IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Visualize a seamless stroll to Varanasi’s Sankat Mochan Hanuman Mandir, unconcerned about slipping on water leaking from pipes and drains, garbage strewn across streets, bad traffic or facing unexpected hotel or travel cancellations. This may sound like a dream. Yet, the Cabinet’s approval of Narendra Modi’s urban regeneration project could turn it into reality. The Union Government plans to spend `48,000 crore on creating a hundred smart cities over five years.

The Prime Minister has already got commitments from Japan, Germany, France, the US, the UK and Canada on helping the plan with their experience and technology. Technology helps maximize utilization of resources by leveraging data collected from sensors, controls, and real time data analytics. It can be used to improve key segments like buildings, which consume 40 per cent of all energy in India, as well as utilities, healthcare, governance, transportation and education. This move could reverse decades of neglect.

Indonesia, as the ASEAN Smart City Network (ASCN) shepherd, has strengthened partnerships across stakeholders, including the community, to realize smart, resilient, and sustainable cities.

"Collaboration involving the public and private sectors, as the wider stakeholders, through ASCN and other relevant platforms can bring better solutions for smart city development," the Home Ministry's director general of regional administration development, Amran, said, according to a press statement issued here on Friday.

The “smart city” is no mere futuristic fantasy, but a work in progress. Chris Carter analyses the trend’s rapid development and explains how you can profit from it.

The lights in the bedroom gradually brighten and you wake up feeling refreshed. You know you’ve slept well: the fitness and sleep tracker on your wrist says so. Downstairs in the kitchen, your refrigerator places an order for more orange juice just as you upend the last drop from the carton into your glass. The coffee-maker gurgles into action right on cue. After breakfast, the mirror in the bathroom bids you good morning and informs you that road-traffic sensors are reporting light traffic, while the leaves on the railway lines have been swept away. All trains are running on time. Oh, and the weather will be warm. So might the wardrobe suggest you wear summer clothes today? The sun is shining as you step outside. The car has charged overnight, when electricity is cheaper. It starts with a hum at the press of a button and you’re off on your way to work.

With rapid innovation taking place in the technological fields like- AI, IoT, data analytics, smart cities have been one of the fast-paced developments to occur using the above-stated technologies.

So, what exactly is a smart city? A smart city refers to an urban area that is well-equipped with basic infrastructure for providing its citizens a quality lifestyle.

Some City of Kingston snowplows can now be tracked online, thanks to a nine-month Smart City pilot with Bell.

Residents can visit CityofKingston.ca/Snow and see the tracker offering data of when the last time roads were snowplowed. The “last plow completed” data notes a range from “less than 4 hours ago” to “16 to 24 hours ago”, shown in different colours on a Google Map.

Makati City is the lone finalist from the Philippines and the Asia Pacific at this year's World Smart City Awards, its local government said Saturday.

Six cities from six countries are vying for the City Award category, which recognizes a city with "developed global strategies combining projects, initiatives and policy implementations for their citizens."

Competing for the award are Sunderland in the United Kingdom, Cascais in Portugal, İzmir in Turkey, Curitiba in Brazil, and Barranquilla in Colombia. This year, the 2023 Call for Awards received 411 top-level proposals under different categories from 63 countries.

In 2017, ArchDaily Brazil reported that Smart City Laguna would become the first “smart city” in Brazil. With its inauguration scheduled for that same year, the venture opened with 1,800 units in its first phase, and in its final phase, 7,065 units divided between residential, commercial and technological uses.

Located in the Croatá district of São Gonçalo do Amarante, the first Brazilian smart city occupies 815 acres directly connected to the federal highway BR-22, which crosses the states of Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão, starting in Fortaleza towards Marabá, in Pará. Its location has economic reasons: the proximity to Pecém Harbor, in Fortaleza, the Pecém Steel Company (CSP) and the Transnordestina Railroad make Croatá a strategic hub that has been recently occupied by technological companies, becoming a “digital belt” a little over 50 kilometers from the state’s capital.

Dive Brief:

• The IMD World Competitiveness Center partnered with the Singapore University of Technology and Design to release an index ranking 102 global smart cities. The rankings are based on residents' perceptions of issues related to structures and technology applications available to them in their city.
• The top five global cities are Singapore, Zurich, Oslo, Geneva and Copenhagen. Nine U.S. cities made the list; the highest ranking one is San Francisco at No. 12. It is then followed by a bevy of U.S. cities further down the list: Washington, DC (31); Boston (32); Denver (33); Seattle (34); Los Angeles (35); New York City (38); Chicago (53); and Philadelphia (54).
• The index notes that being a globally recognized smart city now is critical to attract investment and talent. This is the first edition of the index and it took the partners two years of work to compile. Researchers hope to expand the scope of topics studied as well as the number of cities included in future editions.

The study looked at 100 metro centers around the globe and found smart city initiatives produce economic, financial and social benefits. However, cyber-risks also grow, making the need for proper management more important.

Preliminary results of the “2019 Smart City Research Initiative, Building a Hyperconnected City” show most of the 100 metro centers evaluated worldwide experienced positive economic, financial and social impacts from their investments. Cyber-risks could also increase if the digital innovation associated with these investments is not managed properly; particularly surrounding financial and payment systems.

If the age of digitization has provided us with anything, it is data. Millions of data points from millions of sensors connected to an increasingly wide range of systems and applications. Turning all this data into useful information, however, can be a challenge. Data comes in widely varying formats, with different vendors handling and expressing data in different ways. Different protocols also have different ways of expressing data, and the lack of a single standard protocol in the world of smart cities and building automation compounds the issue.

Ecuador’s ICT ministry (Mintel) has signed an agreement with the mayor of capital Quito to develop the country's first digital city program.

According to minister Andrés Michelena, the project will include digitalizing national identity cards and passports as part of a public safety drive using facial recognition technology.

Dive Brief:

• U.S. cities must make significant progress in collaboration and leadership to attain the status of "smart city," according to a rating released Thursday through a partnership between Leading Cities and Bright Cities.
• The rating evaluated 24 U.S. cities — those involved in the now-shuttered 100 Resilient Cities program — on 45 indicators across 10 dimensions of a smart city: governance, economy, education, entrepreneurship, environment, health, mobility, security, technology and energy. None of the cities scored higher than a B+.

Saudi Arabia was represented five times in the 2024 edition of the International Institute for Management Development Smart City Index

The evolution of smart cities in Saudi Arabia could change the residential landscape of the Kingdom, as high-net-worth individuals discover these communities are perfect destinations for setting up homes, according to experts.

Smart cities integrate artificial intelligence alongside information and communications technology to derive actionable insight from infrastructure, systems and processes to enhance the quality of life and safety for citizens.

The business of local government is changing and citizens are demanding more out of their local administrations. Town and City governments continue to struggle to find ways to meet these needs, often with smaller budgets and fewer resources. Municipalities must look within themselves for opportunities to share, partner, and collaborate to better meet citizen needs and make progress toward the future.

One option for municipalities to consider is to look for opportunities to share internally. For example, combining the financial and human resource operations of their town and school district into one operations office, or sharing information technology departments and systems creates ways to lower expenses, while optimizing current workloads.

A new blueprint for internet of things adoption by municipalities lays out half a dozen areas where IoT can offer benefits to cities.

The Municipal IoT Blueprint report comes via the Wireless SuperCluster of the Global City Teams Challenge, operating under the auspices of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

These smart cities will be built along the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). The smart cities will be equipped with an array of modern technologies, including Internet of Things (IoT), Machine to Machine communication (M2M) and mobility, and therefore, there can be an increase in demand for new specialist roles in the IT sector. Hence, the job opportunities will also be created.

All over the world, governments, institutions and businesses are combining technologies for gathering data, enhancing communications and sharing information, with urban infrastructure, to create smart cities. One of the main goals of these efforts is to make city living more efficient and productive – in other words, to speed things up.

Yet for citizens, this growing addiction to speed can be confounding. Unlike businesses or services, citizens don’t always need to be fast to be productive. Several research initiatives show that cities have to be “liveable” to foster well-being and productivity. So, quality of life in smart cities should not be associated with speed and efficiency alone.

The Smart Cities for All Initiative has launched a new project, ‘Inclusive Innovation for Smarter Cities' to develop and share means of making smart city solutions more accessible to persons with disabilities and older persons.

Smart Cities for All is a collaboration between G3ict and World Enabled, two non-profit organisations focused on inclusive, accessible design.

Andrew Lee, ESET Government Affairs Liaison looks into how cities turn to IoT to address long-standing urban problems, what are the risks of leaving cybersecurity behind at the planning phase?

You’ve probably heard the term “smart cities” – that is, the idea that extensive use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to monitor energy, utilities and transportation infrastructure can lead to cost savings, reduction of environmental impact and faster fault resolution.

When Eva Blum-Dumontet, a research officer for London-based non-profit Privacy International, attends conferences, she likes to ask people she meets if they live in a smart city.

The answer is often “no”, she says, and that is because respondents are unaware that they are from one of the many cities pouring money into such initiatives. A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently.