Cities are getting smarter, and artificial intelligence and Internet of Things technology are providing more data points than ever – but how do firms, data analysts and city planners make sense of the data? And more importantly, how do they share it?
“Data sharing is really the future of data,” said Philip Bane, the managing director at Smart Cities Council.
With more data than ever, making data interoperable remains a crucial challenge. The way data sets are coded is typically dependent on an individual or research team and sharing and combining data can be, in short, a mess.
“One of our best practices in smart cities, is interoperability, or the ability of one application to work with another. Now, just because the application works with another application does not necessarily mean that the datasets can be integrated and analysed in the same way,” Bane said. “The fact of the matter is that one database doesn’t know what the other database is saying.”
There are, as of now, no easy solutions to this problem, but finding one is vital to allowing cities relying on new tech to learn from each other. Even when comparing a city that is ultra-reliant on tech to a city that is just beginning to adopt tech for basic functions, cities aren’t inherently unique.
“Cities have been trying to do the same thing since pre-biblical times,” Bane said. That largely breaks down into providing the same basic services to citizens, including public safety, education and healthcare.”
Cities can learn from each other – if they can read exported data from a city fitted out with IoT censors.
“What works in Dubai will work in Accra or Nairobi,” Bane said. “I really think there’s a future for data hub cities that develop the first instance of an operating smart city model. This can then be exported to other cities. Over time, the model will get better as it collects more data from more cities.”
Beyond data sharing, who owns the data is the other piece of the puzzle.
“How do you construct a framework where cities can keep control and ownership of their data, but possibly [allow] solution providers can do their magic,” Bane asked, adding it’s not an issue that’s solved yet.
Finding a sustainable model will likely take a long time, he added. Right now, a certain provider might have a contract for the same type of data across multiple cities, but another firm might hold the keys to a different type of data. Getting those providers to interact to share data is another key challenge.
“Smart cities aren’t about data, they’re about people and process,” Bane said. Even with billions of data points, if people and processes don’t work together, the data is nearly useless.
Bane said within smart cities, he looks for a tripartite outcome: liveability, workability and sustainability. That outcome is derived from the use of innovation, technology and data.
Sustainability has become the focal point of many new strategies as concern raises over a world witnessing the gradual degradation of the environment.
“Sustainability is about using resources wisely, so you’re not stealing from the future,” he said.
But beyond being sustainable, cities need to be resilient to various shocks and stressors that arise, Bane said. To achieve those ends, it all goes back to people and process.
“Focusing only on technology doesn’t make cities resilient or sustainable. And it doesn’t solve poor planning issues,” he said.
Bane spoke to ITP.net ahead of the Annual Investment Meeting which will take place in Dubai in March.
“AIM is timely in the sense that after COP27 there’s been a lot of talk, but now we have to invest in these projects that are going to mitigate climate change,” he said.
Speakers and industry insiders at the conference will delve into how exactly cities can make themselves sustainable and resilient while using technology to collect data and transform themselves into smart cities.
