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Most cities started their journey toward becoming smart with government digitization efforts that focused on benefiting constituents. But with the advent of the Internet of Things and sensor technology, as well as machine learning and advanced analytics, truly smart cities are being born. While evolving to help constituents in new ways, they are also blurring the traditional boundaries between citizens, government, and private industry. Interactions between intelligent assets, commercial entities servicing the community and people have turned business models upside down and changed the way we live.
These advancements aren’ t just for the metropolitan cities of the world. They exist everywhere. Around the world, cities are reimagining everything from optimizing infrastructure to improving city resilience and helping constituents be more context aware improving livability.
As the Internet of Things enables cities to measure more, the amount of available data will grow immensely. To maximize value from this data, cities can create a common data platform which can be leveraged by all its stakeholders (public, corporates, start-ups). These integrative, holistic solutions break down the silos that often exist between functions. For many groups, such as emergency and incident response teams, shared data can mean the difference with critical response times.
Whether investments are made in transportation and traffic management, citizen experience or public safety and health, opportunities are abound for new technologies in the public sector. Solutions that foster citizen participation, public-private collaboration and grass roots innovation, not only create a superior experience for citizens, but also invite more business to the locale. More investment by business can lead to more innovation.
Read the whole article by Robert Eslin on SAP blogs here.