The Final Aim of Smart City:
- To support better living, create more opportunities, support stronger and more cohesive communities and improve the quality of life overall for all residents
- To make a better use of the public resources
- Reducing the operational costs of the public administrations.
Smart City has a multiplier effect on the economic growth via the adoption of technology. With greater use of technology, a number of cities are accumulating data, delivering innovation, and enhancing the lives of their citizens.
But how do we know, that the cities have reached the stage of “smartness” and meet their targets? Do we have an index to measure just like we have for the human measurement of intelligence such as IQ (Intelligence Quotient)?
The cities have similarities with the human body. A human can keep the body healthy if we eat healthy food, exercise regularly, do not smoke, protect our skin and many more. The same goes for our cities – we shouldn’t allow the city to be polluted, dirty, congested, expose to disease etc. Both the blood of a human and the traffic in the city must continuously flow – otherwise, the whole body will suffer a loss of oxygen (and the city suffer economic or business breakdown).
The simplest basic form of maintaining health is exercise through walking. The number of steps that are recommended is beyond 5000 steps daily. Studies showed 7000 steps and above are the more effective. Nowadays people buy wearables that have pedometers. But how we do measure the health of the city? How do we measure the city in managing their traffic, cleanliness, effectiveness, responsiveness and probably “smartness”?
The answer lies in the ability of the city to install relevant sensors, capture the data, aggregate them and derive insights. The sensors can come from smartphones, fixed or wireless that are attached to the city’s most relevant assets – buildings, roads, bridges, rivers, traffic lights, air, municipality’s resources, etc.
The opportunities to become a Smart City is huge, however, it also comes with various challenges ahead. Check out the upcoming presentation by Dr. Mazlan Abbas on this topic on August 29, 2018, at Khazanah ICT Day 2018.
“We can’t just copy the Smart City initiatives around the world and implement in our country. Different country has different pain-points. We should build smart cities through the eyes of our Citizens – Dr. Mazlan Abbas“