“With this unprecedented access to information, Smart Cities will deliver new levels of efficiency, effectiveness, safety, reliability, and higher levels of service. This access enables a city to anticipate and prevent problems in areas like reducing accidents by rerouting traffic, and reducing crime by identifying hot spots. New insight also enables the provision of services like finding a parking spot, monitoring air pollution, intelligent lighting, and others. A sense and respond model (a key future enabler) allows for the delivery of many of these services without human intervention.

A next generation of efficiency is also enabled, as asset tracking will streamline operations and insight will deliver unprecedented levels of efficiency. For example, a recent survey of water utilities found a saving potential between $7.1 and $12.5 billion each year through smart water solutions. The chief globalization officer of Cisco has said that smart cities drive energy consumption savings of 30% and water consumption savings of 50%. These environmental benefits include reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving waste management. Boston University Installed self-powered trash receptacles which wirelessly alerted collection vehicles when they were full, resulting in on-campus trash collection being reduced from 14 times per week to an average of 1.6 times per week.

The Smart City

The Smart City is Defined as a developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and a high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas requires strong human capital, social capital, and information and communications technology. We are in the early days of an evolution towards Smart Cities, and IDC Government Insights finds that most cities are deploying these projects department by department. In a recent IDC White paper, they provide a maturity model to describe this Smart City evolution…”