To Find Big Opportunities in Smart Cities, Go Small

To Find Big Opportunities in Smart Cities, Go Small



The smart city is a global phenomenon driven by a confluence of rapid
urbanization, aging infrastructure, and advances in information
technology, which are all super-charged by the imperatives of the ever
increasing need for government austerity. Globally, it is a trillion
dollar market with multi-billion dollar companies supplying
multi-million dollar solutions to cities with swelling populations and
shrinking budgets. The good news for the industry is there are a lot of
cities in this situation, all needing better, smarter solutions. By
2025, there may well be more than 100 cities around the world that are fully “smart,” or on the road to becoming that way.

Most
competitors in this space understandably target the low-hanging fruit
of the biggest cities with the biggest budgets. But these big sales are
often complex transactions of complex solutions. Typically, smart city
solutions are designed according to a systems-of-systems approach
(represented in the figure below). All the layers of the domains of a
city – transportation, energy, public safety and security, buildings,
healthcare, education and social services, water and waste – are
meticulously analyzed and teased apart only to be stitched back together
again into new solutions that are scalable, efficient, functionally
optimized, future-proof and, most of all, cost-effective.

Source: Frost & Sullivan

Whenever
we are dealing with the public purse, implementing these large-scale
projects can pose a host of challenges technically, financially and
politically.

Yet with most of the focus on the large and medium
sized cities, the beauty of small is most often overlooked. I believe
there is also a wealth of opportunity in applying smart city solutions
to smaller metropolitan centers. There are a 100 obviously big city
centers, but there are thousands of not-so-obvious small cities.

The Advantages of Small

Rather
than being a disadvantage in the smart city world, small areas have
numerous advantages when it comes to planning, implementing and
operating smart city infrastructure and service projects.