Nokia reveals 22 smart city practices

smart city projectWith the global Smart City market expected to grow by about a 20 percent CAGR by 2020, Nokia revealed ‘The Smart City Playbook’, detailing best practices for smart cities.

A research by Technavio adds that the smart infrastructure sector will be the largest segment in the market and will post a CAGR of almost 23 percent by 2020.

Also, the smart city market size is estimated to grow from $312.03 billion in 2015 to $757.74 billion by 2020, at an estimated CAGR of 19.4 percent from 2015 to 2020, as per MarketsandMarkets report.

The growth of smart cities market are triggered by the field of IoT, cloud, sensors and mobility.

Also hike in demographics, urbanization, government initiatives, energy consumption & requirement for optimization of energy usage during peak hours will aid in smart city development.

This will be further boosted by increasing share of renewable energy and limitations in capacity expansion, and decrease in operational cost for smart building infrastructures in capacity expansion.

The initiative by Nokia also listed points beneficial to city leaders on successful strategies used by other municipalities to make their cities smarter, safer and more sustainable.

The playbook was developed by Machina Research, compiling primary research data into the strategies and progress of 22 cities around the world.

The study highlighted three popular approaches on smart city implementation.

‘Anchor’ route uses a single application to address issues like traffic congestion, with other application additions done over time.

‘Platform’ route will set the underlying infrastructure to back up a wide variety of smart applications and services.

‘Beta Cities’ trial multiple applications as pilots and deploy them for long-term only after assessment of performance.

Common practices include:

Open and transparent rules for the use of data (on which all smart cities are dependent) by government departments and third parties, either shared freely or monetized to cover data management costs.

Information and communications technology (ICT) and IoT infrastructures made accessible to users both inside and outside of government, overriding silos between government departments.

Governments promoting resident needs towards smart city initiatives like smart lighting and smart parking.

Scalability to accommodate future needs and security of both government and private data are essential.

Cities with technology partners will offer innovation capacity, ability to invest and real-world experience.

Also, technology platforms that are open to avoid vendor lock-in, will be at an advantage.

Challenge management is also included  in the report.

With 66 percent of the world population living in urban centers by 2050, such strategies are essential to meet the needs of their growing populations.

Intelligent ICT and IoT platforms will boost the evolution of smart cities.

Many cities are currently applying these technologies to optimize services and infrastructure.

This will lead to well informed decisions, economic development, social interactions for a secure and eco friendly community.

Vina Krishnan
[email protected]