Cities face immense difficulties providing a high quality of life to their citizens, yet smart technologies offer solutions to overcome such hurdles.
Smart city technologies enable cities to improve and enhance “city services” using digital technology, cutting costs and improving environmental and social sustainability while driving economic growth and creating new business opportunities.
Mobility
Tens of millions of people around the globe start and end each day stuck in traffic or jammed onto overcrowded buses and trains. Cities that implement smart mobility applications may reduce commuting times by 15-20%.
The BMW Group is involved in various projects designed to make city traffic safer, transport more efficient, and reimagine connectivity. These efforts take place in collaboration with local governments and cross-sectoral partners and offer solutions tailored to the unique conditions and needs of each city or region.
However, it remains essential to assess whether smart cities meet criteria of measurability and accountability. We accomplish this by analyzing mobility measures detailed in selected projects to identify measurable goals – this allows us to examine whether initiatives contribute to sustainable urban mobility and development.
Health
Smart cities hold immense promise for improving healthcare access, efficiency and quality. Data-driven urban planning could enable healthcare professionals to quickly make decisions based on residents’ real-time health statuses in real time; providing each person with personalized treatment tailored specifically for them.
MHealth interventions provide lifesaving alerts on vaccinations, safe sex practices and adherence to antiretroviral therapy regimens – saving lives by helping stop infectious disease spread across low-income cities.
Smart cities’ success in healthcare depends on their interoperability with core health and human services systems and services, meaning the optimal approach for using Smart city technology to impact health outcomes and meet Quadruple Aim goals is in collaboration with clinicians.
Education
Initiatives, debates and projects related to education in Smart cities are gathering pace. This activity revolves around the definition of a Smart city as an urban aggregate in which digital technologies make it easier for citizens to access information while optimising municipal processes for seamless solutions.
Smart cities must also be equipped to collect and analyse data related to its citizens’ health, such as air pollution or temperature variations. With this data at their disposal, schools could utilize targeted education methods tailored specifically towards student interests – ultimately improving learning outcomes and increasing productivity.
A bibliometric analysis of articles published on smart cities has revealed that research in this relatively young field has seen dramatic expansion since 2013. A review of scientific production indicates a surge of publications since 2013, which peaked again by 2015 before stabilising. Furthermore, this multidisciplinary subject area includes contributions from computer science, social sciences, engineering and others.
Environment
Smart cities enable efficient use of resources, cutting carbon emissions and waste production while encouraging sustainable living and expanding economic opportunities.
As the hardware and wireless components necessary for running these applications are relatively affordable, cities are now able to incorporate smart city technology into their infrastructure and public services more readily than ever before. LED streetlights adjust automatically to reduce energy consumption while sensors help identify leaky water mains quickly for repair.
Municipal officials can use these applications to interact with residents more easily via digital platforms and provide tailored, specialized services. Furthermore, these tools enable officials to monitor and manage operations of the city and its assets more efficiently with data analytics-derived discovery resulting in increased operational efficiencies, decreased costs and resource consumption, decreased security risk exposure as well as other hazards reduced – all done within practical data governance constraints that protect citizen information privacy.