Delivering real-world smart cities through data

Smart cities are not a new concept, and many ambitious projects have failed to translate strategy into real benefits for citizens and municipalities.?

However, we’re now at a tipping point - technologies are mature and there’s a growing understanding that smart cities need to be co-created between citizens, elected officials and municipal staff.

By better managing and sharing data internally and externally, smart cities can make the lives of citizens and employees easier, drive innovation, increase efficiency and meet goals around sustainability.

These real-world benefits aren’t just for big cities with multi-million dollar budgets. In fact, smaller communities can become smart cities cost-effectively through savvy strategies and better use of technology, as we explain in this blog.

That’s why this month’s newsletter focuses on how to create truly smart cities, using data to drive internal transformation, whatever the size of your community. We hope you find it useful!

Delivering better management through internal data sharing

Most cities and local government bodies already share data externally with their citizens to ensure transparency, openness and accountability.?

Extending this concept to share data internally through data marketplaces and portals delivers even greater benefits. It increases efficiency by enabling automation, underpins better decision-making, makes organizations more agile and breaks down silos between departments to enable greater collaboration.

By collecting and sharing data, municipalities are able to become smarter in multiple ways - as this range of use cases show. Internal data sharing enables:

• Automated reporting – providing everyone with access to a single source of truth on key metrics, available in easily understandable formats. The City of Long Beach in California makes its 311 data available via a drill-down map to demonstrate its performance internally and externally.

• Project management – for example monitoring and showing where new equipment such as fiber networks or EV charging stations have been deployed. The Aix-Marseille-Provence Metropolis created a reference directory for its 1,000 employees and partner municipalities.

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• Improved efficiency – sharing key information with staff so that they can work more effectively. For example, Morrisville in North Carolina has deployed smart trash cans that automatically message when they are nearly full, avoiding staff having to manually check them.
• Providing early warning of potential disruption – using Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, municipalities can monitor their environment. The Town of Cary in North Carolina uses sensors to track water levels in local rivers, giving early warnings of potential flooding.

?? Read more about how to share data internally in our in-depth blog.

Delivering better services to citizens to improve their daily lives

Citizens, businesses and visitors all expect more from their local municipality or city. They demand openness and transparency as standard, but they also want smart city services that are built around their needs and make their lives better and more fulfilled, now and in the future. Fail to understand and meet these requirements and municipalities risk residents and businesses moving elsewhere.

Innovative, data-driven smart city services are vital, as these examples from Opendatasoft customers show:

• The Town of Morrisville’s Connected Parks project saw IoT flood and ground moisture sensors installed across its soccer pitches. If they are too wet for play, this data triggers an automatic closure of the park gates, relayed via digital signage and text alerts to keep people informed.

• The City of Geelong in Australia’s Weather Together project sees volunteers host weather sensors in their home or workplace, providing a real-time picture of temperature and weather across the city, engaging them through data.
• The City of Long Beach is sharing information on admissions to its animal shelter through a dashboard that is updated every day with the latest data. This delivers real insight for residents and shows transparency and openness.

Smart cities are also looking at innovations such as digital twins to better understand, monitor and plan complex urban environments. By bringing together data from multiple sources to create a digital replica of the city itself, municipalities can both monitor current activities and run future simulations. For example, you could model current CO2 levels across a city and measure the impact of shutting roads to build a better strategy to reduce air pollution.

?? To find out more about digital twins within smart cities read our blog interview with George Reed of Siradel.

Delivering innovation to business through data??

Businesses have a growing choice about where they base themselves, and are looking for supportive, innovative cities and towns that share their aims.?

Smart cities can engage existing businesses and attract new ones to the area by demonstrating an open approach to using technology to improve their experience.

Examples include:

• Sharing parking sensors or traffic data to help retail or hospitality businesses better plan opening hours or when peaks in demand are likely to be.
• Monitoring the urban environment and showing performance against key metrics. For example, the City of Long Beach’s 311 dashboard shows geolocated incidents of dumped items or graffiti and how quickly they have been cleared.

• Supporting businesses with real-time information. Southern Grampians Shire Council collects real-time weather and water level data, which is shared with local farmers via its open data portal.

• Helping increase visitors to the city. Municipalities can encourage people to visit through smart parking sensors. These flag when spaces are free to make journeys seamless and straightforward and increase visits.

? Data can also be used to create new value-added services and even be monetized within the smart city ecosystem, as the examples in this blog show.?

Building a smarter future

Smart city initiatives allow municipalities of all sizes to enhance the lives of their residents, improve their own efficiency, and drive innovation. Data is the fuel that drives the success of smart cities, whatever their size. We’re now at the point where all communities can become real smart cities that deliver greater value to their stakeholders cost-effectively.

?? To find out more about how data can underpin your smart city program, read our comprehensive smart city ebook.?

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