There is no agreed definition of what a ‘Smart City’ is, although it’s generally thought of as being an urban area that uses a variety of electronic data collection sensors to collect data that is then used to manage assets and resources within the area.
It is estimated that around 3 million people move from rural locations into our city areas each week across the world. That is a lot of people, which means a requirement for us to ensure we have the infrastructure required to accommodate all these extra people. It is estimated 2 billion more people will be living in our cities within the next 20 years. If we consider some of the issues we face today in our cities, such as traffic congestion, the enormous amounts of waste being generated, problems with air quality and water, and the ongoing tasks of providing well maintained infrastructure assets along with all the other council services then it is clear that continuing on with a 'business as usual' attitude is not viable.
On 29 April 2016, the Australian Government launched its Smart Cities Plan. The Smart Cities Plan is designed to help build an agile, innovative, and prosperous nation. Smart Cities Plan So, what will make our cities smart and how will the ‘Smart City’ status be achieved?
Using Technology to solve urban problems
The challengers for our cities are changing rapidly. Some of the questions Councils are asking will be along the lines of what does technology mean for the city, and what ways can it contribute towards quality of life for us all - the Council, our residents, visitors, young, old... everyone?
Councils have always looked towards innovation and often trial new concepts, materials, and processes to find the most efficient and cost-effective way to provide a service. For example, utilising technologies like Falling Weight Deflectometer (FWD) to find out what condition the pavement is in, and using that information to determine the best renewal or reconstruction options. Making a city smart is just like adding another tool to the Council’s tool kit and will provide Councils with many opportunities to leverage all sorts of data and use it to make informed decisions.
What do Councils need to do to facilitate and enable the Smart City?
Councils provide an array of services to the community. The incentive for Councils to move towards a smart city context is that they will be able to reach more people, collect more frequent and accurate data, and use that information to provide services that, for example, could add to a healthier life for its community.
Councils may have to change the way they do business in the smart city. All businesses and organisations explore new technologies and new ideas so they can operate in the most efficient way to achieve the best outcomes and success. Councils will do the same and adapt to the new environment of big data and smart cities. In order for Councils to be the leaders of smart cities they will have to adopt some of the characteristics of a start-up company and not be afraid to:
Experiment
Run Pilot Programs
Be innovative
Push Projects out quickly
Embrace the Open Data concept – make Council’s data freely available to anyone who wants it, to allow innovators to build solutions around it.
Focus on practical real-life applications of technology.
Focus on smart systems thinking.
Governments, the private sector, and communities will work together to solve problems in an urban environment.
There is no ‘one size fits all’
Every city has its own unique identity with very city-specific issues. Although the problems may seem similar, the approaches to fixing those issues may be different from one city to the next.
For example, most cities today have a problem with congestion. The 20th century solution may be to build a new freeway, or an additional lane. We have seen that this doesn’t actually fix the problem, more cars on the roads soon fill any spaces very quickly - and we are left with an even bigger problem with congestion – not to mention more problems with air-quality.
The solution to this problem may be to try to encourage people not to use cars in the city. If we are to do this, then we must think about how we can provide people with an attractive alternative to using their cars. To even begin to think of viable solutions, we need data that we can analyse and turn into knowledge to help us make good decisions that will see us into the future.
How do we get the data?
Data collection used to be very difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. With the development of new sensor technology, a smart city can have a network of sensor arrays feeding back to a point where the data can be aggregated and used to manage the city efficiently.
Data Collection Tools – The Urban Internet of Things
There are so many communication sensors and data collection technologies embedded in almost everything that we do in our day-to-day lives that nowadays we barely give them a second thought. We are already interconnected via smart phones and gadgets. Smart energy meters, security devices and smart appliances are being used in many cities, homes, cars, public venues, and other social systems are now on their path to the full connectivity known as the 'Internet of Things' (IoT).
The data being collecting via our smart city technologies can be analysed and interpreted and used for so many applications. People and organisations who manage the city’s infrastructure are already finding innovative ways to take advantage of the increasingly networked physical world. For example:
Energy - The Smart Grid is a well-developed system and relies on smart meters to read data about a building’s energy usage and relays it back to a central management system that will efficiently allocate resources to where it’s needed.
Street Lighting - The City of Adelaide recently collaborated with tech giant Cisco and lighting specialist Sensity to upgrade more than 60 street lights along Pirie Street and Hindmarsh Square with smart technology to enable greater convenience and efficiencies in on-demand smart lighting and energy conservation.
Water – In many smart cities around the world, Water Authorities and Local Governments are using the information gained from IoT to develop ways to manage water more efficiently – plan and manage irrigation more effectively, find and mitigate leaks in the system, developing ways to conserve water, and flood mitigation.
Waste – Many Councils around Australia have invested in smart bins. The smart bin technology is designed to alert council when the bin has almost reached its full capacity, to allow time to organise the collection to empty it. Waste monitoring will optimise collections, combat clutter on the streets and illegal dumping, and mitigate safety hazards.
Taking the concept of smart waste even further, the Sunshine Coast Council will be replacing their street bins in densely populated areas with waste inlets. The automated waste collection system uses airflow to transport waste beneath the city streets at speeds of up to 70 km/ph to a waste collection facility where it will be transported and disposed of safely. This is truly a world leading concept.
Environmental – There is a growing concern that air pollution, especially in big cities, is the cause of over 5.5 million deaths around the world each year according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Many cities have taken steps to capture air quality data using a network of connected sensors. This data is analysed and used to map information such as high pollution areas, track changes over time, and identify polluters. The data can help to alert residents to poor air quality in various areas, and form a basis to plan strategies to promote clean air.
Why is collecting and analysing data important?
Lets look at traffic congestion in a multi-storey car park scenario. It may be assumed that the cause of the congestion is lack of car parking spaces - the asset is not operating at its agreed levels of service. However, the actual data told a very different story. The congestion was caused mainly because drivers were driving around looking for parking spaces. The solution to this problem is, of course, to make it easier for people to find an empty space quickly. Relatively cheap sensors can be put into a parking spaces to collect data about whether the space is occupied or not, and send it to the cloud for any number of applications to consume.
This simple system has been deployed in many car parks already. I’m very familiar with the system at Adelaide Airport Carpark. It works very well.
Good data is key to any successful data analysis, and Councils should adopt the open data framework (Australian Government Toolkit for publishing your data) to allow easy access to the data for anyone who wants it.
Smart Cities and Cyber Attack
Along with the evolution of Smart Cities and the rapid growth of the Internet of Things, there also comes challenges to protect our security and privacy on line. People are often suspicious when they hear governments are collecting data. For example, Smart Recycling Pods in London were accused of spying on people and stealing their personal data and ordered to turn the functionality off. In fact, the Smart Recycling Pods just counted how many WIFI apps were in it's proximity every 3 minutes. This type of anonymous data collection provides no threat to individual's privacy and the data is usually used to help key stakeholders make more informed decisions. This data could have been used to help make a decision about upgrading or building a new footpath, or help decide where best to install a new seat, etc.
Actually, people have been giving away their information freely for a number of years via shopping rewards cards, and the smart cards that allows people to access the transport system. These type of cards have been tracking millions of peoples movements for many years.
Should people be worried about privacy? Not in these circumstances. The data collected are used by developers to, if anything, make things better for the shopper, or commuter. Government departments who have collected this data can then provide it to the public sector to develop a whole range of new apps to make is easier for the people in the city to consume the data and benefit from it, bringing power back to the people.
Having said that, we must ensure we protect ourselves against hackers who threaten us and our smart cities. Cyber attackers can infiltrate institutions, communications systems, and infrastructure systems. It has been suggested that as we become more connected and more systems are integrated the risk of being hacked increases. It will be more important than ever to ensure firewalls and other security measures are in place. It will be the organisation's Information Security Officers responsibility to have knowledge of, and keep secure all internet-enabled devices accessing the organisation’s networks. All devices must be registered with IT and meet the set security standards. Something as innocuous as a uninterruptible power supply (UPSs) that provides back-up battery power in the event of a power cut, can be an access point for hackers. The job of keeping the systems safe will be an enormous one.
At present, there is a lack of industry-wide standards for IoT devices and this is giving us major security concerns. IoT devices are generally simple, cheap, and low-powered, and without the capability of running antivirus programs. Experts believe that a different approach to security is required to ensure the safety. This should be a hot topic for discussion and needs to be resolved sooner rather than later.
Conclusion
The Smart City concept is certainly a compelling one. A network of devices and sensors to gather and analyse information across infrastructure to help local authorities to intelligently manage their assets, while at the same time increase efficiencies, revolutionise transport, reduce costs, and enhance overall quality of life for residents.
I can’t wait to find out if the Smart City lives up to expectations – I hope it does!
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