smart cities
CITY SLICKERS
Jocelyn Paulley, director at Gowling WLG, discusses the role of data centres as smart city enablers.
T
he global interest in smart
cities should capture
the attention of any data
centre operator. Connected
devices are no use without
the compute power to bring
all of their data together and
extract the information which can
transform the efficiency of cities.
Without a data centre, smart
cities will be dumb.
36 | April 2017
Why the smart
city drive?
Whilst the term ‘smart city’ can
sound futuristic, the drivers are
not. They address current issues
such as environmental concerns
to reduce carbon consumption
and other waste, and aim to
achieve cost savings across five key
verticals – transport, energy, waste,
water and assisted living. Given
that urbanisation is increasing and
by 2030 over 92 per cent of the
UK’s population will live in a city
(according to the World Resources
Institute), these pressures are only
going to increase.
The global market for smart city
solutions and the services required
to deliver them are therefore
unsurprisingly predicted to cost
around £408bn by 2020. Funds