As we continue to move forward in the Industry 4.0 era of greater connectivity between the physical and digital, the promise and development of smart cities become a more likely vision. While the term may have differing definitions, the term “smart city” usually connotes creating a public/private infrastructure to orchestrate the integration of transportation, energy, water resources, waste collections, smart-building technologies, and security technologies and services in a central location.
In the past several years, cities have migrated from analog to digital and have become increasingly “smarter.” A smart city uses digital technologies for information and communication technologies to enhance quality and performance of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens. A smart city is indeed a laboratory for applied innovation. A smart city and its accompanying ecosystem can influence and impact the industrial verticals including transportation, energy, power generation, and agriculture.
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The term ‘smart city’ is usually used to denote an urban area where technology and data are used to improve services for its citizens. These ambitious projects can sometimes falter, particularly when city leaders get caught up in the technology and lose sight of delivering positive impact for people.
“Smart cities begin with people, not technology,” says Jeremy Goldberg, worldwide public sector director of critical infrastructure at Microsoft. “For smart cities to succeed we need to be a little less concerned with adopting technology for technology’s sake and instead focus more on the impact it can have on real people.”
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COVID-19 introduced new uses cases (beyond safety and security) for video surveillance technologies employed in smart cities.
COVID-19 taught us that cities have continuously played a critical role in the management and containment of crises. As noted in a report by Cities Today, the post-COVID road forward requires a change in municipal mindsets — from building “smart cities” to building “resilient cities.” As we begin to focus on what life could look like after a pandemic of this proportion, we’re taking our learnings on resiliency to better prepare ourselves and our communities for the future.
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For the UN Secretary-General, the benefits of making cities more environmentally friendly are “enormous”, and include reduced climate risk, more jobs, and better health and well-being.
“City leadership in using green materials and constructing energy-efficient, resilient buildings powered by renewable energy, is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050,” said António Guterres in his message for World Habitat Day, marked on Monday.
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The path toward a wirelessly connected smart city is already in place.
Many of the world’s urban city centers have taken a bit of a beating over the past year. Lockdowns, social distancing, and remote mass working have left offices sitting idle and many main street businesses shuttered. But the pandemic has also spurred ambitious plans to make our cities more sustainable, efficient, and safe for citizens. Design engineers play a crucial role in turning these smart city ambitions into reality. In this context, interoperability and open standards are increasingly the smart choices to accelerate time-to-market and enhance cost efficiencies, reliability, and security.
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