Transportation systems, utilities, power and telecommunication grids are all part of infrastructure. Delivery, operations and management of all the components of infrastructure are essential to maintaining goods and services while boosting productivity and allowing for economic development.
Construction is one of the largest industries in the global economy and in 2021, it made up about 12% of the world’s GDP. Investment in infrastructure is expected to increase to 3.7 trillion USD per year by 2040. As infrastructure development becomes increasingly complex and digitalization occurs, rethinking the challenges organizations face when managing infrastructure can shed light on digital transformation.
Technology has enabled humans to work smarter and more efficiently. In theory, this allows them to be more productive. It’s an even taller order for developers in smart city environments: to harness technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) to enable urban environments to operate more efficiently, utilize resources more intelligently, reduce crime and pollution, improve mobility, rid cities of traffic backlogs, enhance community safety, encourage social inclusivity, attract and support business, provide more infrastructural services, support the vulnerable, make city information available to citizens at the click of a button, and offer ordinary people a sustainable, eco-friendly lifestyle.
Smart cities are made possible by the intelligent gathering and utilization of data from numerous sources. But development is something of a moving target as technology matures. Whereas the internet of things (IoT) used to be the buzzword when the concept of smart cities was popularized, blockchain looks to be the future of intelligent, sustainable communities.
Weiterlesen: 6 non-sensor data gathering technologies for smart cities
An IoT sensor is great for collecting data on the state of air quality from the moment it is deployed but that data tells us nothing about what happened previously to create the current environmental conditions.
If data is to truly help us build more sustainable, safer, healthier and greener cities, we need technologies that enable us to understand what has happened in the past and predict how a situation might evolve in the future. It isn’t a lack of datasets standing in the way of doing this but rather knowing how to use the ones that already exist.
Weiterlesen: Why satellite data is key to smarter, sustainable cities
Forget the smart home. Smart TVs, fridges and light bulbs might make our lives more convenient by a small margin, but arguably, the true potential of sensors and related IoT technology lies in smart cities and cars. These could change the way most humans live for the better, improving resource efficiency and overcoming many of the problems cities face. After all, 56% of the world’s population lives in cities now and this is set to continue rising.
But are the sensors and technology behind smart cars and cities ready for showtime? Let’s run through their capabilities before going on to answer this question.
Singapore’s planned eco-smart city Tengah aims to use artificial intelligence to support smart energy management. Fukuoka, Japan, is drawing on sensor data to build models that can help monitor water use. San Diego, California, uses an app to connect, coordinate, and manage service requests. Vienna, Austria’s WienBot, a chatbot that provides answers to a range of user questions, continuously learns from its “conversations” to capture the public’s most frequently-asked questions—of particular importance during the COVID pandemic.
These global examples of how smart cities are using technology are ever-growing. But with all this innovative application comes the potential for bottle necks that can slow down operations, diminish the ability to scale solutions, and impede the development of the smart city ecosystem.
Weiterlesen: Smart Cities And 5G: Taking It to the Next Level