I recently had the opportunity to review a paper on smart cities authored by Marc Jadoul (News - Alert), strategic marketing director and Jacques Vermeulen, director of smart cities at Alcatel-Lucent. The authors provided rich context as to the complexities of smart city projects and why information and communications technologies (ICT) are so foundational to such efforts.
Indeed, despite the fact that such projects demand a broad spectrum of expertise—financing, urban planning, architecture, transport and energy just to name a few—these need to be brought together in every stage of project execution, with the enabling ICT smart-city technologies such as next generation communications networks to assure success. The authors rightfully pointed out that in addition to the alignment of expertise from various fields with the underlying technology that enables smart cities to be smart, co-operation is required between the public and private sector.
Given that smart cities are really the realization of successful deployment and leveraging of the pervasive deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, “The full picture of a smart city can only be created with a sustained commitment to deploying a complete ecosystem.”
The reason is that smart cities are all about capturing, analyzing and using IoT and machine-to-machine (M2M) sensor data to accomplish some incredibly useful objectives. For example, data sources could include sensors monitoring such things as air pollution, vehicle traffic flows, energy consumption or water levels. The idea is that service providers and government agencies can leverage this data to create better user experiences not just in the virtual world but the physical one as well.
The trick is that all of the data, along with the devices that generate it, needs to be managed end-to-end and in a secure way. In fact, security must be top of mind throughout the design, deployment and operational stages as the data points themselves must be protected along with all of the data they transmit, instructions they receive and the facilities that store and analyze the data.
A plethora of projects
As the authors point out, “Smart cities will be achieved by the staged introduction of the sensors, networks, platforms, and projects that together make up a smart city.” They note that since commercial imperatives as opposed to government ones will drive early deployments, where we will see such projects dominate are in the fields of energy, transportation and industry, as well as in service sectors such as healthcare and the insurance market. The latter is one area already making news as connected cars are transforming the transportation insurance claims reporting and processing markets.
While the headlines make it seem like smart cities with smart power metering and smart cars (some that are no longer manually operated) are already here, there is much to do. Indeed, a priority must be creation of a common infrastructure composed of network communications, control and management platforms, and big data capabilities necessary to support a viable smart city. It is an infrastructure that in most places does not exist or is early in becoming ubiquitously deployed. In fact, even the most forward-thinking cities are still in the trial phase testing the use cases that justify the importance of a common infrastructure to meet desired goals.
The authors go on to look at the low-hanging fruit for smart-city deployments and benefits that can be achieved when the ICT infrastructure is in place. For those familiar with smart cities the list will look familiar but is worth briefly summarizing. It includes:
Smart energy: A win-win for energy service provides and consumers as smart meters. Service providers obtain the flexibility of more usage-sensitive billing to they can better manage their operations and entice customers to be more energy conscious, while consumers get visibility into their usage so they can better manage their budgets.
Smart transport: In Brussels and Paris next generation IP networks are already deployed or planned to enable the use of driverless trains, improved video surveillance, and a host of operational efficiencies.
Smart government: The list of needs is large and hence the applications areas where governments can improve their service delivery and responsiveness. As the authors note, these needs are only going to grow as authorities grapple with the challenges of urbanization, aging populations and budget constraints. They point to early examples of government-to-citizen initiatives and to the opportunities that exist in government-to-government applications and the optimization of national infrastructure.
Smart health: This a very hot area as telemedicine is an integral part of bending the cost curve of rising costs and providing improved care as a result of things like connected personal monitoring devices and real-time video conferencing that leverage the information gathered. The impact across the entire healthcare system value chain will be profound.
Smart home: This is obviously a separate category but also closely related to smart health and smart energy. It is not just about such things as perimeter and internal security and controlling things like thermostats and garage doors. It is also about being foundational for creation of what is a connected life style. Indeed, imagination is the only gating factor once the infrastructure for connectivity inside the home and with the Internet is provided in a high-performance and secure manner.
Getting from here to there
What the authors conclude is that Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) sees a requirement for, “An integrated, shared data network and M2M platform, with a multitude of managed endpoints and enhanced security to support all the vertical segments that compose a smart city... Given that the basic requirements of each smart city application are reliant on the same functionality, scalability, performance, security, manageability and low latency of networking infrastructure, we think the smarter city planners will insist on a single open infrastructure across the entire smart city.”
It is hard to argue about this path to the future, as having a common infrastructure to enable all of the possibilities of smart cities is a very smart thing to do, and the use cases already exist that demonstrate the value.
