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The Hype Cycle of Smart City Technologies is Gartner’s second analysis of the range of technologies that can be used in smart cities. The Hype charts the position of technologies that support smart city solutions, ranging from mobility and parking to healthcare, energy and water management, big data management, and many other. These technologies offer economic and social benefits to residents and industries.
“A broad set of technologies and business models are relevant to a discussion of smart cities, given the complexity of the market requirements and its complex procurement cycle. The list is not exhaustive; technologies have been selected on the basis of relevance and analyst coverage. Their positions on the Hype Cycle are averages ‘” in recognition that different smart city scenarios exist, creating variability in position. Many technologies depicted in this Hype Cycle are critical to developing innovative and transformational benefits to city inhabitants, government and technology providers. However, most are clustered in the emerging and pre-peak sections of the Hype Cycle, having an ROI of more than five years. Large numbers of these technologies are mature and are well beyond the Hype Cycle’s Plateau of Productivity. Other technologies are still immature, such as advanced metering and plug-in hybrid vehicles for smart grid applications and electric mobility. Many use cases and business models for these functions and verticals in a smart city will take five to 10 years or more to mature. A strong technology push from vendors exists today, but the benefits are currently unclear to citizen groups, and healthcare and transportation organizations, as well as government. The resolution of these kinds of issues will take time.”
“Smart cities also require integration and consulting services from large multinational enterprises that have the ability to invest significant sums into these long-term projects. Some vendors are aggressively pursuing the initial deployment of smart city models, although limited to areas like traffic congestion, traffic management and public safety. This Hype Cycle covers both IT and OT infrastructure components that can form the technology basis of a wide range of smart city functions. These include enabling technologies, such as Near Field Communication, RFID, and mobile endpoints for the collection and transmission of information to databases and master data management systems. These will be associated with the metatagging and direction of data, depending on the privacy laws of the country.”
“This Hype Cycle can also be read from an industry perspective focused on industry-specific implementations. Again, due to the scale and the scope of installed base, each vertical market will have unique upgrade cycles; the development pipelines are different in each case. This Hype Cycle discusses general technologies and business models such as master data management and sustainability. It also looks in detail at technologies and issues in the energy, transportation and healthcare sectors. These vertical sector examples show the portfolio of integrated technologies and business models that a city needs to be truly considered a smart city.”
Source: Gartner