The growth of smart cities – extending rapidly into smart regions, and even smart states in the US – is not slowing down any time soon; in fact, a report from the National League of Cities shows that US cities are incubators for new technology with 66% of cities reporting that they are investing in smart city technology, and 25% of those without any smart city systems exploring how to implement it.
Given the breadth of applications that make up smart cities, the definition continues to change, but there are no truly smart cities without the adoption of IoT and connected sensors, systems, applications, clouds and networks, and the related massive amount of data being generated by growing volumes of sessions.Of those cities that have invested in smart city technology, the top applications according the National League of Cities’ report include:
- Smart meters for utilities
- Intelligent traffic signals
- E-governance applications
- Wi-Fi kiosks
- Radio frequency identification (RFID) sensors in pavement
Consider transportation-related applications alone. In addition to supporting connected, augmented and autonomous cars, traffic management, emergency response management on roads and highways, public transportation systems, drones and more, smart cities and regions are also now benefitting by and being challenged by the sharing economy, with companies like Lyft and Uber growing faster than originally projected, and bike sharing companies surfacing as well.
Partnership between public and private organizations, utilities and companies has been critical to the success of implementations, facilitating capital generation, technology innovation, and new business models with shared revenues, and the management and governance of all these connected systems, including payments, regulation and compliance is putting increasing pressure on ensuring all this is – secure.
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