Bendigo Smart City Work Shows Gains but Surfaces Risks and Ethics Issues

The City of Greater Bendigo established the Smart City Bendigo Alliance and built its Smarter Bendigo strategy around seven pathways that include governance, connectivity, people, resources, financing, health and measurement.

These steps matter now because the city already runs a LoRaWAN IoT network that covers more than 80 percent of its area and supports real-time applications such as the MeetPat smart water station.

Local programs in place

The 100 Gig Bendigo initiative uses a 100-gigabit broadband network to reduce the digital divide and draw digital businesses. Researchers have deployed the Shadeways platform, which draws on satellite heat imagery to map urban heat hotspots and guide council tree-planting decisions. Bendigo was also chosen for a Solar Cities project that received 15 million dollars in federal funding to test smart meters, solar photovoltaic products and energy efficiency steps across 2,500 households.

Each of these efforts relies on the same underlying network and data flows, which raises questions about who controls the information collected and how it will be protected over time.

Questions on data, equity and oversight

Smart city projects of this scale commonly face risks around privacy, unequal access to the new services and the cost of maintaining sensors and software once initial grants end. Governance and measurement pathways listed in the Smarter Bendigo strategy are intended to address some of these points, yet the city has not published detailed rules on data retention or third-party access.

Residents and businesses will need clear information on how usage data from the LoRaWAN network and smart water stations is stored and shared if trust is to remain high.

Council staff continue to refine the seven pathways and monitor outcomes from the existing installations. Further public updates on governance rules and cost projections are expected as the programs expand.