Smart City or intelligent city
Any city in the world that prides itself wants to have or sponsor the label of Smart City or intelligent city. A very broad concept with different versions and guidelines.
With technology, innovation and sensors arrived to collect data. If we apply it to urban development practices based on sustainability, we can improve asset management; institutions, public and private transport, companies, or the city’s own inhabitants.
The concept is broad, but let’s go step by step…
What is a Smart City
The Smart City is defined as an intelligent city that combines technology with data analysis to improve the services a city offers, reduce energy costs and environmental impact.
Evidently, as a definition in itself, it is not new, since initially before the appearance of this idea, let’s call it “Cool”, there were sustainable cities, livable cities, healthy cities, safe cities, bioclimatic cities, green cities…etc.
With technological advances we can analyze more information and data to improve the services of a city
A series of qualifiers, which have transformed into Smart Cities or commonly called intelligent cities (Intelligent cities).
As we see in the previous image, the intense use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is an important part of these intelligent city that wants to change the world thanks to the knowledge of data and information.
Why intelligent cities or Smart City appear
Although we can understand what a Smart City is, it is important to emphasize why they appear. Here comes into play that half of the world’s population lives in cities with the forecast managed by the United Nations that indicates that 70% of human beings will live in urban centers by 2050.
This organization… “Warns that the increase in city population can become a real problem, unless harmony is maintained between the spatial, social, and environmental aspects of localities, as well as among their inhabitants”… The influence of these consequences poses a challenge.
New information and communication technologies provide innovation to make more efficient use of infrastructures and resources
At the same time, seeing the new digital business opportunities that arise, large information, computing, and electronics companies take advantage of such a social situation to obtain a new consumer market. The “Smart Citys” is sponsored… Where technology in the city plays an important role.
Population trends in the megacities of the future…
Thus, in general, it could be said that they represent a new urban development whose objective is to improve cities towards sustainability through digital information extracted from the sectors and layers that make up the city. Here, the knowledge of information plays a crucial role!
It is curious that the main cities labeled as “Intelligent City” are corresponded and supported by large companies such as Telefónica, IBM, or Microsoft…etc. But this is another topic of discussion.
How intelligent cities work
In collaboration with Barcelona, Buenos Aires and other major cities around the world, Boyd developed a set of indicators to support the benchmarking of smart cities. The digital cities can be identified (or categorized) in six dimensions.
- Digital economy
- Digital mobility
- Digital ecosystem
- Digital citizenship
- Digital life
- Digital governance
What are the smart cities evaluation indicators
The smart cities Wheel (Smart Cities Wheel) is a holistic framework to consider the key components that make a city smart.
These six axes or dimensions connect with theories of urban development and growth. And, to be more specific, they are based -respectively- on theories of regional competitiveness, transport and ICT economy, natural resources, social and human capital, quality of life, and citizen participation in city governance.
Factors in smart cities:
Savings in services and sources of value
The automatic and efficient management of urban infrastructures will range from the possibility of creating new services that better respond to the specific needs of each city, to the possibility of identifying future inconveniences that the urban space may face.
Support for the evolution of cities
There are a series of factors to complement in the extension of every city whose deficiencies must be supported and helped by other resources while determining future problems and being able to act “before they occur”.
This ideal or idealized model of a city that needs a digital transformation in an appropriate technological environment encompasses a series of subcategories:
1.- Distributed generation
It consists of the intelligent city having electric generation distributed throughout the territory: the supply is personalized, micro-generation, not centralized.
2.- What is eMobility?
Implementation of electric vehicles in cities and other motorized elements, such as motorcycles, and the respective public and private charging stations.
3.- What is the Smart Citizen?
Citizens and inhabitants are undoubtedly the essential part, as without their active participation it is not possible to implement these ideas.
4.- What are Smart Grids?
Smart Grids are known as interconnected intelligent networks, which have a two-way flow of data between the Service Center or control center and the user living in the city.
5.- What are Smart Buildings?
As a model of efficiency and effectiveness, buildings must be intelligent and more energy-efficient. Buildings with home automation and other electronic elements that respect the environment and have integrated energy production systems.
6.- What is Smart Metering?
It is about the intelligent measurement of each user’s energy consumption data, through smart meters where readings are taken remotely and in real-time.
7.- What are Smart Sensors?
The intelligent sensors will have the function of compiling all the necessary data to make the city smarter. They are an essential part of maintaining connectivity and information, and ensuring that each subsystem fulfills its function.
How intelligent cities collect data
The intelligent cities collect data through information and communication technologies (ICT). Information bases that are analyzed by very complex data analysis programs that provide information summaries.
As an example of a Smart-City platform model and how intelligent cities collect data. We can see the complexity it can reach in a small municipality in the following image:
A city can be qualified as digital (or intelligent) when it invests in human and social capital, in traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) infrastructures, in fuel communication infrastructure, in sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with rational management of natural resources, through participatory management.
What are the advantages of Smart Cities?
As we can see in the infographic on the cover of this article, there must exist and coexist a symbiosis in four reference points to provide a solid foundation; Human Aspect, Government, Environment, and Economy which will imply a commitment from the different agents involved in a constant improvement process to improve the quality of life, both of the environment and its inhabitants, so the advantages of Smart City are:
- It is closely related to the evolution towards the so-called Internet of the Future, particularly in relation to the Internet of Things or IoT– Internet of Things.
- Increase of a new model and business opportunity. New services that better respond to the specific needs of citizens.
- Automatic and efficient management of urban infrastructures. Improved energy savings, improvements in energy efficiency …etc. Improvement in the management of mobility and urban parking, to improve traffic and reduce the time spent searching for parking spaces, reduction of queues and waiting times in municipal offices and health centers, etc.
- The Smart Cities improve urbanism and the environment. More and better green areas, peripheral areas…etc.
- Reduction of expenses that a property can produce, electricity, community…etc. Reduction and optimization of time for the consumer.
What are the most notable achievements?
Although it should be noted that each city is a world and according to administrations have directed the implementation in one direction or another, we can highlight some main achievements such as:
- Regulated lighting to reduce energy costs.
- Smart cards for citizens as health identifications, transport cards…etc.
- Cars that park themselves capable of finding free parking spaces for users.
- Mobility systems based on sharing bicycles.
- In the smartcities we find different apps to interact with the city.
- Intelligent water supply, intelligent energy management (Public lighting…etc) and more efficient waste management
- Surveillance systems at all levels that theoretically maximize citizen security.
- Better traffic control.
- Faster assistance; from accidents to improving infrastructures.
What are the disadvantages of Smart Cities?
Not everything that glitters is gold, and in the world of technological cities there are a series of drawbacks very associated with the technological aspect that can produce setbacks in the city’s expansion.
The problems of smart cities are:
- Funding by the Administration, as a significant investment in technology is required.
- Given the implementation of a high degree of technology in smartcities, there is a dependence on companies that offer these services. Both at the public and private level.
- Reduction of privacy. “To be more efficient, it must be observed what habits the consumer has in all their aspects and levels”
- Properties become more expensive. They are more complex to execute and build.
- Greater technological gaps between cities and realities. Not all cities can afford such a cost.
- Due to the complexity that Smart Cities absorb, they simultaneously produce a considerable increase in waste.
Evidently, both the advantages and disadvantages are from the appreciation I have been able to observe and surely many more can be listed in both cases, what I do perceive is that we are sold the Intelligent Cities as the need of the future.
But I no longer know if I am convinced that they know how many times I pass by the corner of street “X” or that my house has more “Electronic gadgets” than the electronics store in my neighborhood, as examples, all for… “Being more efficient” or to improve the environment and the natural surroundings, in theory, in complex ecosystems for the habitat of users.
Smart city examples
Although it may not seem like it, as an example from Spain, there is a wide variety of smart cities that are implementing different improvement projects in this regard (Here to see them all in Spain and here in Europe). One of the most recognized cities both nationally and internationally is the city of Santander Smart City.
Part of the blame lies with the approximately 12,000 fixed sensors and many more mobile ones placed over the past few years in strategic locations throughout the streets of Santander: buildings, streetlights, trash cans, cars, and municipal buses now transformed into a kind of information laboratories throughout the city.
We can see from the Open Data Santander from here where there is also a wide variety of apps that provide data to users.
With all the sensors, local authorities are achieving a smart city example capable of discovering and being informed of a multitude of variables, in real-time; the precise location of their bus fleet, the humidity conditions of every corner of the city, the traffic situation, pollution indices, or the noise level of the municipality.
That is, they can make decisions in a smarter way and manage all the resources involved in the day-to-day of the city, public and private, more efficiently in terms of costs and environmental impact. (Interesting the analysis of the implementation of the smart-city concept from here in the city)
What is the smartest city in the world?
London is the smartest city in the world in 2024, according to the seventh report of the IESE Cities in Motion Index. New York ranks second, followed by the great city of Paris.
The annual index analyzes the level of development of 174 cities worldwide through nine dimensions considered key for truly smart and sustainable cities. These are: the economy, the environment, human capital, governance, international projection, transport and mobility, social cohesion, technology, and urban planning of the city.
Links and documents of interest to expand information:
- European Smart Cities …From HERE.
Other articles of interest:
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