The world’s population is growing greatly year after year and people are migrating to cities, which makes it necessary to look for new ways to aid development and solutions that assure that citizens have the quality of life in a sustainable way. Cities which were developed on out-dated models are now in urgent need of preventing the collapse caused by overpopulation.
What Is A Smart City?
A smart city is a city based on sustainable urban development that uses information and communication technologies (ICT) to improve operational efficiency, share information with its inhabitants to provide a better place for both the government services and citizen welfare. A smart city is a city that uses technology to provide services and give solutions to city problems.
A smart city’s main objectives is to improve energy efficiency, reduce CO2 emissions, increase the well-being of citizens, improve transportation and accessibility, improve social services and promote sustainability.
A city’s smartness is determined by the infrastructure based around technology, environmental initiatives, effective and highly functional public transportation, confident and progressive city plans, people being able to live and work within the city and using its resources.
The success of a smart city depends on the relationship between the public and private sectors to create and maintain a data-driven environment that falls outside the local government remit. It is centered around the idea that citizens create the city, not the other way round.
Cities use this tool to collect data in real time about all kinds of things, like traffic, air and water quality, and solar radiation. With this information, the government can act immediately to solve nearly any problem.
Some of the well-known applications of this tool include installing sensors in the streets that identify things like empty parking spots and traffic jams, estimate how long the next bus will take to arrive, and measure air and water quality. There are even others that address environmental issues, like sensors that detect the number of pedestrians. These sensors can help reduce the amount of street lighting when there aren’t any people around, thus saving electricity.
History of Smart City
The history of smart cities can be found way back to the 1970s, when Los Angeles created the first urban big data project: “A Cluster Analysis of Los Angeles” in 1974. The term itself first appeared in 1990s news reports about cities that adopted new technological systems to improve services. The label was also used at the time to describe a handful of futuristic urban projects that were never built, including the Multi-Function Polis (MFP) in Adelaide, Australia. The first smart city was arguably Amsterdam with the creation of a virtual digital city in 1994. Later in the mid-2000s when IBM and Cisco launched separate initiatives. Then in 2011, the inaugural Smart City Expo World Congress was held in Barcelona, which has now become an annual event charting smart cities’ development.
Smart City Technology
Smart cities use a combination of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, software solutions, user interfaces (UI) and communication networks to deliver connected solutions for the public. Importantly they rely on the IoT. IoT is a system of interrelated devices connected to communicate and exchange data. These devices include anything from vehicles to home appliances and on-street sensors.
Data collected and delivered by the IoT sensors and devices is stored in the cloud or on servers that allow improvements to be made to both public and private sector efficiencies and deliver economic benefits and improvements to the lives of citizens. The connection of these devices and use of data analytics (DA) facilitates the convergence of the physical and digital city elements, thus improving both public and private sector efficiency, enabling economic benefits and improving citizen’s live
Quite a number of these IoT devices make use of edge computing, which ensures that only relevant and important data is delivered over the communication network. A firewall security system is also needed to be implemented to protect, monitor and control the transmission of data from the smart city network and prevent unauthorized access to the IoT network of the city’s data platform.
Smart cities also use technologies like:
- Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Cloud Computing Services
- Dashboards
- Machine Learning (ML)
- Machine-to-Machine Communications (M2M)
- Mesh Networks
Features of Smart Cities
With the combination of automation, machine learning and IoT it allows for the adoption of smart city technologies for a variety of applications. For example, smart parking can help drivers find a parking space and also allow for digital payment.
Smart city initiatives can be used to combat climate change and air pollution as well as waste management and sanitation via internet-enabled rubbish collection, bins and fleet management systems.
Also in the transportation arena, smart traffic management is used to monitor and analyze traffic flows in order to optimize streetlights and prevent roadways from becoming too congested based on time of day or rush-hour schedules.
Another form of smart city innovation is smart traffic management to monitor traffic flows and optimize traffic lights to reduce congestion, while ride-sharing services can also be managed by a smart city infrastructure.
Smart city technology is being used to improve public safety, from monitoring areas of high crime to improving emergency preparedness with sensors. For example, smart sensors can be critical components of an early warning system before droughts, floods, landslides or hurricanes.
Energy conservation and efficiency are major focuses of smart cities. Using smart sensors, smart streetlights dim when there aren’t cars or pedestrians on the roadways. Smart grid technology can be used to improve operations, maintenance and planning, and to supply power on demand and monitor energy outages.
Building construction can also be part of a smart city project. Legacy infrastructure can be retrofitted and new buildings constructed with sensors to not only provide real time space management and ensure public safety, but also to monitor the structural health of buildings. Sensors can detect wear and tear, and notify officials when repairs are needed.
How Smart Cities Works
Smart cities follow four steps in utilizing their web of connected IoT devices and other technologies to achieve the goals of improving the quality of life and achieving economic growth. They are as follow:
- Collection: Smart sensors that are being spread throughout the city gathers data in real time.
- Analysis: Data collected by the smart sensors are then analyzed in order to give meaningful insights into the operation of city services.
- Communication: The insights found during the analysis are then passed across to the decision makers through strong communication networks.
- Action: Cities then use these insights gotten from the data to create solutions, optimize operations, manage assets and improve the quality of life for residents.
The citizens can now engage and interact with smart city ecosystems through mobile devices and connected vehicles and buildings. Through devices pairing with data and the infrastructure of the city, it is possible to cut costs, improve sustainability and streamline factors such as energy distribution, refuse collection, and also offer reduced traffic congestion, and improve air quality.
Smart cities are important because they allow citizens and local government authorities to work together to launch initiatives and use smart technologies to manage assets and resources in the growing urban environment.
Smart cities are needed because they provide an urban environment that delivers a high quality of life to residents while also generating economic growth. It delivers a suite of joined-up services to citizens with reduced infrastructure costs. Smart cities are important for future population growth in urban areas, where efficient use of infrastructure and assets will be required. Smart city services and applications will allow improvements which will lead to a higher quality of life for citizens.