By Ambreen Ansari, Juarez Barbosa and Jack Sullivan.

Smart city technologies include all of the previous tech trends discussed in CurioCity like AI, blockchain, and automation. However, the Internet of Things (IoT) is the Smart City technology and following on from what Akin spoke about at the live event we are going to discuss further the uses of IoT in a smart city. Firstly, what is a smart city? A smart city is quintessentially enabled by the use of technologies to improve competitiveness and ensure a more sustainable future by linking networks of people, businesses, technologies, infrastructures, consumption, energy, and spaces. Smart cities are made up of many different smart initiatives all connected together that make the city one living unit — driven by data. Smart city applications are there to improve the efficiency of a city, whether it’s managing energy usage to traffic management and everything in-between.

The European Union identified six dimensions along which a smart city could carry out its mission, to generate greater a more sustainable economic development and a better quality of life: Smart Economy, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment, Smart People, Smart Living and Smart Governance.

Why is there a need for smart cities? Like Akin mentioned in his speech, more and more people are migrating to cities. According to the UN, 68% of the global population will live in a city by 2050. This brings with it more complex challenges that are changing and specific to each city — this poses issues only smart technology can take on. Of course, one of the biggest challenges that affect every city is traffic congestion and implementing something as small as smart traffic meters along with smart traffic lights, which can learn to stay green for longer on busy roads during rush hour and can improve traffic congestion. We are building towards a digital future and smart cities are a playground for these technologies.

According to a smart cities index by Easy Park Group, it’s the Nordic countries that lead the way, Gothenburg (with a score of 7.24 out of 10) in Sweden has the top spot. The index is broken up into categories of transport and mobility, sustainability, governance, innovation economy, digitalisation, cyber security, living standard, and expert perception. Each category is then broken down into different factors and given a score out of 10. What is Gothenburg doing to lead the way as a smart city? Firstly Gothenburg has a fully integrated approach to city energy flows and is quickly progressing towards a low carbon economy. Citizen participation is also high in Gothenburg with collaboration between the city, industry, and academia. This firstly generates trust between citizens, businesses and the government and also allows for the successful development of the city. In 2017, Gothenburg set up a project called DriveME, which was the world’s biggest large scale project in autonomous cars. The project involved 100 self-driving Volvo cars being driven around the streets of Gothenburg. The aim of the study was to showcase the benefits to society of self-driving cars such as road safety and reduced CO2 emissions. Another interesting initiative happening in Gothenburg is the Celsius project. This project involves an intelligent heating system that affects all the households and commercial buildings in high density areas of cities. The system uses excess heat resources used in the city, from industrial and data center activities and heat extracted from sewage and bio-based heating. Gothenburg now consumes a lot fewer fossil fuels which reduces the pollution of the city and increases the happiness of the city.

The term Internet of Things was first coined in 1999 to promote RFID technology, but its use didn’t become popular until 2010 and was mainstream by 2014. IoT is essentially connecting sensors, actuators, and cameras that are embedded in physical objects and connecting them over a wireless network. This is why IoT is the smart city technology, by adding a fill-level sensor to a bin, the waste management company will receive a message when a bin is full and can send out a truck to empty it. This has two positive effects on the city, first is that there will be less littering because the bins won’t be overflowing, and secondly, the waste management companies will be able to monitor which bins fill quicker and map out the most efficient route. This reduces the time that the trucks are on the roads for reducing traffic and saving on fuel.

In 2008, the number of things connected to the Internet surpassed the number of people connected through personal devices for the first time. In 2016, 5.5 million new things are being connected to the Internet every day. By 2018, IoT sensors and devices exceeded mobile phones as the largest category of connected devices. When 50 billion connected devices come online in 2020, they will be transmitting data at speed 1 thousand times faster than today’s sensors and devices as 3G / 4G networks give way to 5G (fifth generation wireless) ones. Important to mention, the first 5G networks are already being rolled out worldwide with some implementation in the USA, Asia and in the UK.

With 5G, we will be able to download a large video file in seconds as 5G is at least 10 times faster than the current networks. So we can consider that currently nowadays we still have a narrow street regarding data communication and bandwidth, but with 5G will have a highway.

That’s a critical improvement and all the so called emerging technologies will benefit from it, the ones like Big Data, IoT, Blockchain, UAVs and autonomous vehicles, Robotics, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.

The 5G improvements in relation to network speeds and always-on connections will allow us to interact with virtual reality environments and have our own representation in such environments and virtual worlds. Not only us, humans will have such virtual representations but also the machines and this concept is what is currently being defined as a Digital Twins.

Besides, it is said that 5G will offer always-on connectivity as required by telemedicine applications. A connected ambulance will be able to live stream the patient’s data to a hospital room and the admissions team at the hospital, so they will be able to decide about the best way to address a critical medical condition.

In order to enable the machines to see and interact with the environments, machine vision will also become a crucial requirement for any autonomous system. It’s expected that by 2022, we will have more than 40 billion embedded cameras deployed worldwide.

Autonomous vehicles will use not only the LiDAR sensors but will be able to interact and communicate among them, regarding the traffic and the need to adjust their speed, accelerate, stop and break as required and that will make traffic lights obsolete.

Needless to say, we can then expect an explosion in the adoption of such emerging technology related applications.

If they are ready for it, smart cities will be able to leverage 5G to take the next leap forward with simultaneous connections and concurrent data transfers to multiple devices. IOT-connected devices will be able to upload and download information, interact and respond to each other, autonomously. 5G network technology will open a new era… an intelligent technology capable of interconnecting the entire world without limits.

The Internet of Things on its own is nothing but data collected, it is what is done with the data that makes it so important. Here are two technologies that leverage IoT:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE:

Fuelled by vast volumes of data and faster and faster processing speeds, Artificial Intelligence has accelerated dramatically over the past decade. Interest in machine learning and cognitive computing is also peaking. Industrial automation and autonomous transportation are huge markets for artificial intelligence, with many smart cities making moves to include autonomous transport in their roadmap. While the industrial automation systems have been crucial as a first step in the scope of robotics and control systems as the initial wave of IoT deployments and the development of sensor related technologies, they acted as the first wave in that. However, cheaper and smaller robots will invade the workplaces and also the cities and our homes. The so called Cobots (Collaborative Robots) will be the next step in that regard as they will be able to physically interact with their surroundings and also human beings. They will be able to perform repetitive tasks and liberate us to focus on more interesting tasks, not to mention that dangerous tasks can be performed by them.

In addition to that, not only the physical robots will be available but also the ones that perform what we call RPA (Robotic Process Automation) but the next evolution of that, what we call IPA (Intelligent Process Automation). They’re also robots but invisible ones as they exist as software components that can autonomously perform tasks but also learn new tasks, aligned with what we can call cognitive systems.

McKinsey reports a potential positive impact on the global economy of USD $1.9 trillion from driverless cars by 2025. Dubai and Singapore have already announced a strategy to convert a significant percentage of trips to autonomous vehicles in the next 10–15 years. And both cities are actively pursuing Artificial Intelligence projects with impacts in a range of sectors, from city services to healthcare. As AI enters the mainstream, cities will need to be equipped to confront the technological and social hurdles required to make the most of this technology.

BLOCKCHAIN:

As cited before, with 5G Blockchain networks will become the norm. All the Blockchain features like traceability, increased security, decentralisation, and other aspects will become an integral part of every single network. With the current efforts towards standardisation of protocols, data formats, and integration components, we will then be able to achieve the so called World Operation System, the Web 3.0. That can also be combined with AI for example in order to not only add the smart contracts to watch the context and data traffic in a Blockchain network, but also to make it autonomous.

Powering these new AI systems will be massive volumes of city data. Robust and secure systems will be needed to facilitate the storage and exchange of data to ensure city systems and process continue to operate smoothly. Under Dubai’s Blockchain Strategy, announced in October 2016, the city aims to move all applicable government transactions onto the Blockchain by 2020. His Highness Sheikh Hamdan, the Crown Prince of Dubai, recently declared “in 2021, Dubai government will celebrate its last paper transaction,” effectively setting a 5- year deadline for the city to ‘go paperless.’ The transformation would be powered by the Blockchain.

Future of Smart Cities: THE SMART CITY OF THE NEXT DECADE WILL BE DEFINED BY EXPERIENCES!

The updated approaches are not tackling new technology: In fact, to maintain agile and innovative, the smart city elite are moving away from technology. The smart city vision of the next decade is one of ‘Experiences’. In moving beyond digital city services, Singapore is redefining its vision of a smart city to one where “people are empowered by technology to lead meaningful and fulfilled lives.”

In 2016, Barcelona announced the next chapter of its digital transformation to “make life better for people.”

New York City is pouring investment into the ‘Internet of Things’ to create a Smart and Equitable city ranging from wireless water meters, to real-time gunshot detection, to snow plow tracking. This hopes to enrich city experiences to all residents and prove that connected technologies can help improve government services and better the lives of all New Yorkers.

Dubai, who has been steadily investing in developing its knowledge economy since the early 2000s, staked an early claim as of this new approach to smart cities. The Smart Dubai initiative, launched by the Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, in March of 2014, made a splash in the international smart city arena with a bold new vision: to make Dubai the happiest city on earth. Singapore, Barcelona, New York, and Dubai represent a new vanguard of smart city programs that have moved beyond IOT technology. For these pioneering cities, the future lies in smarter experiences, not smarter technology.

The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to Smart Cities, we can see Elon Musk’s ironically named “The Boring Company” building tunnels underneath US cities to accommodate their loop trains which will travel at 120 mph! Currently under construction is a tunnel from Baltimore to Washington D.C. This journey usually takes around 45 mins, however, according to the Boring Company, this journey will take just 15 minutes! Furthermore, back in the UAE, another US company called “HyperloopTT” are building a train that will travel from Dubai to Abu Dhabi (150km) in 12 minutes reaching speeds of 500mph! As we can see the main aim from smart cities is to make people happier, it will be interesting to see the progress of this over the next few years, especially once 5G is fully implemented!

For the challenges that cities face over the coming decades, technology is sure to be the answer and IoT is leading the way — if you would listen to two expert’s debate the benefits of Smart Cities in a world where resources are limited and quality of life is costly — here is the link to iTunes, Spotify, and Soundcloud