Smart Cities
What is it?
A smart city is a municipality that utilizes information and communication technologies. The goal is raising operational efficiency, interaction with the public, enhancements to government services and welfare, optimization of city functioning, and fostering economic development.
How does it work?
Technologies underlying smart cities embrace the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, software, user interfaces (UIs), and communication networks.
The IoT itself is a network of connected vehicles, sensors, or household appliances able to communicate and transfer data with each other. Data assembled and shared by sensors is then stored in the cloud or on servers. Combined with data analytics, this kind of solution unites physical and digital city components.
IoT capabilities also include edge computing, which enables devices at the network’s periphery to process data close to its point of origin rather than in a centralized location like cloud-based servers. It helps to make sure that the most significant and pertinent information is exchanged throughout the network.
In short, a smart city functions in the following order:
- Sensor-operated data collection
- Data analysis and insight generation
- Presenting insights to decision-makers
- Insight-based actions put into practice
For protecting, monitoring, and controlling network traffic, firewall security systems ensure that data continually transferred across the smart city is safe. Additionally, they restrict unauthorized access.
Other technologies applied in smart cities encompass application programming interfaces (APIs), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), cloud computing, dashboards, machine-to-machine (M2M) empowering devices to share information and act without human intervention, and mesh networks, where devices/nodes are connected and branched off other devices/nodes.
Applications
One of the use cases for smart city technology is energy efficiency. For instance, sensors can detect the absence of vehicles or pedestrians on the roadway. Consequently, it allows energy conservation by making traffic lights dim in road conditions like these.
Besides smart traffic management, the possibilities of smart cities cover smart parking, smart traffic transit, waste management and sanitation, public safety, urban manufacturing, and urban farming.
Challenges
Some of the challenges that smart cities face are listed below:
- data privacy and security
- the system’s unreliability
- connectivity issues
- no cultural essence
