Secure, Sustainable Smart Cities and the IoT

Smart cities aren’t just a concept or a dream of the future. Smart City Technologies have Substantial unrealized Potential to Improve the Quality of Life.

Thanks to the wildly innovative Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, many are already active and expanding rapidly. Many governments and private investors are leveraging cellular and Low Power Wide Area (LPWAN) wireless technologies to connect and improve infrastructure, efficiency, convenience, and quality of life for residents and visitors alike.

What is a smart city?

A smart city is a framework, predominantly composed of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to develop, deploy, and promote sustainable development practices to address growing urbanization challenges. A big part of this ICT framework is essentially an intelligent network of connected objects and machines that transmit data using wireless technology and the cloud. Cloud-based IoT applications receive, analyze, and manage data in real-time to help municipalities, enterprises, and citizens make better decisions that improve quality of life.

Citizens engage with smart city ecosystems in various ways using smartphones, mobile devices, connected cars, and homes. Communities can improve energy distribution, streamline trash collection, decrease traffic congestion, and even improve air quality with help from the IoT. Together, these smart city technologies are optimizing infrastructure, mobility, public services, and utilities.

Why do we need smart cities?

Urbanization is a non-ending phenomenon. Smart cities put data and digital technology to work with the goal of improving the quality of life. More comprehensive, real-time data gives agencies the ability to watch events as they unfold, understand how demand patterns are changing, and respond with faster and lower-cost solutions.

Today, 54% of people worldwide live in cities, a proportion that’s expected to reach greater than 66% by 2050. Combined with the overall population growth, urbanization will add another 2.5 billion people to cities over the next three decades. Environmental, social, and economic sustainability is a must to keep pace with this rapid expansion that is taxing our cities’ resources.

How is IoT technology making cities smarter and better?

Secure wireless connectivity and IoT technology are transforming traditional elements of city life - like streetlights - into next-generation intelligent lighting platforms with expanded capabilities. The scope includes integrating solar power and connecting to a cloud-based central control system that connects to other ecosystem assets. These solutions shine far beyond simple lighting needs. 

Connected Life Safety Services receive data from sensors from Multistory Apartments keeping Connectivity at the heart of fire safety, providing real-time visibility to drive timely, alert Civil defense teams, and for accurate decision making.

Connected Healthcare receives data from the sensor device from people moving around the world and creates a continual link between patients, providers, and platform’s algorithms to predict problems so patients can take preventative action and also alert respectively connected telehealth hospitals for action.

Connected Cargo in the cloud receives data from sensors on temperature, humidity, light, shock, tilt, and location, etc. Especially for Pharma distribution where medicines are very sensitive.

Connected Utilities receive data from sensors and cars adjusting light cadence and timing to respond to real-time traffic, reducing road congestion.

Connected Traffic lights receive data from sensors and cars adjusting light cadence and timing to respond to real-time traffic, reducing road congestion.

Smart Connected Telecom Infra receives data from all sensors components hosted in the shelter, correlates, and alerts the relevant stakeholders thus reducing time to respond and react.

Connected Cars can communicate with parking meters and electric vehicle (EV)charging docks and direct drivers to the nearest available spot.

Smart garbage cans automatically send data to waste management companies and schedule pick-up as needed versus on a pre-planned schedule. And citizens’ smartphone becomes their mobile driver’s license and ID card with digital credentials, which speeds and simplifies access to the city and local government services.

High-power embedded LEDs alert commuters about traffic issues, provide severe weather warnings, and provide heads up when environmental issues arise.  Streetlights can also detect free parking spaces and EV charging docks and alert drivers where to find an open spot via a mobile app. Charging might even be able from the lamppost itself in some locations! 

Together, these smart city technologies are optimizing infrastructure, mobility, public services, and utilities.

What makes smart cities successful?

In addition to people, dwellings, commerce, and traditional urban infrastructure, there are four essential elements necessary for thriving smart cities:

1.    Pervasive wireless connectivity

2.    Open data

3.    Security you can trust in

4.    Flexible monetization schemes

What’s the best wireless technology for smart cities?

The first building block of any smart city application is reliable, pervasive wireless connectivity. While there’s no one-size-fits-all, evolving Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technologies are well suited to most smart city applications for their cost efficiency and ubiquity. These technologies include LTE Cat M, NB-IoT, LoRa, Bluetooth, and a few others that all contribute to the fabric of connected cities.  The advent of 5G Technology is expected to be a watershed event that propels smart city technology into the mainstream and accelerates new deployments.

Opening the data vault

Historically, governments, enterprises, and individuals have held their data close to the pocket, sharing as little as possible with others. Privacy concerns and fear of security breaches have far outweighed the perceived value of sharing information. 

However, a key enabler of sustainable smart cities is that all participants in the complex ecosystem share information and combine it with contextual data that is analyzed in real-time. This is how informed decisions are made in real-time. Multiple sectors must cooperate to achieve better, sustainable outcomes by analyzing real-time contextual information, which is shared among sector-specific information and operational technology (OT) systems.

Can smart cities be secured and trusted?

Connected cameras, intelligent road systems, and public safety monitoring systems can provide an added layer of protection and emergency support to aid citizens when needed.  But what about protecting smart cities themselves from vulnerabilities?  How can we defend against hacking, cyber-attacks, and data theft?  In cities where multiple participants share information, how do we trust that participants are whom they say are? And how do we know the data they report is true and accurate?  The answers lie in physical data vaults and strong authentication and ID management solutions. Smart cities can only work if we can trust them. 

Four core security objectives 

Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is used to distribute the secret digital keys important for protecting highly sensitive data critical to many industries. In particular, it protects data in the finance, defense, utilities, and health sectors as well as the critical infrastructure that underpins our smart cities and smart energy grid.

All ecosystem partners - governments, enterprises, software providers, device manufacturers, energy providers, and network service providers - must do their part and integrate solutions that abide by four core security objectives:

1.    Availability: Without actionable, real-time, and reliable access to data, the smart city can’t thrive. How information is collected, distilled, and shared is critical, and security solutions must avoid adverse effects on availability.

2.    Integrity: Smart cities depend on reliable and accurate data. Measures must be taken to ensure that data is accurate and free from manipulation.

3.    Confidentiality: Some of the data collected, stored, and analyzed will include sensitive details about consumers themselves. Steps must be taken to prevent unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information.

4.    Accountability: Users of a system must be responsible for their actions. Their interactions with sensitive systems should be logged and associated with a specific user. These logs should be difficult to forge and have reliable integrity protection.

Strong authentication and ID management solutions need to be integrated into the ecosystem to ensure that data is shared only with authorized parties to achieve these security core objectives. The solutions also protect backend systems from intrusion and hacking. 

Thankfully, due to growing digital security concerns, legislations are being introduced to address threats and potential market failure by several governments. This legislation will help to establish minimum security requirements for connected devices.

How do we monetize smart cities?

In the age of IoT and smart cities, Data is the new Oil. For smart cities to thrive, we need to establish sustainable commerce models that facilitate all ecosystem players' success. The software must be woven into the fabric of IoT solutions to benefit all ecosystem contributors; this includes OEMs, developers, integrators, governments, etc. Each member’s intellectual property needs to be valued and rewarded. 

Subscription software capabilities enable new business models that allow each contributor to extract value from their contribution to the ecosystem. Subscription-based models offer a way to monetize hardware and software used to build smart infrastructures and spread out expenses moving away from a huge one time CAPEX spend. 

As urban areas continue to expand and grow, smart city technology is developing alongside to enhance sustainability and better serve humanity. By leveraging pervasive connectivity, open data, end-to-end security, and software monetization solutions, we can align evolving smart city needs for a much-improved experience for all ecosystem partners.