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White Paper on Smart Cities
Inside: - Executive Summary - What is a Smart City? - History - Advantages - Disadvantages - Challenges and Keys to Successful Implementation - Risks - Economic Benefits - Cost of Implementation - Building Blocks - Expert Opinion - Case Study - Future - Conclusion - References
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White Paper on Smart Cities
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Smart Cities are the future reality of all municipalities around the world. By 2050, an estimated nine billion people will inhabit earth and seven in ten people will live in the cities. To manage this large-scale urbanisation, cities are turning to digital technologies to integrate information and communication systems into various technical systems and infrastructure, thereby setting the stage for smart cities. This white paper discusses the history, risks, advantages and disadvantages of Smart Cities with a focus on its economic benefits, cost of implementation and challenges. It includes a case study of Smart City development in Dubai, and lays out concrete steps for architects and senior managers on the successful implementation of Smart Cities. WHAT IS A SMART CITY? Smart City is a city that uses digital technologies to enhance the quality of life and standard of living of its citizens. Smart Cities anticipate and mitigate current and future challenges by using the power of the all-pervasive communication networks, distributed wireless technology, and intelligent business management systems. Smart Cities rely on integrating and analysing massive amounts of data to address day-to-day issues. For example, data can be leveraged to intelligently reroute traffic and reduce accidents, pinpoint crime hotspots and deploy resources accordingly to reduce crime, and to connect citizens. Smart Cities help its citizens in day-to-day activities such as finding a parking spot or new local shop by proactively providing services, notifications and information. Smart Cities make governance more transparent by connecting citizens to their local governments and encouraging direct participation, interaction and collaboration. The key principles that define a Smart City are as follows: 1. Information Technology enabled transparent administration and governance. 2. Efficient management of utilities such as energy, water, solid waste and effluents through use of renewables, conservation and recycling. 3. Creative and meaningful use of public-private partnerships. 4. Use of technology for safety and security such as network of video cameras, intelligent patrolling and surveillance and rapid response to emergency calls. 5. Financial sustainability. 6. Adequate social infrastructure. 7. Transit-oriented green environment with design focus on minimum carbon footprint.
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White Paper on Smart Cities
BUILDING BLOCKS The key building blocks of Smart Cities are: Smart Energy: This includes Smart Grid, Smart Metering, Gas Distribution and Renewable Energy Smart Mobility: This includes Mass Public Transport, Traffic Management, Electric Vehicles and Intelligent Congestion Charging. Smart Water: This includes Water Distribution Management, Grey Water Recycling, Storm water Management Smart Public Services: This includes Public safety, healthcare, Education and Public Lighting. Smart and Affordable Buildings and Homes: This includes Efficient Building and homes. Smart integration: This includes integration of information between different city departments for real-time visualisation, management and analysis of incidents across the city. HISTORY In 2005, the former US president Bill Clinton, through the Clinton foundation, challenged Cisco to develop technology to make cities more sustainable. As a result of this challenge, Cisco spent twenty five million dollars over a period of five years on a program called Connected Urban Development programme. During this period, Cisco worked on pilot projects with the cities of San Francisco, Amsterdam and Seoul to test the potential of this technology. In 2010, Cisco commercialised the products and services developed through this programme through its Smart and Connected communities division. In 2008, IBM began working on a similar vision to make cities smarter as part of a Smarter Planet initiative. IBM focused on analytical algorithms and data processing technologies to make sense of the oceans of data that is collected on a daily basis. Today, Smart Cities are emerging fast and countries like South Korea, UAE and China are investing heavily into its research and formation.
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ADVANTAGES The advantages of Smart Cities are easy to see. Smart City technology will help cities streamline their operation, reduce resource consumption and enable better services to its citizens. It will improve operational efficiency, as cities will be able to track its assets, enabling efficient asset allocation and situation management in case an unexpected event occurs. Smart Cities provide several environment benefits through reduced greenhouse emissions, energy consumption and improved waste management. As Smart Cities will rely on intelligent technology, it will be able to better serve its citizens without human intervention. DISADVANTAGES As with any technology, Smart City technologies come with downsides. Futuristic technologies will not fix basic urban problems in existing cities such as haphazard growth patterns and poor neighbourhood design. While Smart technologies strive to bring sustainability, it cannot overcome issues such as bad building location and sub-standard architecture. Smart City technologies rely on constant monitoring and analysis of data for smooth operations. This constant monitoring can have negative ramifications on citizen morale as the technology can be considered an intrusion of privacy. These privacy concerns are legitimate. Data that can be used to find a parking spot can also be used for surveillance. CHALLENEGES AND KEY TO SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATION There are differing views on what a Smart City is supposed to be and cities that want to adopt Smart City technologies face some common challenges. Addressing these challenges is also the key to the successful implementation of a Smart City plan. Road Map Relevance: Smart City roadmap depends on the objectives of a city and its existing local resources. It is important to start from a citys unique strength. Creating a roadmap for a Smart City is more an art and the context is more important than the product. Stakeholders: Stakeholders of a Smart City are crucial for its successful implementation. The challenge lies in different stakeholder priorities. Sharing a vision is crucial for its success and also the biggest challenge. The solution is to invite stakeholders early in the process to align different priorities. 5
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Sector Synergy: This involves holistic planning to integrate more partners involved and more projects connected to execute sustainable activities. The challenge is to develop synergy between various fundamentally different sectors. The solution is organisation and a network environment that makes finding and connecting people easier. ICT Role: The challenge is to see technology as an enabler and not as the goal. If Smart Cities rely too much on technology, the real goal of building a better living environment is lost. The solution is to always question how a technology can help better lives before incorporating it into the system. Behavioural change: Less consumer spending is seen as bad for the economy and Smart Cities aim at massive waste reduction and energy savings. This mixed message is a challenge for the local, regional and national governments to take a lead on. The solution is behavioural changes at every level: government, business sector to citizens. RISKS Software systems are vulnerable to hackers. This presents a huge risk to Smart Cities as they will be hugely dependent on software systems. If someone gets control of all or part of the Smart City, it can lead to widespread chaos. As cities get increasingly interconnected, such a breach in one sector could lead to disruptions and chaos in the other. The surveillance implications of Smart Cities are unnerving to the point of it seeming like an exercise of authoritarianism, riddled with totalitarian overtones. To complicate matters, since a majority of the technologies used by Smart Cities are designed and developed by corporate giants such as IBM and Cisco, corporations will be in control of designing and maintaining the basic functions of urban life. These corporations will measure and control data without having the same accountability to the public that a government does. Citizens living in Smart Cities do not have the option of opting out. Data on their every action is collected, monitored and measured. So, the setup ends up being coercive to some as citizens at some point must participate or lose the ability to execute that function, be it communications, entertainment, transportation or energy. ECONOMIC BENEFITS In face of shrinking budgets and limited resources, it is important for cities to implement Smart technologies to efficiently use existing capacity and resources. Smart Cities will have dramatic benefits on a regions prosperity. As an immediate effect, Smart Cities will result in twenty percent more efficiency and thirty percent more sustainability. This will automatically result in forty percent more economic activity.
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COST OF IMPLEMENTATION Financing Smart Cities has to be done through complete private investment or through Public Private Partnerships. For a fully functional Smart City, investments will be needed in all sectors such as housing, electricity, ICT, education, health, recreation, cultural facilities, sports facilities and environmental facilities. The approximate cost of implementation of a Smart City stands at 100 million pounds spread over a period of twenty years. The cost is calculated using an average figure for a Smart City capable of supporting one million inhabitants. EXPERT OPINION Molly Webb from the Climate Group opines, When Smart Cities have a level of ambition that goes beyond a political or private sector vision, issues can be overcome. We need to create a base for innovators. Kut Hofstetter from the Municipality of Vienna says, Your goal should not be to control collaboration of Smart City sectors, but to give people the opportunities to talk and guide them. According to Haydee Sheombar from IBM, The greatest pitfall in setting a road map for a Smart City is wanting to be a Smarter City because it is sexy. CASE STUDY Dubai, UAE: At the edge of the Great Arabian Desert is the futuristic Emirate of Dubai. Its location demands extensive use of energy for both air conditioning and water desalination. The necessity to meet this demand while reducing its energy bills and impact on the environment has made Dubai a pioneer in Smart Building technology. Thirteen months after the launch of its Smart Building technology in partnership with mobile operator Etisalat and specialist solution provider Pacific Controls Systems, the Emirate Energy Star (EES) programme has reduced carbon emissions by more than 35,000 tonnes, which is the equivalent of planting more than 7,500 trees. Dubai connects all its major commercial, retail and residential building developments to a Command Control Centre (CCC) that is staffed by EES engineers and facility engineers along with IT and communication experts. The CCC actively manages the energy usage in real-time 24 hours a day, seven days a week with an aim to reduce energy consumption by up to thirty percent. In 2011, with an average energy saving of nineteen percent across all its connected facilities, Dubai got its return on investment in a just ten months.
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In the near term, the EES programme is aiming to connect six thousand public and private buildings to the CCC with a goal of cutting their cumulative energy consumption by twenty percent. The UAEs Vision 2021 states: In a strong and safe union, knowledgeable and innovative Emiratis will confidently build a competitive and resilient economy. They will thrive as a cohesive society bonded to its identity and enjoy the highest standards of living with a nurturing and sustainable environment. With a strong commitment to a sustainable environment, the Emirates goal is to have the lowest per capita greenhouse gas emission in the region by 2021. BIG PLAYERS IN THE SMART CITY SPACE Cisco, IBM and Siemens are Smart City practitioners and innovators, and by far the biggest players in the Smart City space. Cisco aims at addressing urban challenges with its Smart + Connected Communities solution that uses intelligent networking capabilities to provide information and services that are needed to address challenges such as rapid urbanisation that brings with it attendant issues of pollution, resource management, infrastructure and economic growth. IBM smart city work aims at developing new technologies and insights to transform the systems, operations and service delivery. IBM Smart City solutions focus on developing technology in the areas of planning and management, infrastructure and people. Siemens is focusing on delivering effective, efficient and sustainable urban infrastructure by providing a foundation from which economic success and prosperity can grow. Siemens Smart Solutions include integrated mobility solutions, building and security systems, power distribution equipment and smart grid applications.
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FUTURE By the year 2020, urban citizens will start demanding intelligent cities with sustainable environment and higher quality of life. New technologies will allow Smart Cities to put citizens first and help deliver the promise of social, environmental and economic sustainability. By the year 2030, all the major Cities of the world will be on the path to becoming Smart Cities and existing Smart Cities will continue to mature and adopt new technologies such as grid sensors and pneumatic waste disposal while incorporating sustainable architecture and low-carbon energy production. By the year 2050, Smart Cities could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to seventy-five percent through green buildings and use of renewable energy. The eco-friendly high rises in these Smart Cities will be smog eaters with suspended gardens of green algae bioreactors, vertical farms and green bridges, all of which will be efficiently managed by future technology. CONCLUSION Smart Cities are not a question of if, but a certainty of how and when. According to ABI research projects, in 2016, cities will spend a whopping forty billion pounds on smart city technologies. Current projections predict an annual spending on Smart City technology at sixteen billion pounds by 2020 with the industry valued at over four hundred billion pounds globally. With so many existing cities around the world and many more new ones in the making, every major IT company is preparing for this future and working on finding their niche in the Smart Cities market.
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REFERENCES Orchestrating Infrastructure for sustainable Smart Cities: http://www.iec.ch/whitepaper/pdf/iecWP-smartcities-LR-en.pdf Smart Cities Background paper: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/246019/bis13-1209-smart-cities-background-paper-digital.pdf Smart City 2020 - Technology and Society in the Modern City: http://www.microsoft.com/global/sv-se/offentligsektor/PublishingImages/Smart_city_2020.pdf WhitePaper GIS for Smart Cities: http://esriindia.com/industries/government/~/media/esriindia/files/pdfs/industries/white-paper-gis-for-smart-cities European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities: http://ec.europa.eu/eip/smartcities/files/sip_final_en.pdf The rise of Smart City: http://www.theneweconomy.com/technology/the-rise-of-the-smartcity Getting Smart with Urban Living: http://www.businessinfocusmagazine.com/2014/06/smartcities/ The actually existing smart city: http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/files/2014/09/SSRNid2477482.pdf A nation of Smart Cities: http://www.usibc.com/sites/default/files/A%20Nation%20Smart%20Cities.pdf Smart Cities and the Internet of Everything: The foundation for delivering next-generation citizen services http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/scc/ioe_citizen_svcs_white_paper_idc_2013.pdf Network Architecture based on Virtualized networks for smart cities: http://smartcities.ieee.org/images/files/images/pdf/ngn_sdn_v3.1.0.pdf Smart Cities readiness guide: http://smartcitiescouncil.com/resources/smart-cities-readinessguide Streetline Connecting the real world: http://www.streetline.com/smart-cities/ For or Against Smart Cities: Where should the planners stand? http://www.planetizen.com/node/67449
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