Smart cities are coming soon. The latest research indicates that the global smart cities market size is poised to grow at a CAGR of 20.5% and is estimated to reach $2.5 trillion by 2025. Investments in digital transformation and smart city deployments are also steadily trending upward; Statista estimates that by 2025 the global investment in direct digital transformation will reach $6.8 trillion and by 2022 40% of cities will use digital space-planning tools. Numerous international organizations have published reports, frameworks, strategic roadmaps and playbooks to guide key stakeholders in their quest to design and build urban living for future generations. Business leaders and government officials must embark on a digital transformation in order to build smart cities and offer their citizens an improved quality of life. There are numerous factors that drive the successful deployment of smart cities, but emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, 5G and 6G networks and edge computing are considered essential.
Gianni Minetti, CEO of Paradox Engineering, explains why cities must ensure security is built into their solutions from their very inception not added at a later stage of development.
The Maryland Health Department in the US is reportedly the latest victim of cyberattacks hitting governments, public bodies and cities. If measuring it as a country, cybercrime would be the world’s third-largest economy after the US and China, inflicting damages to public and private organisations for several trillion US dollars every year.
Weiterlesen: Cybersecurity: a lifelong journey for smart cities
If a smart city is one that puts data and digital technology to work to make better decisions and improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, then the ease, speed and security with which that data can be accessed and processed is paramount. Connectivity among these digital systems is key, which means that smart cities will depend on a secure, ubiquitous cellular network to power their crucial subsystems.
The advantages of cellular IoT include cellular footprint, cellular security and reliability, and low power consumption and associated low cost—making it the perfect connectivity solution for these three elements of a smart city.
This was one of the clear messages to come out of the World Economic Forum’s inaugural Urban Transformation Summit, an initiative which aimed to forge a path for more sustainable and inclusive cities.
A new global initiative has underscored the requirement for increased public-private collaboration to support the development of more sustainable and inclusive cities.
Weiterlesen: Public-private collaboration will define a new era for smart cities
Two years of pandemic-induced shutdowns have underlined the importance of improving our ability to quickly deploy technological tools in urban settings. These must be developed to overcome challenges in our health, education and governance sectors to avoid the waves of crises accompanying each Covid-19 outbreak. The urgency was underlined at November’s SCEWC (Smart City Expo World Congress) summit which assembled over 30,000 professionals from urban innovation systems based in 120 countries. “Our 10th anniversary edition comes at a time when cities need to be together even more,” insisted SCEWC director Ugo Valenti. “(This summit) gathers to restart a much-needed drive for sustainable urban transformation.”
But how can six of the world’s leading smart cities teach us to achieve this? How can they help leaders attenuate the oft-justified criticism of a dearth of popular participation, lack of long-term strategy, prioritization of technology over city-dwellers?