A UN World Urbanization Prospects Report in 2011, indicates that 3.6 billion – over half of the world’s population – already live in cities. This will rise to more than 6.3 billion people, or 75% of the population, by 2050. It’s a challenge for urban planners and administrators. Existing cities all over the world, have already become unmanageable in terms of their transport networks, emergency services and general utilities like waste management. To meet this challenge, more than 2,500 cities around the globe already have “smart” projects in progress – each collating vast amounts of data on municipal functions such as transportation, healthcare, public safety, utilities and governance.
There are obvious and existing sources of data related to these services, which are already being tapped such as traffic cameras, the service providers, and the citizens themselves, but increasingly from sensors attached to streetlights, traffic signals, buses and garbage bins, and even buried in the roads / Dividers themselves. It’s a city wide web or the internet of things which is helping cities across the world to organize themselves effectively – helping the authorities to allocate scarce resources, prioritize and respond promptly – automatically.
Managing cities the smart way will on the other hand require a quantum leap in new technologies and will require tremendous computing power, the likes of which are now used only in scientific research.
Smart cities in action
Santander is an old port city in Spain. A €11m European Union grant in 2011 allowed them to install over 12,000 sensors. These sensors record everything from air pollution levels to free parking spaces.
Streetlights now automatically dim when no one is around, while garbage bins notify collectors when they’re full. These advances save local authorities about 25% on electricity bills and 20% on waste management. Lots of information to store, to manage and analyse – experts suggest that smart cities will generate 4.1 TB of information / day / Sq. Km. This is equivalent to more than 4 average computer hard disks. The best part is that this information is available to citizens too, reducing corruption, and increasing effectiveness.
Some recent smart city projets are even more diverse – In Norway – real time city bus arrivals and departures at more than 40000 bus stops are available through twitter and soon will be directly on smart phones – helping both the monitoring and streamlining of the schedules and the citizens reach their destinations without hassle.
The agility and reliability of communications are the key to this revolution – the next big thing in Urban Governance and Technology. The urban population around the the world is increasing by the year – as economies focus more on industry and services and less on livestock and agriculture and consequently there will be new challenges for sustainable living – This will require. Urban management will become complex and require even more intelligent and more robust data processing systems.
Current advances in city management only reflect Professor Michael Blatty’s, vision of cities of the future. It was in 1997 that he laid out his vision in one phrase: “The Computable City”. He said that by 20150 there will be a “massive convergence” of computers and communications technologies, with highways and “smart buildings” connected via the internet in new kinds of vast information infrastructures. “Everything around us,” he wrote, “will be some form of computer.”
It’s about to come true, along with its pitfalls…..
