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PBS Group’s ‘Smarter, Safer Cities’ Explores the Blueprint for Transformation

Over three days, PBS Group’s ‘Smarter, Safer Cities’ webinar 2026 brought together regional institutions and global technology partners to explore what it takes to make Caribbean nations safer, smarter and more resilient.

At its core, building smarter, safer communities is about improving everyday life for citizens. From more efficient public services and safer environments to better connectivity and more seamless experiences, technology shapes how people live, work and interact within their communities. These improvements also bring wider economic benefits, increasing commerce, facilitating trade and attracting tourism and investment.

Realising these benefits, however, requires more than investing in new technology. As governments and businesses across the region face increasing pressure to modernise, they must consider how new solutions will integrate with existing infrastructure, work across departments and respond to the needs of the people they serve. While regional collaboration offers opportunities to share expertise and achieve greater scale, every approach must be adapted to each country’s priorities, resources and stage of development.

Recognising these challenges, PBS Group convened industry experts from Cisco, Fortinet, Entrust, Motorola Solutions, IBM, Ernst & Young (EY) and the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), among others, to discuss global trends and the latest technologies, and how these can be applied across the region.

Day One: Setting the Right Foundation

Day One explored the importance of setting clear, realistic priorities and measurable outcomes to guide the development of smart infrastructure.

Opening the discussions, CTU Secretary General Rodney Taylor emphasised that while Caribbean economies are relatively small on their own, they have greater influence and purchasing power when they work together. The region, he stressed, is not competing against itself but with the rest of the world, which makes collaboration essential to its competitiveness.

Michael Whitlow, Executive Director at EY, highlighted the importance of translating broad ambitions into measurable outcomes. He asked, “We say we want a safer city, but what does that really mean in a tangible, deliverable sense?”. He emphasised the need for a framework that connects strategy with internal culture and implementation. Transformation, he noted, goes beyond deploying technology. It requires an understanding of how each solution affects the wider ecosystem in which it operates, and the flexibility to adapt as circumstances change.

Closing the day, Pablo Herrera of Cisco explained how the cyber threat landscape is expanding as cities become smarter and more connected, with every device or system that has an IP address potentially vulnerable to attack. Building security into these systems from the start, he said, is essential to maintaining citizens’ trust. “The investment required after an attack is ten times bigger than the actions that you can start taking now,” Herrera warned. He also noted that every country is at a different stage of development, with its own opportunities and advantages. While global technology providers like Cisco bring technology and expertise, local integrators bring an understanding of the local environment and the on-the-ground skills and resources needed to implement and support solutions.

Day Two: Building Secure, Connected Infrastructure

Day Two focused on three key considerations for smarter infrastructure: cybersecurity, interoperability and citizen outcomes.

Samantha Deoraj of Fortinet pointed to Barcelona and Amsterdam, which use connected smart sensors and data to improve efficiency and make better-informed decisions. Crucially, these initiatives are driven by collaboration between governments, the private sector, academia and other stakeholders, rather than by organisations working in silos.

Building on the theme of interoperability, Jyotsna Pantula of Entrust explored how physical and digital identities can evolve together to give citizens seamless access to essential services. She noted that citizens of Barbados can now travel to Guyana using compliant electronic national IDs, demonstrating how modern systems can simplify cross-border travel. For digital services to be effective, she said, they must be secure, inclusive and easy to access, so that citizens can trust, adopt and use them.

The discussion then turned to border security as a driver of competitiveness and trade. Astrophysics explained that non-intrusive scanning technologies can process between 80 and 120 containers an hour, depending on the set-up, when compared with manual inspection would take about four. However, every country has different requirements, infrastructure and resources, so needs must be assessed case by case to select the right combination of devices and services and get the most from the investment.

Integrity360 rounded off the day by emphasising the need for a realistic, risk-based approach to cybersecurity. Threats are not new, the speaker noted, but they continue to evolve alongside technology, and cities must protect inherited systems as well as newer connected devices and applications. That requires understanding what is connected, who has access and where vulnerabilities exist. As the speaker put it, “We should not build a smart city and then secure it. We should actually secure the city that we are building, because that makes the city smarter.”

Day Three: Smart Technology for Real-World Impact

Day Three explored how smart technologies can deliver benefits beyond safety, creating new economic opportunities.

Kechi Ibe-Ejiogu, CEO of Kahira Global, described how visitors and investors begin forming impressions of a city within moments of arriving, and how their experience over the first 72 hours influences whether they return or consider investing. From clear signage and efficient services to reliable connectivity, these everyday interactions shape their confidence in how well a city works. “If the technology is invisible, I shouldn’t have to understand the systems behind it. It should just work,” she explained. Her explanation of ‘confidence infrastructure’ places the human experience at the centre. Technology is the enabler, but what matters is that people feel safe and trust the services available to them.

This link between safety, confidence and economic activity was reinforced by Motorola Solutions, which highlighted how land mobile radio, video surveillance and body-worn cameras can strengthen public safety. Integrated command-and-control systems bring these technologies together, enabling real-time awareness, secure communications and better use of limited resources. By helping public safety agencies respond more effectively, these solutions also help create environments where people feel confident to move freely and do business.

The final session focused on how organisations can better understand and use the growing volume of data generated as more devices and systems become connected. IBM’s Sean Archer stressed the importance of applying AI to specific business challenges rather than adopting technology for its own sake. Miguel Martinez of XIM Power introduced ‘beyond monitoring’, which brings together real-time data from multiple devices and systems to identify risks and issues faster. With AI helping to interpret this information, organisations can move from reactive maintenance to anticipating equipment failures before they cause disruption.

Bridging the Gap: How PBS Turns Technology Ambition into Reality

The webinar reinforced that building smarter, safer communities is not about how much a country invests in technology, but about what that investment delivers. Success depends on understanding the challenges being addressed, collaborating across sectors and ensuring that technology serves a clear purpose.

Turning that vision into reality requires a partner who understands the local environment, can draw on experience from other countries and knows how to adapt proven approaches to each country’s needs.

This is where PBS Group plays an important role. With more than 25 years of experience and operations across 24 markets in the Caribbean and Central and South America, PBS serves as the local integrator that brings global technology to life.

It combines enterprise technology solutions and global partnerships with regional engineering talent to design, implement and support complex projects. Beyond supplying equipment, software and devices, PBS installs them, integrates them with existing systems and monitors their performance. In some cases, it also develops custom software to address specific challenges.

That gives organisations a single partner from initial planning through to ongoing support.

Across the Caribbean, progress is already being made towards smarter, safer communities. The opportunity now is to build on that momentum, turning shared ambitions into practical solutions that deliver lasting value.