Smart Cities: How Technology is Enhancing Urban Sustainability

 Quality of life measures in cities can be measured through many factors. From resident perception of safety when walking along streets to how quickly emergency responders arrive at an accident site, digital applications have the ability to improve these measures by 10-30%.

Photo by Peng LIU

These applications provide fuel for application development and help cities increase operational efficiencies while engaging residents.

Energy

Smart cities use technology to maximize efficiency of infrastructure, transportation and utilities systems. These intelligent systems help make cities more sustainable by reducing energy usage, creating green spaces and improving air quality while monitoring and adapting to evolving needs.

These systems also improve public safety and the livability of urban areas, with smart streetlights being one example of such improvements. Smart streetlights can automatically adjust to changing traffic patterns to reduce power usage; similarly, cities can utilize efficient public transportation such as buses or trains to decrease car usage on the road and thus decrease congestion, emissions, fuel costs and save on vehicle ownership. 

Finally, smart grid systems enable cities to incorporate renewable energy sources into the power system without incurring unnecessary losses in energy supply.

Solar-to-electric charging stations that enable electric vehicles are another example of intelligent city technology, while intelligent waste management systems communicate with garbage bins to notify service providers when one has been full for more than 48 hours - giving cities real-time data they can analyze to inform decisions and optimize processes.

To create a smart city, it is crucial to understand all its constituent parts and how they interrelate. A smart city typically includes both soft infrastructure such as policies and regulations as well as hard infrastructure such as roads, utilities and buildings - as well as an effective communication network linking all these elements together.

Collaboration between government and private sectors is integral to building an effective smart city. Most of the work that goes into building such cities falls outside government control - for instance, a surveillance system on busy streets might include sensors from one company, cameras from another and servers from still another - while smart parking systems might include sensors that collect environmental information that connect back to a central data center.

Smart cities require an integrative approach informed by data collected from its residents and other stakeholders, using this data to improve operational efficiencies, enhance engagement and ensure financial viability.

Water

The Smart City concept involves harnessing cutting-edge digital technologies to increase standards of living and urban sustainability. Numerous companies are developing cutting-edge tools that help cities realize these objectives through improved public services, energy savings initiatives, and decreased environmental footprints.

Smart city technology is playing a critical role in water management to support sustainability. For instance, smart sensors in municipal pipes can detect issues before they turn into crises by notifying appropriate departments when there are leaks or other potential concerns that could affect citizens. Furthermore, these sensors can also be used to manage distribution systems within buildings to increase efficiency while decreasing costs for consumers.

Smart city technology is also being employed to optimize urban manufacturing and urban farming operations, enabling cities to reduce production costs while creating more jobs and improving food quality for residents. Smart sensor systems can also be utilized to monitor structural health of buildings so as to ensure residents' safety as well as maintenance being completed before problems escalate. Furthermore, smart cities utilize sensor data for faster garbage collection, utility distribution and traffic flow management.

The concept of smart cities is ever evolving as cities adopt and integrate cutting-edge technology. Some cities are moving beyond simply adding technology; some are adopting initiatives designed to promote digital justice - making sure people have access to digital resources while being protected against harmful online behaviors - by investing in their networks. Portland, Oregon uses its smart city initiatives for this purpose.

An integral element of smart cities is their collaborative nature, with multiple stakeholders coming together including local governments, research institutions, private companies, SMEs and citizens collaborating closely on initiatives. Neighboring cities also play an essential role in making sure initiatives succeed and their shared data enables real-time contextual analysis to enable informed decisions to be made rapidly.

Transportation

As urban populations worldwide increase, maintaining environmental and social sustainability becomes ever more complex. Cities must address issues like congestion, waste disposal and resident safety; smart technology is making this possible.

Smart city applications help to transform raw data into alerts, insight and action that can assist cities in efficiently running their infrastructures. Such applications use smart grids or the Internet of Things networked devices that are controlled to provide communication infrastructures needed for cities to operate more effectively.

Streetlights often come equipped with sensors that communicate their status to a smart grid, enabling them to switch on or off depending on the number of people present in an area, measure light levels and temperature in order to optimize energy use, track movement of vehicles through cities and reduce traffic congestion. Similar sensor-enabled technologies are being implemented for waste management, tracking vehicle movements through cities and reducing traffic congestion.

Intelligent traffic signals that monitor current patterns and predict future needs help alleviate traffic congestion during peak times, while smart public transit systems can be designed to accommodate new routes based on real-time demand. Finally, intelligent parking management enables cities to take advantage of additional revenue streams by encouraging efficient vehicle routing and utilization of existing space.

Many of the technologies making cities smarter come from large IT, telecom and energy management companies; however, their applications can only become successful if widely adopted and utilized.

Smart city initiatives hinge on their ability to enhance the lives of their citizens, so understanding key drivers that affect quality of life for citizens in each city and creating smart apps that address those needs directly is paramount to their success. That includes making sure infrastructure such as regulations or policies and hard services such as roads utilities or energy are in place so smart city initiatives can deliver tangible and measurable results that can be measured over time.

Environment

Success for smart city initiatives ultimately rests with its residents, so it is vital that any such initiative takes into account what residents need before implementing any smart technology solutions. Some experts suggest taking a "people-first approach," which includes citizen engagement, user research and experimentation of infrastructure policies and technologies which enhance overall quality of life for citizens.

Dallas implemented an innovative program called People First that involves an interdisciplinary team dedicated to understanding its residents and businesses. They investigate their needs and develop policy goals and objectives with data and technology; using these methods they believe this is the most efficient and effective approach to creating sustainable cities.

Building trust with citizens is also integral to taking a people-first approach, which is why many smart cities seek to be transparent with regards to data collected and provide public feedback loops for new needs and improving existing services.

Smart cities focus on improving the sustainability of existing city infrastructure and services by employing sensors to monitor and optimize water, transportation and electricity networks; prevent waste by detecting leaks in waste management systems; enable citizens to reduce energy consumption through access to real-time data that helps inform choices regarding energy consumption; and more.

Smart cities can help create environmental awareness by taking advantage of technologies such as LED street lights, which consume less power and emit significantly lower light pollution levels than their conventional counterparts. Smart cities can also encourage electric vehicle adoption by setting up charging stations throughout their city, or provide other forms of emission-free transport such as public bicycle rental systems.

With urbanization growing at an increasingly rapid rate, there is an increasing need to develop smarter cities that better meet the needs of their inhabitants and can adapt to a shifting climate. Luckily, progress in smart cities development is already evident and has the potential for further advancement and advancement.