Taking Smart Cities to the next level
Over the last few years, many cities have established ‘Smart City Labs’ from which they’ve launched pilots in areas like parking, environmental control, waste management, smart lighting, public safety and asset management. Smart City concepts provide opportunities to increase the operational efficiency of maintenance and inspection work as well as boosting the quality of public services. By continuously looking for improvements of the quality of life of a city’s inhabitants, the reputation of a city will improve which will attract new residents, companies, investors and tourists.
Scaling these pilots has thus far proven to be challenging. Questions related to information security, privacy and operationalizing a network of sensors are relatively new and addressing these can slow down bringing these pilots to full production. Cities will therefore need to create an infrastructure and governance model that is set up for bringing pilots to full production. Furthermore, this infrastructure should support the ability to combine data into new insights and create synergy between the different smart city projects.