Collaboration: a cornerstone for creating smarter cities

Cities take up less than three percent of the Earth’s surface. Yet already over half the global population lives in one and by 2050, more than three-quarters of us will. With the rural-urban split tipping ever further in favor of the latter, the pressure for cities to become more efficient is increasing – and technology has an important role to play in this process.

The question of how to create smarter cities using technology was high on the agenda at the 5G Techritory Forum that I attended last month in Riga, Latvia. Combined with the news that my own hometown of Stockholm, Sweden, was voted 2019’s Smart City of the year, this has got me thinking about what it takes to build the cities of the future.

The key, I believe, is collaboration. A truly smart city needs both centralized and de-centralized functions, which deploy modern technology to operate seamlessly across the city environment and improve residents’ quality of life in the process.

One place in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that embarked on this journey is Zagreb, Croatia, which has put cultivating citizen trust at the heart of its digital transformation journey. Their open data project, e-Redar, includes an interactive digital map where simple things like damage to a sidewalk can be flagged for local utility providers to intervene more efficiently. The platform itself helps residents feel more empowered to affect change where they live.

Another city in CEE – Novi Sad in Serbia – has turned its attention to tackling a perennial problem in urban areas: air pollution. The fact that cities generate over 70 percent of the world’s total CO2 emissions is a threat to human, as well as environmental, health. To tackle this, authorities in Novi Sad are monitoring air quality thanks to modern sensor and Internet of Things technologies. Following its successful deployment in Serbia, the system is now being replicated in the cities of Carouge, Switzerland, and Santander, Spain.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been part of many smart cities’ strategies for some time, but we are fast approaching a tipping point when it comes to the integration of AI. Research by Gartner shows that while in 2018, AI was a critical feature in just 5 percent of smart city implementation projects, this proportion will increase to 30 percent by 2020.

Embedding AI into smart city solutions shifts city management from reactive to proactive. Using the predictive capabilities of AI, municipal authorities can improve traffic flows, predict and reduce criminal activity, and reduce unnecessary consumption of precious natural resources such as water – all in the name of improving the overall urban living experience.

This end goal, however, is best achieved when different city departments and agencies work together. One of my favorite examples of this comes from the Finnish city of Espoo, where municipal authorities had over a decade worth of data about their 520,000 residents disaggregated across over 30 different systems. By applying AI to this data, while respecting privacy guidelines, they were able to better understand citizens’ socioeconomic and health needs. For instance, they identified 280 factors that could help predict which families might need welfare support, allowing the appropriate agencies to intervene at an earlier stage, resolve issues before they escalate, and reduce costs. Most importantly, this will improve outcomes for families and children across Espoo.

Cutting-edge technology depends on cutting-edge infrastructure. This is where emerging 5G connectivity comes in. The World Economic Forum predicts that the adoption of 5G will bring about “more robust and reliable connections between computers, sensors and robotic devices” making the smart city of the future “a more realistic prospect when the technology takes hold.” The promise of 5G technology isn’t just a matter of being ten times faster than 4G, it’s also about supporting a wider variety and volume of devices. This in turn enables the kind of digital feedback loops that are so essential for making the most of AI technologies. The CEE region is already preparing the ground for an AI-enabled future: research from the European Investment Bank has shown that CEE municipalities’ investment plans are more focused on infrastructure modernization than the EU average.

But for the full potential of technology to be realized in cities across CEE, a mindset shift is needed; moving away from working in siloes towards collaboration by default. This applies to every stakeholder living, working and playing in our cities, from mayors and private companies, through to different departments within municipal agencies, and right down to individual citizens, who need to feel they have a role to play in shaping a better urban future. Only then will every city in CEE, and beyond, become a smarter, healthier, and better place to live.