Smart cities continue to be a major investment area, but as well as the technological challenges there are issues relating to climate that need to be tackled. Dan Evans, Director of Smart Cities at Itron, thinks that the next months of 2023 will seem some important changes in relation to smart city developments.
Evans explains some of the main innovations to Digital Journal.
2023 will be the year for real-time, data-driven insights
Smart cities are an evolving space, and maturation will require cities and utilities to tap into real-time data analytics.
According to Evans: “More than 9 out of 10 utility executives say the ability to gain insights from real-time data is very or extremely important. Utilities are facing an increasingly difficult future, complicated by regulatory mandates, economic realities and climate disruption. However, with the right tools, real-time data collected by a variety of sensors (meters, streetlights, etc.) can cultivate actionable insights to streamline service delivery, predict outages or other threats to the stability of the grid or other critical infrastructure.”
In many cases, the data can also reveal potential new revenue streams. This leads Evans to state: “Real-time, intelligent data has many applications from a smart city perspective, including flood monitoring, air quality monitoring, identification of optimal EV charging areas, smart streetlight efficiencies, parking management opportunities, optimal traffic management schemes and even public safety measures such as gunshot detection. When infrastructure is intelligent, and when it is equipped with the right technology throughout, analytics can add value anywhere—and everywhere.”
Urbanization will complicate climate disruption
In the past few years, urbanization has rapidly increased. By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will be living in cities and urban areas.
What are the climate implications? Evans observes: “To accommodate this constant influx of residents, city managers will rely heavily on smart city solutions to manage and mitigate the impact on municipal services, citizen quality of life and public safety of visitors.”
Evans adds: “As urbanization increases, new buildings and roadways are built, which can result in what is called the urban heat island (UHI) effect. Urban heat islands occur when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement, buildings, and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat. City managers across the country will leverage smart city technology to monitor these rising temperature levels around the city and adjust accordingly.
3) Public safety will become one of the most critical smart city applications.”
There are other implications: “When we discuss modern safety applications, we’re typically referencing sufficient lighting on roadways, bike paths and walkways, air quality monitoring, traffic management and flood monitoring to identify trends and predict imminent danger. When used in tandem with predictive analytics, the sensors in these monitoring systems enable city governments to detect and respond to issues.”
Evans considers other disruptors: “Today, smart city applications include those that can literally save lives. For example, in Annapolis, Maryland, local law enforcement worked with the regional utility to install gunshot detection sensors in areas with high criminal activity. By operating on the intelligent utility network, the sensors can use advanced technology to detect the occurrence of the event (while filtering out false alarms, e.g. fireworks), the exact location of the incident, the type of gun used and a video recording of the event for police records. Most importantly, gunshot detection sensors can immediately dispatch police to the area for potentially life-saving intervention.”
Evans concludes: “While this breakthrough technology unfortunately cannot prevent crime altogether, it helps law enforcement identify patterns to anticipate when, where and under what conditions firearm criminal offenses are most likely to occur. In 2023, we can expect to see many more cities interested in deploying this type of technology.”
