Simplifying Smart Cities – An alternate Step by Step Approach

Much water has flown down since my last article on this topic “What is smart city”.

It is now widely known and recognized that Smart City market exists for real in many parts of the globe especially in India, Spain, Singapore and Middle East.

Smart City is a necessity than a luxury. However success factor is critical in terms of visible improvements to the lives of citizens, visitors and other stakeholders of a city.

Urbanization and the ugly growth of it, is no secret. More than half of the global population lives in cities and it will grow even more and even more rapidly in coming decade. There is no match of this growth in urban population to creation of new cities. That means the overpopulated cities are set become obese, more chaotic, more traffic, more pollution etc etc, more of all that is scary about cities.

To make it less scary and more enjoyable, Smart City is a good choice. However, after studying at least 15 such smart cities in India and different parts of the globe, I see a mixed result. It was expected that a city will be transformed and there will be visible enhancement of lives of stakeholders once the city becomes smart. This is not there yet. Why? We need to analyze how these smart cities are implemented at this moment (traditional/usual/common approach)

The following is the traditional approach more or less followed in India, many European countries like Spain etc.

1)     A country wide template having reference architecture, functionality, execution duration is created for Smart City implementation

2)     Cities to be transformed are selected

3)     A consultant is appointed to modify the template as per the specific city’s priorities/KPIs

4)     A tender is floated inviting companies to bid for the smart city project

5)     Usually a consortium of 3-4 companies with 5 to 15 other additional companies together bid for the project

6)     After evaluation, the winner is invited to implement the smart city project in a typical time frame of 12-24 months with operations/support of additional 2-4 years.

This approach is consistent up to 70-80% from city to city. Now let’s discuss the similarities in terms of technical components as they have been sought through this smart city approach.

1)     A Smart City platform – It is more of an Internet of Things (IoT) platform in varying size, shape, capability and interfaces. This is either provided by an OEM or a Telecom company, implemented by either the OEM or a SI (System Integrator). This can be either in local data center or served through cloud.

2)     A communication backbone, mostly provided by Telecom companies

3)     A Sensory layer to collect real-time data. This is usually provided by hardware OEMs.

4)     A data lake to store many different kind of data including big data, spatial/geographic data. This can be either in data center or in cloud adhering to local regulations.

5)     A set of vertical solutions such as transportation, traffic, security/surveillance, environment, utilities, sports/recreation and so on so forth. The number of such vertical solutions and nature of such solutions (whether new or retrofit) vary from city to city.

6)     Multiple interfaces such as mobile, web, desktop, kiosk, touch panels are also been sought.

This is how they look (diagram below) in most simplistic view.

As you see in the above diagram, it is a heterogeneous, complex technology stack, even if in the most simplistic view. In reality, many implementers bring in multiple platforms because of multitude of reasons such as some solutions come with its own IoT platform, so the situation demands the smart city platform to act like a platform of platforms which is complex.

Who can implement such diverse set of technologies and solutions together?

Usually a consortium is formed with 3-4 core companies and 5-15 additional companies (typical vertical solution providers). The leader of such a consortium is more often an EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) company or a Telecom company. 

Advantages of traditional model:

1)     City gets all the specified smart solutions together in a shorter duration

2)     City spends comparatively lesser money to get these solutions

Disadvantages of traditional model:

1)     City and its citizens miss out the benefit of bespoke solutions – Each city is unique and so are its challenges. Authorities, consultants, service providers and citizens together need to report, analyze and prioritize smart solutions for the city. For example, a city has chronic drinking water issue. In this case, the focus should be on water utility and identifying source of drinking water, harvesting of rain water, preventing contamination to water sources and carriers, preventing losses in transportation of water and so on. All these can be addressed by smart solutions specifically created to address the drinking water problem. Similarly another city has transportation problem, hence the priority should be on bettering public transport, creating shared mobility, bringing in more next gen electrical vehicles, creating and managing adequate parking facilities etc. Again these can be addressed through custom-made transportation solutions.

In the current model, every city gets a set of generic solutions. Yes, it has the right to pick and choose the solutions/services, but the current model does not provide much room to innovate and create its own smart solutions to address the local challenge.

2)     City and its citizens miss out the benefit of experts in the field – As I said earlier, either an EPC company or a Telecom company mostly becoming the lead player to enable smart services in a city. Though these companies are backed by relevant OEMs and System Integrators, the priority here is to implement the available solutions and make it work for the city. What is actually required is to create the solution for the city by the company who is expert in this field.   

And the end result is the city is not convincingly able to resolve any its chronic challenges visibly, though it gets benefit of an umbrella of smart services partially.

Proposed Alternate Approach

This approach is not completely new. It is in fact put into practice in different parts of the globe. However, it is yet to become the norm.

1)     Think your city-as-a-lab:

Nashik city in Maharashtra is an example where the city has established a digital impact square to report, discuss and resolve both chronic and imminent challenges faced by the city.

https://www.digitalimpactsquare.com/

This is a collaboration between all parties (Citizens, Visitors, Government/authorities, Universities, System Integrators, OEMs). Through live forums like this – challenges can be identified, prioritized, solutions can be found and technical components can be agreed upon.

2)     Build your smart city brick-by-brick:

They say “Rome is not built in a day”, then how do we expect it to become smart in a day? Above is an example to generate collaborative thought processes and get necessary buy-ins (agreements) to start your journey. Create necessary soft and hard infrastructures which will serve as the foundation layers in a smart city project. Soft infrastructures are the policy and process documents (for data, for security, for platform, for integration architecture and for use cases). Extend the soft infrastructures to include inventory of existing sensory framework (yes, each city already has a lot of sensors whether we know or not). Hard infrastructures are the communication back-bone, acquisition of new sensors, extending existing data centers etc. Once your soft and hard infrastructures are ready to good extent (no need to wait till it the process ends, as it is going to be a dynamic and evolving process), start implementing the smart solution for most impending problem that will have a visible impact on lives of stakeholders. Take the example of resolving transportation challenge in Mumbai or Bangalore or for that matter San Francisco, resolving pollution problem in Delhi or Shanghai, Drinking water problem in Chennai. Even resolving the supply chain for agricultural produces around Nashik will have substantial and visible impact to millions and millions people in these cities and the world at large.

Example of such approaches are already there. The lamp post as a platform in Singapore (https://www.opengovasia.com/tender-awarded-for-singapores-smart-lamp-post/ ) is an example of focusing on few use cases at a time after establishing the foundation layers. Another example is the smart nation initiative of Qatar (https://tasmu.gov.qa/en ) which is more of step-by-step approach against the traditional big bang approach.

To summarize, here are few steps for the alternate approach to smart city.

a.      Establish a forum to generate ideas from all stakeholders (Nashik example)

b.     Create a live document of all your city’s challenges and solutions (TASMU, Qatar example)

c.      Develop soft infrastructures

i.        Data Policy

ii.      Security Policy

iii.     Platform Policy

iv.    Futuristic Architecture with open standards

d.     Develop hard infrastructures

i.        Communication backbone (again, Singapore example) – leverage expertise of telecom company through direct ownership of the implementation by the Telecom company

ii.      Implement the most deserving use case first along with platform (example: Security for Singapore, Transportation for Mumbai, Environment Management for Delhi etc) – leverage expertise of platform OEMs, Vertical Solution providers and System Integrators through direct participation and ownership. Also City has sufficient time to develop its own solutions rather implementing generic solutions with minor customization.

e.     Start realizing your KPI/revenue through appropriate monetization of first few services

f.       Gradually build upon the success and good will from first few services to roll-out next set of solutions.

This approach is based on the philosophy that each city is unique and collaboration of all stakeholders of the particular city is the key to resolving its challenges. It is not a bottom-up vs top-down approach, rather a hybrid as both top (Govt, Consultants, OEMs, System Integrators) and bottom (citizens, visitors, local businesses) are collaborating together to find and implement smart solutions. Imagine if you resolve the transportation problem of Bangalore through custom mobility solutions, rest will be cake walk for you. The visible benefits of eradicating a single and large challenge will give you and govt the impetus to implement 10 more solutions. 

(PS: These are my personal views. The objective is to stimulate ideas among policy makers, consultants and funding agencies towards more citizen-measurable smart cities. I welcome contrarian views. Many thanks for reading through.)