schools and approximately 74,500 students.
Developed by Applied Information and powered by the AT&T mobile network’s Internet of Things (IoT) platform, the system provides instant alerts in the event of a lamp or battery failure as well as remote adjustments of the beacons for weather events, school timing changes, holidays and emergencies.
“Fort Bend County and our supplier Paradigm Traffic have teamed up to make upgrades to the existing school beacons with the help from Applied Information,” said Brian Fields, Fort Bend’s traffic signal supervisor. “Since the deployment of the web based system, the complaints for the school zone beacons not working properly have dropped significantly.”
As part of the upgrade process, Fort Bend officials opted to replace the back panel base plates of the system’s hardware. In addition to a significant upgrade to its system, the decision allows for future updates and capabilities to be added after the initial installation.
“Our staff is able to use the system tools to quickly manage the system and address any issues that might pop up,” added Fields. “allowing them to accomplish other duties in the county without worrying about the school flasher system.”
