The province’s biggest metro, the City of Johannesburg is in a mess, literally and figuratively.
It has been just under three months since Thapelo Amad, through a coalition led by the EFF and other parties, nominated Amad as mayoral candidate following the motion of no confidence against Dr Mpho Phalatse.
The representative from Al Jama-Ah was unveiled as mayor of Joburg, yet in spite of promises to prioritise service delivery, the mayor has stumbled from one controversy to another.
The City of Johannesburg says it seeks to enhance the standard of living for each and every one of its citizens.
This will be done by deploying smart city infrastructure, such as CCTV cameras, interactive panic buttons, and electronic signage, to enhance road traffic enforcement, law and by-law enforcement, the detection, prevention, and investigation of crime, disaster mitigation, licensing-related services, and services relating to medical and fire emergencies.
The smart city is not hoverboards and flying cars, which is something of a disappointment for most of us, but is about improving citizen quality of life by transforming resource usage and access to services.
The smart city, as defined by Wikipedia, is a ‘technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data’. Forrester says it is interconnected systems that optimise services and improve citizen experiences. And these intelligent environments are considered to potentially be the best route for Africa, which has the highest urban growth rate in the world, according to an analysis across 7 600 urban agglomerations in 50 African countries.
High crime rates are a reality of South African life. For that reason, a number of our cities have already created camera-based monitoring systems to deter criminals, or identify and prosecute them if they transgress the law.
One example is Safe City Msunduzi, an entity of the Msunduzi Municipality, which monitors 169 CCTV cameras across Pietermaritzburg. Some are going even further – like the City of Cape Town, which is building on its camera-based system to deploy drones, gunshot sensors and a tech-heavy Highway Patrol Unit that will automatically scan number plates.
Business premises is one of the first places companies take stock of when assessing their electricity usage and the optimisation thereof. And rightly so, approximately 30% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and 70% of energy consumption are attributed to buildings. Moreover, it’s estimated that 30% of energy is wasted in buildings.
Coupled with our country’s much-talked-about volatile grid, buildings must become smarter. Also, as it becomes smarter, through the upgrade of existing premises and development of new, smarter buildings, we will steadily see the dawn of a new era, the smart city.