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The word ‘smart’ has steadily become part of the norm within the industry and everyday life, but what exactly makes up the different aspects of the smart city?

Smart Cities are cities which best use modern, integrated technology services and infrastructure in energy, transport and ICT to respond to the social and economic needs of society. Traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies, for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses with less impact on the environment. 

Making Smart Cities user friendly and a pleasant experience for all involved is critical and has different challenges and requirements to achieve that.

In recent years the rise of the smart home has taken the market by storm. Intelligent devices have been integrated into new housing developments and renovations everywhere. Our homes are now stocked with intelligent devices, like smart thermostats, smart speakers and smart light bulbs. But the trend for intelligent spaces extends far beyond our homes. All around the world, entire cities are also becoming smart. 

What are smart cities?

A smart city is one that leverages technology to increase efficiencies and improve the quality of services and life for its residents. Smart city initiatives can cover anything from power distribution, transport systems, street lights, access control, traffic management and even rubbish collection. It uses data and technology to make everyday life easier and better for the people who live and work in the city.

More and more of us are living in cities, and the geographical nature of cities are increasingly expanding, with people wanting to be in the hustle and bustle of city life, as well as close to work. This means our cities are facing growing environmental, societal and economic challenges, especially with climate change and pollution being a grave danger to our planet. By making cities smarter, we can overcome some of these challenges and make cities greener, more efficient and a better place to live. 

This is all possible thanks to the rise of technology trends – trends that allow us to create spaces in which humans and technology interact in a more connected, intelligent and automated way. Trends such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) or autonomous vehicles. Combined, advances like these are changing the world and how we live in it. 

Technology

Keeping traffic flowing

Traffic can make city life almost unbearable, whether it be personal vehicles, taxi services or buses. Technology offers some promising solutions to make the management of city roads more effective. For example, public transport routes can be adjusted in real-time according to demand, and intelligent traffic light systems can be used to improve congestion. In China’s ancient-walled city of Xi’an, they’re adopting an intelligent traffic management system based on Hikvision technology – and boosting traffic flow while reducing journey time. 

“Xi’an’s city walls make it impossible to increase the size of the urban area. So it was only through technology that we could allow the modern city to grow and develop,” says Lihu Ma, Project Manager from Hikvision. “A core part of the Hikvision solution involves our AI-powered video technology.”

The Xi’an traffic police worked with experts from Hikvision, as well as urban planning experts, internet service providers and other technology companies, to design and implement an intelligent traffic management system. The construction of this system fully utilises Hikvision’s core advantages in urban transportation intelligence, employing AI-powered video to create a powerful traffic sensing system. “Effectively, we are building a bridge between an intelligent digital world and the physical urban transportation network in Xi’an,” explains Lihu.

Using city resources more efficiently

Wi-Fi networks, broadband and IoT are becoming dominant factors everywhere, smart cities must use these resources to analyse the city needs more appropriately.  For example, the city of San Nicolas de los Arroyos, in the Buenos Aires district of Argentina, has deployed IoT solutions from Telefónica to enhance the quality of life of its inhabitants and the urban environment. Seeking to transform itself into a smart city, the municipality is using mobile connectivity to help it manage its workforce and its vehicle fleet: mobile-connected GPS trackers for employees and vehicles help the city administration to optimise the deployment of resources. The municipality now knows in real time where all its connected vehicles are, enabling it to coordinate their movements, save on fuel and maintenance costs, and reduce the likelihood of traffic accidents

Improving energy efficiency

As well as investing in clean energy sources, such as solar energy, hybrid cars or diesel tax, smart cities also use technology to help closely monitor real-time energy use and reduce energy consumption. For example, across many countries in Europe, homes are being provided with smart energy meters, free of charge, that are designed to incentivise reduced energy consumption and costs. EDF Energy relies on smart metres to reduce overall cost as bills are no longer based on estimates from the size of the house. It also enables home owners to track how much energy they are using. Similarly, in New York, upgrading street lights to LED technology, which allows the lights to be adjusted or dimmed based on real-time data is another example of smart technology being used to increase energy efficiency in an urban scale. 

There has been multiple new legislation being implemented across the board, in housing, automobiles, supply chain and office buildings, that is aimed at improving energy consumption. Smart intelligent devices that accurately use supply and demand data have become increasingly popular for cost-efficiency and ease of installation. Something as simple as lighting, whether it be in the streets, in warehouses, or in domestic/urban buildings, may have an upfront cost, but can dramatically increase savings over time. 

Making cities safer

Thanks to the vast spread of Wi-Fi connectivity, IoT technologies and CCTV cameras, cities are able to harness technology to improve resident safety and boost incident response times. Surveillance, and biometrics have taken the market by storm, particularly recently due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests. Although some facial recognition technology is being reprimanded due to its violation of privacy and human rights, most surveillance technology is being adapted to fit into today’s society. 

Given the unprecedented times that we face, security companies have had to tackle new challenges such as facial coverings, social distancing and thermal imaging. Thermal imaging can be used outside of busy shops, and in high streets, as well as airports and businesses to check the temperature of guests, employees or visitors. Checking the temperature has become a new source of prevention and protection against the coronavirus. 

Similarly, facial coverings have become mandatory in the US, the UK and many other countries around the world. This limits the ability to use facial recognition technology for military, police forces and even access control for urban buildings and organisations. New technology is having to map faces using different parts of the face and tackling challenges in accuracy results. 

Surveillance technology is also being used to tackle social distancing rules. It is able to establish the correct distance between members of the public, and inform the necessary personnel to address the issue. 

All of these security systems and features will no doubt become a staple in the smart city, not just because we are continuously evolving as an age, but also because to be smart, industries must evolve with the times and embrace it. Technology is constantly changing, and we must change with it.

Encouraging greater collaboration with citizens

Smart city technology encourages residents to get more involved. Common examples include apps that allow citizens to report local issues more easily, or community networking platforms that allow neighbors to connect and share resources, or even traffic apps such as Waze, which allows road users to update GPS maps when encountering a problem, accident, traffic jam in real time, which updates other road users. 

In another example, a low-cost environmental testing kit is encouraging residents to collect local environmental data. The Smart Citizen Kit can be placed in locations like balconies and window sills to gather data on the local environment, including air pollution and noise. The data is streamed to an online platform, effectively creating a crowdsourced map of data from all over the world.

Director & Principal Designer of it does Lighting Lorraine Calcott explains: “In today’s ever-changing political climate we all need to behave and work smarter to ensure our cities remain viable places to thrive in. When technology is put to good use, city developers can increase safety, improve efficiencies, enhance green/blue infrastructure and provide environmentally effective spaces for all ecology and human receptors. 

“Embracing connectivity isn’t always easy but with the right guidance and implementation you really can have a connected city that works for everyone.” 

This shift towards intelligent spaces and smart places is a huge technological trend that will continue to innovate and change as time goes on. I am in no doubt that we will all soon be living in smart cities around the world.

Commentary: Simon Newman, Head of Cyber and Business Services for Police Crime Prevention Initiatives

The rapid growth of the internet means that we are increasingly relying on technology. From internet banking, online shopping and keeping in touch with our families, it has helped improve accessibility and reach. Governments have also been quick to embrace technology with ‘smart cities’ being heralded as the future.

There have been a number of cases around the world where smart cities have been targeted. In Texas for example, hackers were able to exploit a security weakness in a tornado warning system, setting off sirens that caused widespread alarm. There are also concerns that criminals could infiltrate smart traffic systems, causing blockages or accidents. Even power and waste management systems could potentially be vulnerable, with criminals able to shut off power to citizens.

Most smart cities have been developed with security in mind and there’s widespread agreement that they need a much higher level of security than other organisations. Even implementing the most basic controls can help prevent the most common types of attack. This means establishing a good level of cyber hygiene, ensuring a robust password policy across the entire network, patching updates regularly and implementing 2FA or MFA. 

Case Study: Transitioning from the ‘City of Lakes’ to a Smart City

The Smart Cities Mission is an innovative initiative by the Government of India to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people. It aims to achieve this by enabling local development and harnessing technology as a means to create smart outcomes for citizens. A hundred cities across the country were shortlisted by the government, which were to be promoted as ‘Smart Cities’. Based on an all-India competition, Bhopal was selected in the first round of 20 smart cities, to transform the city into a leading destination for smart, connected and eco-friendly communities focused on education, research, entrepreneurship and tourism. 

The city leaders wanted to upgrade the security of its residents, migrants and visitors, by ensuring diligent monitoring across the city. Also, Bhopal faced chaotic traffic flows and repeated violations, causing traffic jams, accidents and fatalities. This not only made everyday life uncomfortable but also increased transport time with a negative effect on economic activity. The stakeholders wanted to implement an end-to-end video surveillance system to support law enforcement, to build a secure environment for citizens, and to also ensure road safety across the city.

After rigorous evaluation, a panel of city leaders, stakeholders and industry leaders selected Videonetics for this project. Videonetics designed a solution based on its AI & DL powered Unified Video Computing Platform (UVCPTM) encompassing Intelligent VMS, Intelligent Video Analytics and Intelligent Traffic Management System.

 

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Media contact

Rebecca Morpeth Spayne,
Editor, Security Portfolio

Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823 922
Email: editor@securitybuyer.com

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