Cities are only as smart as their businesses

Sci­ence fic­tion pro­vides fan­tas­tic visions of a con­nect­ed city, but as this futur­is­tic real­i­ty dawns, its suc­cess will be dri­ven by com­pa­nies using the inter­net of things (IoT).

From smart ener­gy grids to traf­fic logis­tics, pub­lic trans­porta­tion to waste man­age­ment and street light­ing to con­nect­ed liv­ing or work­ing, vast net­works of sen­sors across smart cities will har­ness mass­es of data col­lect­ed in ways we’ve nev­er seen before.

But unless the C‑suite pre­pares right now to lead, and is will­ing to fund inno­va­tion, it may fail to sat­is­fy the demands of employ­ees, cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and cit­i­zens.

José Manuel Benedet­ti, direc­tor of strat­e­gy and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion at Insight, says: “A smart city means more than allo­cat­ing free park­ing spaces or opti­mis­ing street light­ing with smart lamps. C‑suite exec­u­tives need the tech­nol­o­gy to take advan­tage of the huge amount of data con­nect­ed cities will cre­ate.

“Many organ­i­sa­tions still rely on human employ­ees to review data from IoT appli­ca­tions and make deci­sions. The vol­ume of data from even a small smart city would make this impos­si­ble. They need lay­ers of auto­mat­ed deci­sion-mak­ing algo­rithms to com­ple­ment the process and give human deci­sion-mak­ers only the infor­ma­tion they need.”

Estab­lish­ing itself at the heart of a smart city ecosys­tem will also be a key chal­lenge for busi­ness. As Benedet­ti explains, each must con­sume and use data, while gen­er­at­ing and feed­ing back its own so the streams react to each oth­er.

“One of our clients uses drones with smart image pro­cess­ing soft­ware to mon­i­tor rail­way tracks for faults,” he says. “In a smart city, a sim­i­lar appli­ca­tion for roads would, when com­bined with busi­ness­es’ own data from their vehi­cles, iden­ti­fy when infra­struc­ture, such as bridges, is over­loaded and needs repair. Data from these vehi­cles then helps the city plan any extra traf­fic con­trol mea­sures.”

Smart city solutions gather data in urban areas

With so much being promised, experts believe the C‑suite needs a long-term, struc­tured approach to har­ness these oppor­tu­ni­ties and help them cope with new poli­cies and rules.

Nick Sacke, head of IoT and prod­ucts at Comms365, says dig­i­tal-twin pro­grammes can be the answer. Cities cre­ate a dig­i­tal copy of the infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tions and this updates dynam­i­cal­ly when data from sen­sors and oth­er sources is received and processed.

He explains: “This is a fan­tas­tic resource and facil­i­ty for com­pa­nies that want to play a role in the plan­ning and deliv­ery of infra­struc­ture, util­i­ties and ser­vices, as poten­tial com­plex­i­ties and prob­lems can be mod­elled upfront.

“Access to the dig­i­tal-twin data in many cities is planned to be made avail­able to all busi­ness­es, with some data sources freely avail­able, while oth­ers are charge­able. The return on invest­ment for using their enhanced data should be well worth the invest­ment.”

One cur­rent exam­ple of smart city ideas using IoT is in Las Vegas. With 40 mil­lion vis­i­tors a year, it worked with NTT, in part­ner­ship with VMware and Dell Tech­nolo­gies, to cre­ate a real-time net­work of infor­ma­tion that uses arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine-learn­ing to remove a sig­nif­i­cant bur­den from key city per­son­nel when it comes to crit­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing.

Michael Sher­wood, direc­tor of inno­va­tion and tech­nol­o­gy for the City of Las Vegas, says: “Cities that invest, cities that learn, cities that under­stand the tech­nol­o­gy, will be the cities of the future.”

Smart city projects need IoT technology 

Smart cities will also offer com­pa­nies the chance to devel­op bet­ter logis­tics over time, cre­at­ing agili­ty for stock sup­plies and stor­age plus effi­cien­cies in deliv­ery, while inform­ing demand-dri­ven man­u­fac­tur­ing in smart fac­to­ries. Much will be dri­ven by 5G, result­ing in data trans­fer speeds and the respon­sive­ness of mul­ti­ple devices being used at once increas­ing great­ly.

Kevin Hasley, chief exec­u­tive at Root­Met­rics, says: “Smart cities can be cru­cial for busi­ness­es by enabling them to bet­ter under­stand the urban realm and pow­er­ing game-chang­ing tech appli­ca­tions like autonomous vehi­cles and drones.

“Pit­falls though could lie in tim­ing the invest­ment need­ed, vary­ing 5G adop­tion rates and speeds of imple­men­ta­tion, plus reg­u­la­to­ry bar­ri­ers, which could cause issues and delays in future. Under­stand­ing the local per­for­mance stan­dards of 5G is going to be cru­cial in help­ing busi­ness­es to nav­i­gate this and make the most of the smart cities oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

Applied futur­ist Tom Cheesewright thinks data lit­er­a­cy as anoth­er chal­lenge. “Most organ­i­sa­tions are strug­gling to make good use of the data they have to dri­ve evi­dence-based deci­sions. Com­pa­nies won’t realise the ben­e­fits of IoT tech­nolo­gies unless they address this,” he says.

“The tech­nol­o­gy invest­ment is prob­a­bly quite small. It’s more about skills and cul­ture. Who has access to the data? Who is respon­si­ble for extract­ing answers? How do dif­fer­ent func­tions col­lab­o­rate around that data?

“A tech­nol­o­gy-first approach is the biggest trap; a whole city mon­i­tored and con­trolled from a tablet is attrac­tive to some in lead­er­ship, but the most suc­cess­ful cities are nec­es­sar­i­ly messy and organ­ic. You need to start by lay­ing out a coher­ent frame­work, but then pick sin­gle prob­lems you can solve and build those as point solu­tions.”

Ali­cia Asín, chief exec­u­tive of Libeli­um, says com­pa­nies must not for­get the end-user. “For any of these smart city solu­tions to work, expe­ri­ence tells us that cit­i­zen buy-in is crit­i­cal,” she says. “None of us would have thought we would need to encour­age peo­ple to use con­tact-trac­ing and social-dis­tanc­ing apps. It has required build­ing trust and ensur­ing trans­paren­cy as not every­one will be skilled at using some of the new tech­nolo­gies. More than ever, we need to address this end-user audi­ence and make sure they become part of the smart city solu­tion.”