Smart Cities and IOT: Mobility is Key

This is an attempt at painting a picture of how Smart Cities are important, and the technologies that are being used to enable smart mobility/transportation.

The question that I am attempting to answer is why understanding Smart Cities in general and IOT/Mobility in particular is important for all of us - engineering students?

IOT or IO-MT

Smart environments such as smart transportation are upon us because of major advances in sensor, communication, cloud, mobile-apps, security and other cyber-physical system technologies. The collective name for interconnected sensors, placed on “things” within fixed cyber-physical infrastructures, is “Internet of Things (IOT)”.

However, IOT often represents interconnection of static things, which are built into the physical infrastructure of user homes, offices, roads, and other physical/critical infrastructure/systems. When one deals with mobile “things”, it is called Internet of Mobile Things (IO-MT)”. With mobility, system complexity goes up, and design/implementation and integration challenges increase. But the general name is still IOT.

Modern Life and Mobility

So much of modern life is a question of mobility. We have become nomads again. People need to travel from one place to another, be it for education, work or leisure. And businesses need to deliver their goods and services when and where they are required.

On any given day, millions of people in a city like Delhi/NCR drive cars or take public transport. And hundreds of thousands of items are delivered by commercial vehicles.

This massive movement of people and goods requires a complex infrastructure, an infrastructure we engineers build, operate and manage. It does not always work as one would like it to. City streets quickly become clogged with traffic, highways are prone to delays and traffic jams. Also public transport – whether buses or the metro can be a sea of people at peak travel times.

Impact on – People & Planet

Stalled traffic is frustrating, causing delays and impacting air quality. As per estimates of an IIT research study about traffic congestion, it is reported that drivers in Delhi spent an average of 104 hours in gridlock in 2016, amounting to a cost of more than Rs. 1200 per driver in wasted fuel and lost time. Private cars are not the only ones that get stuck in traffic, of course, since commercial vehicles and public buses often share the same roadways, and there are serious concerns about how these various modes of transportation impact global warming.

Delhi/NCR features at “Top of the Charts” for being one of the most polluted cities in the world, and while the Government of India is a signatory of the Paris Climate Agreement, things don’t look bright.

This two fold concern about mobility – that is the impact it has on people, as well as on the planet – of many Smart City initiatives; which aim to use technology to improve transportation/mobility. This is being attempted by maximizing its efficiency and minimizing its impact.

Two Cities, Two Different Approaches

Jaipur was selected under the Smart City Mission for development, where modernity would blend with heritage of the city through projects such as improvement and beautification of facades, restoration of heritage buildings and smart roads with integrated/intelligent traffic management system. Smart Mobility is a thrust area.

Another approach is that, while Jaipur is attempting to make the centre of the city smart first, Nagpur which is the largest of the Smart City projects in the country is attempting to develop, both the periphery and the centre.

Smart Cities build on Smart Mobility

Emerging mobility patterns of young adults is shaping an industry in which on-demand service providers such as Ola and Uber have experienced strong growth. The young and their mobility patterns would continue to drive new business models, where technologies like IOT along with mobile apps will integrate with the digital platforms/ecosystem. But why mobile apps?

Mobile phone is the best tool to harness the benefits of IOT solutions. Smart phone users are growing, and shall increase considerably in future. Also, accessing IOT solutions via mobile apps is more flexible.

IOT development in mobile apps facilitates the remote control of other smart gadgets using a single mobile device. All devices have been assigned their unique IP address. And they are all connected to the Internet.

IOT and Smart Mobility: Examples

Most of the IOT driven initiatives focus on end-user experience, and emphasize the importance of delivering transport services that are simple to use, and provide easy access to real time information.

A friend’s father recently bought a Toyota car in the US. He had to change and buy a new one as he had damaged his earlier car in a road accident. Uncle was telling me that his car helps him to park, if one changes lanes too fast, suggests not to do it. This is a simple example of how IOT/sensors are keeping track of the driver’s running time, idle time, distance travelled and average speed. They are being notified when they exceed their speed limits. This in a way is ensuring driver’s safety. Hopefully it would improve driving habits.

Two – wheelers are an important part of the urban mobility mix. According to Ms. Shweta Berry, Head - Strategic Alliances for Aeris, “IOT devices in two wheelers - be it motorcycles or scooters have major implications; from an end user safety perspective, if one meets with an accident or the two-wheeler is stolen, appropriate notifications can be triggered to different people – be it the family or the police.”

Aeris is one of the most innovative IOT companies, and is working closely with BSNL – Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited on multiple smart city projects across the country. They were showcasing their achievements at the Smart City Summit, held in August 2018.

The widespread adoption of smartphones and other mobile devices play into this as well, since so many people now carry or wear devices that support interactions with IOT-driven services.

Sharing is Smart

Young people desire connectivity and convenience. Entrepreneurs are rushing to provide new services whether it is exploring car-pooling services like Via (had talked about this in my previous blog) or shared bicycles, pilots of which are being conducted across campuses like IIT Kanpur and IIT Chennai.

Also we look to choose from an increasing range of transportation types, along with vehicle ownership to get from one point to another. And this young user base is very influential.

To give you a perspective, 10% of urban population in India lives in Delhi/NCR. A region which has multiple smart cities that have been approved – Faridabad in Haryana, Meerut in UP and Alwar in Rajasthan; with Gurgaon and Ghaziabad waiting in the wings.

There are 43 million people living in Delhi/NCR. Assuming 25% of them to be in the age group of 22 – 40 years, which makes it almost 10 million. About 30% of this, i.e. 3 million would want more value for money options – car-pooling or two-wheeler taxis.

Ola, Uber and other such on-demand service providers are changing the way individuals move. They are doing this by either seamlessly connecting drivers to passengers (taxi, carpooling), or passengers to cars (car-sharing). All this enabled by technology.

Auto Mobility and Opportunity

Car sharing would be extending benefits of “auto mobility” to individuals, without them having to bear the cost and effort of car ownership.

This is the future in the immediate short term. And according to Mr. Chetan Hebbalae, Senior Director of Product Management, Cambium Networks, USA, “Smart Mobility opens up exciting opportunities not just for Electrical/Electronics Engineers with embedded sensors/systems, M2M and Lora; but also for Mechanical/Automobile specialists with hybrid cars/alternate fuels/robotics and automation, and for Computer Science Engineers with mobile apps, analytics, big data and network/information security.”

The future is interdisciplinary and it is now.

Shivang Ranjan