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Smart cities: What can we learn from the past ?

According to reports published by ARUP the global Smart Cities Market is expected to grow to $1,134.84 billion by 2019. While this looks promising for all involved, writes David Rolfe, the Big Data Platform product manager at Openet, the challenges in supporting a connected city are a lot more complex than simply implementing the latest technology. 

For different parties the term smart city means different things. For example, the European Union defines a smart city as “a place where the traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies, for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses.” For a device and software manufacturer like Microsoft, a smart city “puts a city’s people first, harnessing their ideas, energy, and expertise to create more sustainable places to live, with access to citizen-centric services, public safety, high quality healthcare and education”. While interlinking these concepts isn’t inconceivable, what it reveals is that there is no agreed public definition of the term. As a result it is used as a buzzword to group together all IoT applications within society – from Uber to smart fridges. Such a vague definition creates obvious challenges for technologists trying to plan for the future.

We’re in the middle of a fundamental change to society. Yet, future generations will depend on the careful planning, developing, growing and governing of our connected cities, involving the expertise and commitment of a wide spectrum of service and resource providers. Trying to forecast exactly what is ahead is difficult, but studying a similar technological advancement, such as electricity, may provide some clues.

Lessons from history
History shows that electricity took decades to have any real impact, but when it did, it led to drastic and wide-reaching change. With this in mind, there is a historical analogy to be made between electrification and the technologies powering smart cities.

For electrification, the first wave of innovation was fundamentally built on incremental steps enhancing existing processes with electricity. For the first businesses to adopt electricity, it mainly provided status and prestige but no direct economic benefit. The real revolution began when new business models and processes emerged driven solely by the power of electricity. This technological change opened up an entire secondary industry meeting the infrastructure and logistical needs of electricity.

For example, while electrical lighting was optional for music halls, a cinema wouldn’t be able to function without this type of energy. Despite providing function in both use cases – a source of power, in the latter, electricity fundamentally changed how the business was structured. If we apply this principle to the majority of current smart city concepts, businesses are currently in the incremental stage. While there is no shortage of ideas and proposals, there is a shortage of true applications that are changing society as well as the very business models organisations utilise.

For example, smart water meters are IoT technologies that give consumers detailed information about consumption habits and costs. This leads to a marginal decrease in usage, but is unlikely to result in a seismic change in behaviours. Smart city traffic management is another example of an application that has been enhanced by IoT, but won’t drive any real change within society.

Yet the fact that many smart city concepts are currently in this incremental stage doesn’t mean the applications aren’t important. What it does mean is that we shouldn’t restrict ourselves to current methods of working and planning, and start to reimagine the very infrastructure we use on a daily basis.

What challenges and opportunities lie ahead?
Right now we are struggling with adapting the physical implications of “always connected” technology, as we apply it to the places we live. Much like the introduction of electricity, this is comparable to retrofitting electricity into buildings and homes. Like electrification there will be an entire secondary industry that will spring up to meet the infrastructural and logistical needs of smart cities.

A sub-industry to support data privacy is a likely example of this. Assumptions made by technologists have, up until now, proposed that people are happy to share data publically. Yet, these assumptions are proving questionable, increasingly being challenged in court. Frost & Sullivan has predicted security to be the single biggest issue in the technology industry in 2016.

As connected devices become more ubiquitous, the data produce will become inherently more sensitive. Direct ownership and stewardship of data comes with costs which may challenge many newcomers. Device manufacturers, for example, will struggle to manage the increasing quantities of network generated sensitive customer data due to lack of expertise, exposing them to hacks or worse. This creates a clear need for an entire suite of services to manage the very large amounts of time sensitive data that it will involve. For IoT vendors, this presents an opportunity to facilitate secure interaction with products in the field, and provide escrow services for sensitive data.

Data privacy not the only challenge that will arise in need of support from new services, technologies and business models. Complexities around managing data volumes, device life cycles and technological anarchy will all need to be overcome. Many enterprises will be unable to make the technical leap to evolve their businesses to the IoT dimension, without the help of solutions that can manage and monetise network data securely. The challenge for operators and service aggregators will be to consolidate and integrate all applications and services, presenting a ‘veneer of simplicity’ for the end user.

To ensure everyone is equipped to manage the interconnected digital society, detailed planning is needed and the acceptance of some trial and error. Just like the evolution of electricity has shown us, a host of new infrastructure and logistics will emerge to meet the needs of new, scaled technology deployments. This move will stretch both technical and commercial boundaries until a common protocol is accepted. Highly complex and automated network systems will need to be continually optimised in order to monetise transactions and provide an acceptable customer experience.