How to Build Smart Cities: Four Things to Consider

Robert Forget, CTO of Aware360 and vice chair of CompTIA’s Smart Cities Advisory Council, shares his thoughts on the enormous, collective effort that goes into building a smart city.

The question is that comes to mind when I think of smart cities initiatives is this: How do you eat an elephant? The answer is one bite at a time. In that same spirit, I’ve come to realize that no single entity can successfully be an expert in all the skills and technologies required to build smart cities. An ecosystem of partners must work together to tackle the unique challenges inherent in building a smart city. I say this for four main reasons. Let’s look at all four:

1. Going from digital to smart requires redesigning foundations, not just adding apps.

Digital transformation in communities is nearly complete and mature across the industry. Because of this maturity, we have cities and municipalities with a good grasp of technology that have successfully migrated to a digital-first mentality over the last two decades.

Becoming a smart community, however, requires a broader approach. CompTIA’s research report on Building Smarter Cities and Communities summarizes the challenge:

“Making the leap from digital to smart requires advances on many fronts. Most municipalities are on the digital continuum, meaning some level of e-government services are provided to citizens or technology used in an operational capacity. To make the leap from digital to smart, however, requires more than deploying a new mobile app and a few sensors. Rather, it typically requires a re-thinking of everything from IT architecture and broadband infrastructure, to workflows, user experience (UX), staff training and more. Smart cities must be built on smart foundations.”

2. Citizen and government concerns such as ROI offer opportunities for vendors.

CompTIA research suggests that three-quarters of governments have a positive view of smart city developments, but citizens’ views vary because they lack familiarity with the issue.

Engaging citizens in the foundation for smart cities will be critical, since they are the end-customers who should benefit from projects being launched. CompTIA’s report referenced above solicited input from the voice of the customer, and the concerns of government and citizens were similar:

Vendors and solution providers should pay close attention to these lists. These are real concerns and potential causes of failure in any planned projects. They also reveal opportunities. For instance, one important concern is insufficient ROI. If vendors provide proof of ROI before the launch of an initiative, they can eliminate the funding / budget concern up front. There are also various ways to fund Smart Cities initiatives outside of citizen taxes. The industry and government should work closely to review options for grant funding, public/private partnerships and success-based funding options to better meet the expectations of citizens while advancing the implementation of innovative technologies.

3. Innovative technologies need to come together as a solution set.

The technology opportunities themselves are plentiful. The global IT market is estimated at $4.8 trillion in 2018. Unemployment in the sector is at 1.9 percent, much lower than overall rates. Smart cities are already contributing to this number. MarketandMarkets estimates the worldwide smart cities market to grow from $425 billion in 2017 to $1.2 trillion by 2022. The core global IT market is also growing with the use and deployment of new emerging technologies.

Smart cities incorporates and can leverage many of these emerging tech categories, including IoT, automation, AI, 5G, drones and biometrics. With any use of emerging technologies, the goal is repeatability and the ability to successfully implement and operate a deployed solution. A smart cities deployment is not just a technology – it is a use-case and overarching solution-set.

4. Beyond technology, the required skills must come from partners working together.

Successfully planning, implementing and operating a smart cities solution requires a variety of skills. The Smart Cities Advisory Council documented them earlier this year as follows: 

 1. IoT solutions architecture

 2. AI and machine learning

 3. Wireless connectivity for IoT

 4. Understanding hardware

 5. Edge computing

 6. Network management

 7. Implementation and integration

 8. Project management

 9. Change management

 10. Operations and maintenance

 11. Compliance

 12. Cybersecurity

 13. Community interface

 14. Big data

 15. IoT clouds (stream processing and APIs)

 16. Business case development

 17. Soft skills and design thinking

This brings us back to the title of this post. No single entity can master every required skill. We as the vendor community need to work together, each bringing our expertise to create a consistent experience and ensure a better outcome for the end-customer.

When we do, we can bring a brighter future and help build successful use cases for smart cities. There is a lot of technology and more than enough money to share across this new and exciting landscape. It is more important to hit the desired outcomes together than to fail alone.