How Can Cities Become IoT Smart?

How Can Cities Become IoT Smart?

Key takeaways:

• IoT smart cities tend to create strong relationships between public and private sectors (including technology partners), for utilizing new smart technology, and engaging with citizens for their adoption and feedback.
• Smart cities habitually look to take advantage of technological advances by testing and using new technology for creating more efficient systems and services for their citizens in new and innovative ways.
• Smart cities tend to employ administrators who are highly networked and proficient at applying for and activating the Government Grants available to Local Regions for Implementing Trials and Pilot Schemes. These typically being for; more efficient eco-transport, air, spatial quality and environmental monitoring as well as ubiquitous access and educational programs that are seen as key to taking the journey to becoming a recognized smart city.
• Successful smart cities tend to be proficient at generating and communicating the expected benefits, timeframes and commercial frameworks necessary, so that commercial partners, key stakeholders and citizens can understand and buy into the goals, the risks, the constraints, and the concerns. Meaning there is a clear understanding of how each system can be best implemented and its role within the overall smart city ecosystem.??
• Implementing pilot schemes and technology trials are important steps and critical to eventual success. Helping build a cohesive focus, generate debate, and create momentum as well as encouraging members of the public to get involved. Discussing and potentially supporting the types of smart city initiatives that are seen as desirable and viable being a major element of levels of adoption and perceived success.
• Sharing and applying the lessons for other systems and other regions is mutually beneficial. This is important as smart city transit systems not only rely on habitual/regular users, but also tourists and visitors who need to access the city and its technologies from time-to-time. Creating smart city infrastructure also creates economies of scale benefits for other embarking cities and can create powerful systems that can interconnect users between them.?This is also important for platform developers and integrators, who are seeking to share the costs across multiple services, products and projects.

What is a Smart City Concept?

A smart city is, in concept, an urban area that looks to use IoT (Internet of Things) technology and data to improve how citizens go about their everyday lives.

The promotion of smart city programs effectively seeks to create a better quality of life and levels of accessibility to data and services for residents and visitors through efficient use of resources, improved mobility, enhanced public services like healthcare and education, and increased transportation safety.

Often, a smart city's primary aims are to improve the well-being of its citizens, reduce CO2 emissions and improve traffic and energy efficiency - but these can vary depending on how each city defines the phrase "smart", its contextual problems, geography and aspirations.

?With over 70% of the world's population predicted to live in cities by 2050, smart cities are clearly going to become increasingly important for ensuring a healthy and safe environment for all who live, work or visit them.

How Do Smart Cities Work?

Using IoT devices, sensors, platforms, data sharing systems and smartphone Apps, smart city programs can improve the quality of life for their citizens by building community and infrastructure networks and by supplying access to this critical data through ordinary devices such as smartphones for monitoring, decision making and planning. These IoT devices can take on an enormous range of forms and functions and are predominantly manufactured by private companies who are seeking to deploy either at scale or create high value-specialist forms of equipment.

While the range of applications is enormous, a few simple or frequent examples can be to?track air quality, access real-time traffic information, street lighting status, monitoring water and waste quality, pollution levels, recycling systems and building monitoring and control systems. The usefulness of any system, however, is reliant on interoperability of data and systems. This is because the purpose of the system is to create useful data and information that can be disseminated, accessed, and interpreted either via smartphones or other devices. Some systems will need to present information and warnings to the public in transit or even it is proposed to make dynamic and real-time changes. Indeed, many of these systems are not yet fully trusted, so also increasingly often rely on validation from nearby users who are able to confirm or validate their experience in comparison with the published data. For example, data marketplace systems are emerging that allow users to help give administrators a better understanding of complex systems and their interactions by rating the quality of data.

For example, these smart city systems are forming part of the means that consumers use to plan, schedule and reserve their journeys using multi-operator and multi-modal systems that connect e-scooters, bikes, trains, subway systems, buses and taxis. Of critical importance being the need to ensure these systems are connected so that they are usable, predictable and reliable for a wide range of stakeholders. For example, if an individual is suffering from a respiratory illness, they may wish to check the air quality data before travelling. Clearly, if this data is of poor quality, then user will no longer trust the system and through shared experiences or electronic word of mouth its reputation will quickly break down and will not be used in the future. This also impacts other parts of the smart city ecosystem. Inferences may be made that the entire system is not particularly accurate and therefore not usable. This is incredibly important as innovative technology adoption implicitly requires that habits are broken and more efficient ways of operating and using information are seamlessly integrated into people’s lifestyles.?

One of the first visible ways that smart cities are developing is the increasing adoption of integrated transport systems. For example, smart cities are using more flexible means of scheduling and paying for journeys using smartphone Apps. Ticketless systems are now the vogue, with tap in-tap out payment creating a more convenient and faster way of processing travellers and journeys. Such systems rely on connectivity to ensure that systems are live and on-line wherever possible. This is important for checking bus and train schedules, buying tickets, locating car parks, finding, locating and paying for e-scooters, and checking congestion around public facilities and areas as well as safety advice. All could feasibly form part of a pre-planned and experienced commute, workday or visit to a city. Crucial, as visitors like to appear ‘at home’ with the city and not wasting their valuable time or resources, being or appearing lost.

City officials, authorities and governance providers also must use and provision for the delivery or interconnection of specific management platforms that can service these complex requests for data. Amongst the multitude of feeds, this means analysing and interpreting masses of incoming real-time data so that users can be accurately informed. There is also the aspect of planners or operational managers wishing to use data to make informed decisions and improve services. This can mean creating systems that can process vast quantities of data efficiently, so that informed decisions can be made. Even apparently simple systems such as how traffic lights are timed to reduce congestion, or how temperature is regulated in public buildings can require complex interactions.

This type of data can also be used to anticipate how many people will travel through certain areas or how energy is being used. This is going to be increasingly important with the adoption of EV charging and renewable energy generation systems to ensure that energy supply companies can plan how to most effectively and efficiently meet demands and prevailing or adapting local conditions or needs. For example, as EV adoption increases, having parking spaces may be useless, if they are not equipped with functioning EV charge points. This not only relies on the equipment working, but also the supply system into the building being capable of supplying sufficient electricity to the charge points and not at the expense of the emergency systems or IT infrastructure.

In addition, many other types of devices are equally specialist and together with their core systems can track air quality, access real-time traffic information, street lighting, monitor water quality, collect waste data and perform many functions that seek to protect city users. These systems in themselves create technological challenges, each requiring specialist forms of connectivity. For example, where subterranean systems need to communicate through nodes that are located above ground or traffic systems that require extremely low latency to ensure rapid communications. Some require extremely low data and high physical range, and others are served by IoT gateways, nodes or routers that provide very local connectivity and the long-range backhaul mechanism.

How Can Cities Become Smarter?

So, how does a city transform into a smart city? Obviously, smart city infrastructure projects are complex and run by expert teams who are well versed in public-private investments and their implementation and delivery. That said, smart cities are technically complex and involve highly involved forms of technology which can appear ubiquitous, emerging, immature, obsolete, proprietary, which can both excite, exasperate and confuse investors, specifiers and administrators who are concerned about longevity, cost of implementation, maintenance and their future autonomy from individual commercial organizations.??

That said, there appear to be seven steps on the road to becoming a smart city that cannot be overlooked if a city wants to be perceived as technologically progressive and hopefully one day to be considered truly smart:

1) The importance of Leadership, Regulations, Policies, New Technologies and Growth

As we mentioned earlier, each city must first define what being "smart" means to them.

As an example, Copenhagen is using IoT technology to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025, while Hong Kong's transformation into a smart city is aimed at improving city management and the city's attractiveness for global business. Clearly, each city will have its own goals, economic and structural issues, contextual circumstances, and culture, which will each form part of its interpretation of what being a smart city means to them.

Therefore, a first step in transitioning to becoming a smart city seems to be understanding how the city wishes to use smart technology and data to achieve its aspirations and vision that chime with their values or help overcome inherited problems. Many cities also have unique geographies which can constrain certain forms of travel or make certain crossings expensive. For example, the Solent region has constraints around densely populated peninsular areas such as Portsmouth and unbelievably expensive ferry systems to and from the Isle of Wight. Such unique problems affect how technologies can be implemented and the particular problems that create issues or may affect the viability of some solutions. Related to this, cities also may feel competition and pressure to implement systems that are not viable in their own context due to the trajectory of government policy or the actions of other cities.?

Implementing forward-looking policies and regulations centered around their own 'smart goals' is vital for each city to progress forward in its smart city transformation. In a post-GDPR world, it's especially important for cities to consider how data will be handled and how citizens' privacy can be protected as the goodwill of citizens and users is key to their success and the inherent trust that they rely on.

Adventurous and progressive leadership must also be established to ensure the successful scoping, planning and implementation of smart initiatives - whether that’s through elected officials or NGOs tasked with leading the project. Fundamental to this process is a guiding ethos that can direct the principals in motion and decision making through complex difficulties, tensions and conflicting arguments.

2) Sustainable Services and Ongoing Initiatives

Once leadership and agreed and established goals are in place, cities must ensure that their smart initiatives are sustainable. It is a frequent problem, however, that initiatives can be implemented with two fundamental tensions. That is, the need to cater for as many stakeholders and users as possible, and the need to retain control and a level of agnosticism to particular system and platform providers.?

Many smart city initiatives can undergo lengthy requirements capture, public consultation and tendering processes. This, if successful, can lead to bespoke systems development and integration work that can take 2 to 3 years to complete. This, of course, leads to the argument that city administrators could take the less expensive option of using off the shelf, proven systems from the major system provider. The issue is that they may not overcome the unique contextual problems, eliminate vulnerable or poorer members of societies, or become irreversible if the platform providers sense commercial lock-in and seek to recover their investment through pricing increases. A simple example of this might be the implementation of a tap and go scheme that is unavailable to those without smartphones, a bank account or a credit card. Creating a system for those more vulnerable members of society may require bespoke integration and care, but given its importance is deemed a price worth paying.?

Projects can also have a shelf-life. While grants and their scope in terms of trials are subject to grants, they are usually time bound. For example, if a project takes 12 months to scope, 2 years to develop and has a finite life of 5 years, then only 2 years will be available to prove the system. For complex systems such as e scooter schemes, bike travel & storage, and various other transport systems this might not be enough to test the adoption, or the novelty adoption, tail off and then re-emergence through considered utilisation. This creates a potential discomfort for commercial organisations and perhaps an avoidance of projects as they are viewed as involving heavy resource use without long-term commercial returns guaranteed.?

By utilising existing tech, however, cities can begin to seek to ensure that fewer resources are used, such as through smart grids and intelligent transport systems. This can help cities save money while also reducing their carbon footprint and help administrators become better stewards of their resources.

Identifying low-hanging fruit, such as using geolocation to reduce traffic, is a great way to see quick results from the implementation of IoT. Other initiatives, such as smart street lighting and public Wi-Fi networks are also being implemented around the world to reduce costs while providing additional services to citizens.

Another way smart cities are becoming more sustainable is by introducing policies and regulations surrounding electric vehicles, often with incentives for citizens to switch over. This can help reduce air pollution, and using smart charging technology, cities can better manage how much electricity is being used during high-demand periods.

Of course, the creation of charging networks requires consideration and thought. Many charge points will need to be deployed in a range of contexts, Beit car parks, shopping centres, public roads, housing with no off-road parking and so forth. Many such initiatives are being governed by local authorities, however, commercial organisations implementing them on private land and property are suffering from a lack of standardisation which means that industry is highly fragmented. Integrating these systems with demand and availability checking, booking and payment services can be haphazard. Meaning that a user may need multiple Apps to access such systems as is also the case with many parking service providers.?

3) Creating a Connected Network and Reliable Data Governance

Just like how roads are the foundation of any city, a strong network is the backbone of smart cities.

A reliable grid infrastructure of IoT, data platforms and increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) is essential for providing citizens with access to services such as transport, parking, charging, healthcare, education, security and entertainment. This is as the quantities of data are substantial and their processing requires highly sophisticated systems that can make sense of them within a variety of contexts.

To become a smart city, cities must not only create a network of connected devices that are able to collect and share data in real time with a variety of systems, but also provide the mechanisms and interfaces to enable action to be taken. This means installing sensors in physical objects such as streetlights, traffic signals and buildings, as well as providing citizens with access to a fast internet connection or the ability to view and interact with local information available via interactive IoT devices and systems. For example, air quality sensors in schools may indicate that CO2 levels are unsafe, but if the temperature is extremely low, teachers may be unwilling to open windows to ventilate. This also creates issues when it is considered that energy and heating bills are increasing at a rapid rate. A better system would be to implement an extraction system that operates automatically. This, however, means that a more expensive and complex system needs to be costed and implemented. Budgets may not exist, and higher maintenance costs would need to be factored. This may mean that the system cannot be made available to all, which then creates social and ethical questions for administrators. Similar considerations or other ethical questions apply to other components of a smart eco-system. For example, an e scooter scheme may be popular with young people who do not have access to a car but are unpopular with drivers and seems as dangerous for some pedestrians. There may be no perfect system or utopia in practice. Nonetheless, administrators must assess the variety of benefits for users and their dangers or controversies. Ultimately, the vision and aspirations of the progressive smart city protagonists may win, but continuous governance must consider all users and cases of misuse or highlighted areas of concern for their ongoing development.

Cities should also plan how data will be handled and how it can be used to create better services for citizens, such as improving urban mobility by collecting traffic data. These, perhaps, may be less controversial, however, information that identifies users, infers their identity or blatantly records them must be subject to rules and governance to comply with law and ensure the wellbeing of citizens which is central to the adoption and success of such schemes and the viability of technologies utilised within smart cities.?

4) Strong Attention to a City's Community

Becoming a smart city means identifying what a smart community will look like and ensuring that the city's existing community is on board with the ideas from conception and through the transition before and after deployment.

Cities must therefore focus on how smart initiatives can benefit their citizens, such as how they could help increase accessibility, reduce crime and create jobs. Smart city initiatives also need to consider how they will engage with their community and how they can ensure that vulnerable groups are not left behind in the process of becoming a smart city. We must remember that not everybody is technically literate, has access to bank accounts or can afford price hikes to pay for these services.?

By engaging with citizens to identify how smart technologies can enhance their lives through better mobility and an easier lifestyle, cities can help ensure that their initiatives are in line with their communities’ needs and wishes. This will also increase public trust and appreciation for the city's initiatives, making it easier for them to promote the benefits of being a smart city. Of course, public consultations are central to these processes and are subject to law and planning law.

While creating smart cities means absorbing controversies, and of course driving and adopting change, they can have serious benefits for users. This can mean much greater access to an integrated and innovative macro, meta and micro transport grid, less involved payment schemes and processes, and healthier and safer indoor and outdoor environments. While research is always controversial, most people do seem to be happy with the sense of progression and some of the real benefits and conveniences. Some research might be a little fantastical, even stating that as many as 98% of people living in smart cities are satisfied with the facilities available to them. We, of course, await further research which studies the impacts on individual’s everyday lives and the types of benefits they enjoy, find valuable or dislike, are anxious about, or distrust.

5) Promoting Security and Economic Growth

It is of course important for administrators of smart cities to ensure that their smart initiatives are secure and beneficial to the overall economy.

As mentioned earlier, security and data protection must be a priority when creating a smart city, as cyber-attacks including denial of service attacks have become more frequent in recent years due to how connected systems are. It's crucial that cities implement measures such as encryption and authentication protocols to protect data from malicious actors. It is also crucial that major systems are configurable but protected by encryption and IP Security systems such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to ensure only validated users and operators can access key parameters and data.

Fundamentally, the take up of smart city initiatives are not only about efficiencies or environmental change, but they are also seen as essential in terms of helping create economic growth and enhancing the image of the region or city. Smart cities must also therefore ensure that they are creating initiatives that will help improve their local economy and create new jobs by attracting employers, employees, retailers and investment.

Initiatives can involve investments such as integrating renewable energy sources into the smart city infrastructure or creating new digital businesses to help spur innovation and entrepreneurship. They not only help the local environment but create a positive image and a progressive sensibility for its leaders and citizens.

6) Partnering Public and Private Sectors

Carrying on from the previous points, it's essential that cities can fund their smart initiatives and thrive in the long term beyond trials. For this reason, cities must secure funding from private investors or public grants but do so in a way that is sustainable and part of the bigger picture for how the city is likely to need to be developed in the future or is desired to transform and become re-energised.

Creating strong partnerships between the public and private sectors is an integral part of becoming a smart city, as it allows cities to leverage the latest technology and skills from renowned experts and the much-needed investment from all sorts of stakeholders. This can be the central government, employers, infrastructure providers, private investment, or wider network authorities.

As an example, if a city is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2025, then it might enter a partnership with a solar energy company to help produce and utilise renewable energy sources. This might be to tackle certain issues or to act as a beacon for best practice. For example, with pre-planning and investments, battery infrastructure can be utilised to store energy from peak generation periods to be used across time periods or for specific events. Football stadiums are utilising this technology to capture energy through the week, for use to power their systems and floodlights on matchday. Coupled with high capacity 5G systems, they create a unique and exciting experience for fans and something which they can shout about. While such data systems have benefit to users and the private landowner, if available on a wider data marketplace they also can form part of a weather, crowd, transport or air quality information system that enables citizens to be fully informed and able to plan and avoid congestion or pollution hotspots. It also allows administrators to make more informed decisions about where public transport needs to be improved, how pedestrian flows can be streamlined and how traffic and parking can be better managed.?

Public-private partnerships also provide an opportunity for innovation, as cities can make use of leading technologies such as AI and blockchain that are not always available in the public sector alone. It also means that systems that are developed for one city can be implemented at lower cost for other cities. Afterall, this is the purpose of government funding for smart city infrastructure trials. The hope that the investments will lead to other cities being able to implement the improvements with less cost, shorter timeframes and with more off the shelf smart city solutions.

7) Framing and Implementing Pilot Projects

Implementing smart city initiatives can mean starting small and testing how effective they are. Many systems will require complex data interfaces or user interactions. As an example, tap and go systems were originally believed to create delays and queues. Testing the technology with users clearly demonstrated that they had the opposite effect and were in fact more efficient than traditional paper ticket systems. Having one point of access (smart phone) meant that users were readied and prepared to scan their ticket, rather than fumble or become confused as to where to buy, print, insert and where to take the ticket from.?

This is where test systems and pilot projects come in, as they allow cities to gather data and adjust their projects before launching them on a larger scale, with the inevitable backlash if things go wrong.

Through effective processes, city officials can maximize learning opportunities, reduce risks and identify how to get the most out of their smart city initiatives.

For example, if a town or city is looking to implement a smart parking and EV charging system, then they can first run a pilot project in one or two car parks before rolling it out across the entire city. This will mean that not only the technology, but also complex user behaviour's can be assessed in advance of the final scheme being designed and implemented. By doing this, officials can ensure that everything works as expected, while also gauging how the necessary changes in user processes are experienced by consumers without wasting time, effort and money for services that are unworkable or fundamentally flawed.

Once pilot projects are successful, then cities can move forward with their smart city initiatives on a larger scale, which inevitably will require greater levels of cross-pollination and integration to supply richer data and more connected user services.

Pilot projects can also help cities build trust with their citizens by displaying how the technologies will improve their lives. It also helps create momentum and helps build a strong, positive buzz within the city, thus encouraging more citizens to get involved and support the smart city initiatives. As an example, e-scooter schemes have been largely controversial, but their users and traffic have over time learned to modify their behaviour's to make them useful and less antisocial. If they were to stop, many would now think that would be detrimental to the city. E-scooter schemes have in effect been trials, although larger in scale than might be necessary for other types of tests given the mass user take up needed and the portability and reusability of the vehicles elsewhere. They in effect need less fixed and permanent infrastructure than a mass transit system. They, and bike sharing schemes are rapidly becoming part of the fabric of many cities, where their benefit is perceived to far outweigh the negatives.?

?Overall, pilot projects are a fantastic way for cities to test how effective their smart initiatives will be before fully committing to them at scale which is clearly very important for administrators and their funding models.

Some Top Smart Cities in the World

Cities can become smarter, safer and more efficient in how they run, thus providing citizens with an improved quality of life.

But what cities are already making the transition?

Below are some of the ‘currently perceived’ top smart cities in the world:

1) Barcelona

Key Points & Infrastructure:

• Free Wi-Fi network covering the entire city.
• Over 20,000 active sensors are used to measure air quality, noise and temperature across the city.
• Smart parking system to help manage congestion.
• Aims to make public transportation emissions-free by 2025.
• Water and waste management technology implemented to improve efficiency.

2) Amsterdam

Key Points & Infrastructure:

• The Amsterdam Smart City programme is a collection of initiatives to improve how the city works, with the aim of being a zero-waste, zero-carbon city by 2025.
• Smart traffic controllers are being used to optimise how traffic flows and reduce congestion.
• Amsterdam is also investing in smart energy solutions, such as electric vehicle charging points and solar panels.
• Data-driven city portal for citizens to access information about their city.
• Smart lighting systems to improve safety and reduce energy costs.
• Video analytics used to track how many people are in public areas at any one time.

3) Singapore

Key Points & Infrastructure:

• Singapore's Smart Nation Initiative aims to improve how people and businesses interact with their everyday services.
• The city has a range of projects to help make it smarter, such as utilizing data analytics to reduce traffic congestion and implementing smart sensors on streetlamps to check air quality.
• Smart water management using real-time data analytics.
• The city is also looking to reduce electricity costs with smart metering technology, allowing customers to track how much energy they are using in real time.
• Singapore has also invested heavily in smart healthcare technologies, such as AI-based systems and robotics for diagnosis and treatments.
• Aims of building a vehicle-free smart city made up of over 42,000 eco-homes.

Discover the Potential of IoT Connectivity with Caburn Telecom

Thank you for reading our post on how smart cities are constantly emerging and progressing efficiencies and wellbeing benefits for residents and visitors.

Ultimately, cities must ensure they have the right resources and partnerships in place to become a smart city and provide citizens with access to the latest services as they require resources, technical expertise and large-scale investment. This can be achieved by engaging with the private sector, government, key stakeholders, local communities, other international and regional cities and their administrators in investing in new technologies and creating strong public-private partnerships that can deliver IoT through pilots and at scale successfully.

Caburn Telecom is a leader in supplying the latest IoT solutions for smart cities. Our secure and reliable network makes it easy for cities to connect their smart technology, giving them access to valuable data that can be used to improve how they operate.

Contact us today to learn more about IoT connectivity and solutions.

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