Intelligent Transport Solutions for Smart Cities and Regions: Lessons Learned
The financial squeeze led many of the early
smart city projects to tackle quick-win, point
solutions with a clear, near-term return on
investment. Smart street lighting 1 is one
example of the savings that a city can
achieve. However, if the city then wishes to
integrate other smart city services into a
common IT environment, or use data from
existing street furniture for other purposes,
it faces significant integration and life-cycle
support costs, problems that several cities
are beginning to experience 2 .
T HE S MART C ITY P HENOMENON
City authorities find themselves at the
confluence
of
several
technology
breakthroughs, service innovations and
rising citizen expectations which are fueling
the smart city phenomenon.
The telecommunications sector delivers a
constant stream of low cost and ubiquitous
technologies to connect and remotely
manage a wide variety of city assets.
Internet companies, transport authorities
and ride-sharing service providers offer
sophisticated journey planning and crowd
sourcing applications which improve
transportation logistics and add convenience
to the everyday lives of commuters. At the
same time, consumers see traditional
industries embrace internet concepts
through services such as online banking,
utilities account management and the use of
mobiles to pay for car parking.
The integration challenge does not just apply
to
citizen-facing
applications.
City
authorities are organized into departmental
silos, some of which have outsourced
services to private sector firms. These
structures create problems when it comes to
sharing connected assets and data, within a
department and across departments and
operational boundaries.
City managers are beginning to see that their
initial focus on quick-win, standalone
solutions is costly to maintain and difficult to
integrate into a unified smart city operating
framework. They also have to discover
innovative funding and risk-sharing
frameworks to break new ground in
delivering smart city services. The way
forward is to make best use of highly
reusable, horizontal platforms, through
flexible and expandable partnerships
between public and private sector
organizations.
These innovations raise citizen expectations
for public sector services, forcing them to
become less bureaucratic and more citizen
friendly. Smart city solutions also need to
cover a wider range of services than city
authorities previously provided. And, all the
while, city budgets are under pressure in
absolute terms and in relation to budgetary
ring fences around education, health and
welfare services. Inevitably, this results in a
squeeze on budgets for innovation and
operational transformation.
1 Lighting the Clean Revolution: The Rise of LED Street Lighting and What it Means for Cities, “LEDs achieve 50 to 70% energy savings, and reach
up to 80% savings when coupled with smart controls”. https://www.theclimategroup.org/sites/default/files/archive/files/LED_report_web1.pdf
2 From Smart Cities 1.0 to 2.0: it’s not (only) about the tech, http://theconversation.com/from-smart-cities-1-0-to-2-0-its-not-only-about-the-
tech-73851
IIC Journal of Innovation
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