Sri Lanka & the Smart City Journey

It has been an exciting and educational 2 days in Colombo with our partners, AVONET, starting the smart city journey in Sri Lanka. Right from the start Sri Lanka is a very different country, with only 18.2% of the 22 million population living in cities against a global average of 54%.

LESSON 1: In Smart City one size never fits all.

People often ask when I am speaking about Smart City why I do not launch into long appraisals of technology and big data from the start, and to that my first response is that in Smart City the qualifications that I use most are in psychology and human behaviour, not engineering.

LESSON 2: Smart City is about people, not technology.

Smart City is about people, their needs, aspirations and motivations. As both advisor and project designer LVX is always people-centric and we look to provide Smart City Solutions by using insights from validated, data, that are sometimes technology enabled. Some of our best Smart City outcomes have involved no technology at all:

> Changing languages

> changing use strategies for traffic flow optimisation

> running awareness campaigns for social benefits in underprivileged communities

LESSON 3: "Smart City: does not automatically mean "technology".

CHALLENGES

In Sri Lanka today the challenges that we see are several, and highly diverse:

> One of the highest suicide rates in the world, (35.3 people per 100,000)

> only 1% of all bank transactions conducted electronically, despite 126% market mobile saturation

> over 1 million young tuk-tuk (trishaw) drivers who cannot get access to tertiary education to advance themselves and their country

> Dengue Fever pandemics, as well as constant yellow fever & malaria outbreaks due to lack of adequate mosquito control

> Elephants on regional railway tracks causing damage and death in accidents

> High levels of respiratory and kidney disease in children from polluted air and water

> Over 200 deaths per annum from flash floods

> Waste management that is out of control, with no proper collection, recycling or disposal

> Traffic that is at breaking point, and one of the highest road death rates per capital in the world, (8 deaths per day)

OPPORTUNITIES

At the same time their are great opportunities:

> Tourism continues to grow at high rate

> Foreign infrastructure investment is growing at a high rate

> Sri Lanka's US$70Bn GDP is derived from diverse sources, not just a single industry

OUR MISSION

Our mission now is to grasp these challenges and opportunities, assess the shared benefits for the people and businesses of Sri Lanka, fashion them into projects, and deliver value to all, for now and for the future.

This is what I love about Smart City: the people.