An outdoor lighting network (OLN) is disclosed as a supplementary or contingency communications infrastructure for smart city systems. The OLN may integrate light points within the network as receivers which are switched from a standard OLN communication protocol to a D2D based protocol upon disruption of a primary smart city systems communications network, wherein each communication protocol includes a respective message prioritization method. Aspects of the disclosure additionally includes methods and apparatus for implementing an outdoor lighting network which can act, in cases of primary communication failure, as a D2D network in order to pass messages from smart city system field devices, through the converted D2D OLN network and to a smart city system central manager for proper handling and distribution of the smart city system field device communications.