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This white paper, entitled The Role of Digital Utilities in Smart Cities: Leveraging Utility Information and Communication Technologies, has been recently published by Electric Power Research Network (EPRI). It describes a framework for how the digital utility can provide additional value for customers by leveraging existing ICT systems for greater public benefit.
The following is a list of actions that utilities, community leaders, and other key stakeholders can take to guide the parallel evolutions of smart cities and digital utilities:
- Invest in reliable, resilient, flexible, and secure network architectures and computing technologies to accommodate increasing volumes, varieties, and velocities of data from a broad range of sensing devices.
- Implement data analytics to create new insights and information while creating relevant policies and practices for data security and privacy.
- Increase engagement among utilities, cities, regulators, and other key stakeholders to educate about the importance of infrastructure investments and reflect this in utility and city plans.
The white paper concludes that:
The benefits of both investment in technologies and increased use of data analytics can only be achieved by engaging the appropriate stakeholders. Increasing engagement among utilities, cities, regulators, and other key stakeholders to educate about the importance of infrastructure investments and to reflect this in utility and city plans is key for coordinated success. The smart city opportunity is complex with many opportunities. Working together will allow all stakeholders to prioritize the most impactful activities to complete and avoid the “paralysis through analysis’ where no action is taken because the path forward isn’ t clear.
- Download the report here.