A city is made up of millions of assets, ranging from streetlights to traffic signals to garbage cans in the park. A significant amount of a city’s budget is spent on maintaining these assets, so any additional assistance can have a huge impact on the budget.
A smart city utilizes technologies such as IoT (the Internet of Things) to provide real-time updates on the status of those assets, such as a key light being burned out or an unexpected change in the volume of traffic. This information helps in the short-term, as it allows for better real-time decisions to be made, and in the long term, as it allows for better planning and resource allocation.
The result is a city that is safer, has more reliable resources and offers better services to its residents.
Every year, cities and regions are being asked to do more with less resources. This is further complicated by the fact that many cities have aging infrastructure that needs to be replaced. Smart cities give civic leaders the ability to better utilize the resources they have to offer better services to their residents.
This means better coverage for first responders, cleaner parks, reduced vandalism and more, all while reducing the cost of service.
The first part involves the collection of key data from assets. In some cases, such as determining the flow of traffic, sensors are used to gather key pieces of real-time information. In other cases, the device itself (such as a streetlight) may have the ability to report its status by using means that are built into the device.
The second crucial step is the communication of these key pieces of information. It may be using the city’s own landline or Wi-Fi network, or it may be using a wireless technology, such as the cellular network, to transmit the status of key items.
The third step is taking this information and making it “actionable” by the city staff. This may be in the form of a text-based alert, it may be an alarm sounding at a monitoring centre or a team member pulling up real-time charts from a secure web page. In any case, the data has been transformed into a form that allows action to be taken.
The final step is the ability to use the data to highlight recent and historical trends. The data can be “crunched” in a way that allows finance teams to understand the true costs of a project, as well as to allow leaders to determine the priority of key projects.