What Will You Discover in IOT & Smart Cities – “Gold Mines” or “Time Bombs”?

Sometimes we wondered why in some countries, Smart Cities initiatives are very successful but others failed – either it was not accepted or fully adopted by the people, or it’s stuck on the Blueprint shelves.

In any Smart Cities implementations, we can’t avoid Internet of Things (IOT) because it’s how we aggregate the data and derive meaningful insights about the cities. Cities that use data as their decision-making process are the ones that will propel forward and lead the rest. They will understand what the current issues are and how to improve the cities operations and reduce costs.

Benchmarking cities and creating city’s indicators are the first steps towards a continuous process of becoming an ROI-driven and green-driven cities. You can’t reach the state of vanity-driven cities without successfully implement the latter.

In fact, the IOT maturity model shows that you need to move from monitoring, controlling, optimizing and finally to autonomous. And we can see that many vanity-driven cities have already reached the stage whereby the city’s assets and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, buildings, parking, transportation, etc. have been partly or wholly monitored and controlled.

The only way that you can plan the way forward if you can also optimize the city’s resources – i.e. understanding where and how congested are the roads, utilization of parking bays, consumption of electricity, etc. It looks like a perfect plan, right? But then, why can’t we see the growth of smart cities around the world as fast as we would expect? What stops or delay them?

Other than the necessary funding, I believed mindset change is the biggest stumbling block. If coupled with certain personal agenda, most projects will fail and become white elephants. IOT devices embedded in strategic locations and assets will be able to uncover many things. The data derived from that single asset will tell you whether the investment that you have put in place being utilized or not. Whether the current way of doing things are cost-effective, or it is the source of leakages concerning money or time.

Be careful of what you will uncover from the data – it can be a gold mine which can reduce your operational costs and increase your productivity, or it can be time-bombs that are already waiting to explode.

People viewed Internet of Things (IOT) – either they save you or “kill” you. It’s like the saying – are you looking a “half-full glass or half-empty glass”.

About the Author

Dr. Mazlan Abbas is an IOT Evangelist, Thought Leader and CEO of REDtone IOT. He is ranked No. 20th Thought Leader in IOT by 2014 Onalytics Report – “The Internet of Things – Top 100 Thought Leaders”, ranked Top 10 in IoT Top 100 Influencers by Postscapes 2016/2017, ranked Top 100 in Smart Cities Top Experts by Agilience Authority Index May 2016. You can reach him on LinkedIn or Twitter . Check all his presentation slides HERE.

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