Embrace Smart Cities not because you want to, but because you have to

Smart Cities: As the urban population continues to grow around the world, governments face major challenges – security, traffic congestion, water and energy efficiency, waste management, planning, operational and administrative efficiencies, among others.

These challenges are even more so in Asia and Africa, where we find the fastest growing cities in the world according to Citymayors.com. The challenges seem insurmountable but technological innovations provide hope that we can address these challenges and enhance the living standards of the people.  While there is no authoritative definition of a smart city, a city that uses technology to improve the living standards of its people could be called smart. The cities we live in reflect the values of our civilization. How smart a city is, is reflected by how much the quality of life of its people improves, efficiently and sustainably. A good living standard is no doubt the best legacy we could pass down to the next generation.

The use of technology alone does not qualify a city to be called smart. In fact there is no universally accepted measurement for ‘smartness’ of a city or community, and with the boundaries being pushed daily, a smart city today might not be considered a smart city in three to five years. It is not only governments that are using smart solutions. Real estate developers continue to use technology to reduce costs, attract customers and maximize revenue. As such, Smart solutions are being used for an increasing number of solutions by governments and businesses alike. It is impossible to cover all these solutions in this article, so we will try to highlight just a few.

Security

The terrorism threats in the world has created a need for authorities to use technology to protect its citizens, and for business to attract and retain their clientele. One of the biggest security projects in this front has been undertaken by the government of Kenya, where it is in the process of implementing a security surveillance project and stream that to the National Police Operations Centre. Other cities that have done the same include Johannesburg, a project carried out during the 2010 world cup and helped deliver a world-class experience. In real estate, video surveillance, access control, visitor management and analytics have become common place in most buildings coming up today. Security tends to be a bother for clients, and wait times in building lobbies have become common place.

However, surveillance alone is not smart. Smart in security is how well we can use analytics to not only respond quickly to incidents and events, but also learn how we can more efficiently and effectively address these challenges in the future. Examples of these include learning how to better handle people and vehicle traffic during public events such as rallies and sports events among others.

For real estate developers, by booking visitors in advance, we can collect information about these people in advance and automatically recognize vehicle plate numbers, making it easier to access buildings. Tenants can define hours visitors are allowed to access a building, hence access is withdrawn as soon as that time expires. These efficiencies try to make security more convenient, that it has traditionally been known to be, hence gain support from the various user groups. With all these data, the possibilities are endless. We can tell when we are likely to have more visitors and hence prepare for them. We can also feed in this data to other systems to save power by shutting down lighting and cooling when not required, and adjusting the same based on the number of people in a room for example. In case of emergencies, we are equipped to answer questions such as who has been visiting us, where do they go, what patterns existed and we can even support authorities in their investigations of such incidents.

Transportation

This is one of the biggest challenges facing African countries in the region, in fact, it is more of a crisis. Globally, a lot of money is going into the research on self-driving, electric and solar powered cars, area with a lot of promise. It is a sector advancing faster than the government’s ability to regulate it. Smart traffic lights, car-pooling, bike sharing programs are the way to go for us to beat traffic congestion on the roads. Development of a clear communication system and sensor-based parking system are some of the best features of smart cities. Cities such as London have been able to install cameras with number plate recognition to automatically charge for entry into the city – called a congestion charge. But this is not the only use of such sensors, we can detect congestion and advise motorists to use alternative routes due to accidents ahead.

One could say that such sensors could be expensive, but looking closer, they don’t even need to be dedicated. By leveraging private public partnerships with telecommunications companies, we can tell how fast mobile phones are generally moving along a highway, which is in essence, the speed of traffic flow. This could not only be used to re-direct traffic, but also implement smart traffic lights. By coordinating traffic lights along a highway, we could then reduce congestion faster than a traffic policeman standing at a roundabout can, as we have a more global view.

In most African countries, our driving habits leave a lot to be desired. We only obey traffic lights when there’s a policeman, we drive on the wrong side of a major highway to avoid driving to a U-turn 300 metres away – as long as there’s no one looking. Other issues include policemen who own a public service vehicle, and will look the other way, as the vehicle picks up passengers in the middle of a major highway. With automation, we can detect some of these offences with ease, and automatically levy fines, leaving our police officers free to handle matters that really require their hard-earned expertise – and drive lasting behavioural change in the society. In doing so, we will have saved lives and countless man-hours that currently lost on our roads.

Energy and Water efficiency

Smart cities make use of alternative energy sources, the wind and solar energy. They also employ grid technology to manage and reduce waste. Waste treatment is a menace in Africa and technology proves with no doubt to be the best solution to solve this craze. Smart cities are all about offering solutions to its residents. Technology can assist us in not only saving these limited resources, but also in educating the masses about their impact of their behaviours. Solutions available here today include smart lighting and cooling, automatic detection of leaks in water systems and / or prevent overflows. Other solutions enable us to encourage responsible behaviour. Examples here are as simple as letting citizens know how much they spend in energy usage in their neighbourhood and encourage them to be top of the leader board. Most people will adjust their behaviour should they know that they are spending twice as much money as their next-door neighbour. Allowing people to generate power, store and /or resell it to the grid are also areas of growth– with great promise in many countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Israel, United Kingdom, among others.

Big Data and Analytics

By now, you must have realized that smart cities, with all these sensors will generate more than just a huge amount of data – Big data. If well implemented, data in one area can be used to improve a totally unrelated area. Traffic flow has an ability to make us understand pollution, security, and many other sectors.

Public Engagement

Perhaps the most certain of reasons in support of smart cities is the ability of the government to be responsive to its citizens.  A smart community shares a virtual platform with its government hence giving real-time access to its services. With smart street lighting, social media involvement and cleaner streets it is evident that most governments are putting an effort in involving its citizens in the governance of the country.  Through timely and constant feedback government can grow its intelligence and respond to the needs of a larger community.

Creating Smart Cities Successfully

To gain success in implementing smart city solutions, several factors must be taken into consideration

• Cities must have a plan – clearly developed from its goals. It must be clear how success will be measured. A clear vision will help define priority areas, when choices must be made during implementation. This is not hard for most governments, as we have strategic plans, we just need to align with most of them.
• Public-private Partnerships – it is unlikely that any public or even business institution will have the money and all the ideas required to implement even one single domain of smart cities. Strong governance and controls is very important to ensure that the private enterprises do not end up exploiting the consumer – government, business or the public.
• Ensure that various systems can work together – we need to ensure that each solution that is implemented not fixes a small section of the city, but allows the whole city to innovate. We must therefore avoid siloed and disjointed projects, where various ministries and depatments implement their own projects, with very little regard to what other departments are doing. This is hard in government, especially but it is key, if the dream is going to succed. The same must be true even in cases where public-private partnership is being used.
• Legal framework – it is important to have the right regulatory environment for the projects. This will protect the various parties involved in the projects, and therefore encourage innovation. Some of the solutions in some domains will come from start-ups, and they need to be protected to ensure that new one ideas keep coming up.
• Allow utilization of data – The data collected should be managed and analyzed, and within the confines of the legal framework, shared with properly vetted interested parties. Without this, the data collected will be of no use.
• Security – the data collected, personal and otherwise and the reliance on automated systems, presents a major risk. Proper digital security practices must be implemented to handle such data, as well as protect systems from service disruption due to security compromises.
• Embrace the transparency – the challenge facing several countries is that smart cities come with a high level of transparency that some countries, especially in Africa, are certainly not ready to embrace.

Conclusion

By 2050 Africa’s population is set to rise by 15% while the urban population by 56%.  A good place to start for most African countries would be developing technology for a specific purpose. While a smart city ensures that everything is connected to enhance communication, sustainability ensures that all the effort is not a once-off project.

The concept of smart cities is an ongoing experiment that promises to not only provide a safer community but also to make peoples live much better. The creation of more smart cities is inevitable as the emerging generation is filled with technology savvy users. The continents management faces two clear options. Disregard technology and suffer the consequences or embrace ICT and provide opportunities for its citizens. Most countries will move to embracing smart cities not because they want to but because they have to.

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The Author – Ndungu Kahindo is General Manager-Solutions, Dimension Data East Africa