The global trend toward smart cities is gathering steam. What constitutes an intelligent city?
Answers may differ, depending on who is asked; New York City leads in deployments of connected devices that help ease traffic congestion, saving commuters both time and money. Furthermore, it has pioneered environmental IoT projects which assist in cutting energy consumption and emissions.
Infrastructure
Smart cities are designed to maximize efficiency while simultaneously minimising environmental impact, boasting architectural and infrastructural innovations to enhance everyday living experiences for its inhabitants. For instance, some streetlights connect to the Internet using movement analytics in order to optimize energy use or prevent roadway congestion by monitoring time of day traffic patterns.
Other examples include providing faster and more available public Wi-Fi, using smart water meters that communicate with digital systems for automating utility payments, and installing traffic management solutions like signal preemption to allow emergency vehicles through traffic without delay. Such technologies don’t require massive upfront investments but instead can pay for themselves over time through cost savings as well as helping address key societal issues like air quality management and crime prevention – features which will become even more essential as urbanization rates rise – improving residents’ quality of life.
Energy
Smart cities aim to increase sustainability and decrease carbon emissions by adopting intelligent energy systems that utilize interconnections among technologies and devices for monitoring, prediction, and optimisation of processes. Such technologies and devices include electric vehicle charging stations; intelligent traffic management systems which use data to reduce congestion; adaptive streetlights and intelligent waste management systems – among others – that help monitor, predict, and optimise processes.
With these technologies, elected officials gain a deeper understanding of city needs, enabling them to collaborate with engaged citizens on designing social and physical interventions to meet them. Microgrids for decentralized power generation improve resilience during power outages while providing cost-effective and durable long-term solutions. WSB assists cities in finding cost-effective and long-term solutions.
Mobility
Smart cities utilize digital solutions to address issues like traffic congestion, air pollution and resource management. This includes intelligent traffic management systems which use data to reduce road traffic volumes; intelligent parking systems which help drivers quickly find available spots without needing to circle city blocks; as well as energy distribution and waste collection technologies.
These technologies promote environmental and social sustainability while improving urban residents’ quality of life through more efficient networked infrastructures, as well as mobility and social inclusion.
Some smart city initiatives, like the implementation of Foli bikes and winter bike routes or reduction in CO2 emissions from public transportation, have concrete goals to be accomplished within an agreed upon timeline. Unfortunately, however, other initiatives do not specify an end date to achieve their goal(s), making their measurability and accountability difficult to measure and assess.
Health
Smart city digital solutions have a direct effect on quality-of-life dimensions for their citizens, from air pollution and crime incidents to commute costs and carbon emissions reductions. McKinsey Global Institute assessed how these applications performed in these domains, finding they can increase some key quality indicators by up to 30 percent – this equates to lives saved, crimes avoided and carbon emissions avoided.
Smart cities across the globe are working hard to improve healthcare systems with online health services and streamlined medicine delivery, but initiatives frequently lack adaptation and execution optimizations to support these demands fully. To meet this need, edge, fog and cloud computing is being leveraged proactively to execute health services proactively.
Education
Education in Smart cities is an integral component. To build a city responsive to its citizens and technological infrastructure, an educated citizen with skills, value system and knowledge necessary for adaptation should be produced.
Research in this field of study is expanding rapidly, as evidenced by its increasing bibliometric analysis. Of all fields that have contributed to it, computer science stands out with the highest number of publications followed by social sciences.
This micro-credential provides sequences designed to assist current public sector professionals looking to expand their understanding of data and technology; technologists and entrepreneurs who see urban space as an area with unsolved problems; architects and planners with experience designing solutions that combine technology and human experiences into smart city designs;