Smart City
The key aspects in this definition of a Smart City are as follows:
- Good quality services – A smart city provides the services, e.g. the Physical and Social infrastructure that is world class, to its residents.
- To all its stakeholders – This implies that the smart city should be able to provide these services to all stakeholders regardless of where they are and what is their economic or social status.
- Through the use of ICT – The usage of the Information Communication and Technology would be a key enabler in providing the services anytime and anywhere.
- Cost and resource effective way – The technology would enable the efficiency and cost reduction in the provision of the services.
A smart city may create the value in the following ways
- Public spending is reduced in the long term on the public infrastructure in smart city and buildings with efficient building automation, water and sanitation facilities, electricity and high speed internet connectivity and incident reporting.
- The efficiency of public services and their quality leads to higher satisfaction quotient in the citizens which in turn leads to effective utilization of services provided.
- Provides base for better decision making for identification and enhancement of the city boundaries or inclusion of new services/infrastructure requirements in the city limits.
- Helps to promote social development holistically such as basic education, employment, food and housing security for all strata of society.
- Real time information availability – enhances citizen awareness about the city they live in by providing information update in real time and equipping them to make informed decisions.
- Intelligent networks of people, mobiles, sensors and actuators generating data at the rate of more than terabyte per second leading to advanced analytics in real time which helps in disaster management and recover post the disaster.
- Energy efficient smart cities lead to sustainable management of energy resources in the long run through smart grids, efficient distribution and metering and processing and measuring of other environmental parameters along to synchronize with changing demand patterns.
- Public and voluntary participation in government and e-government policy making.
- Real time information availability – enhances citizen awareness about the city they live in by providing information update in real time and equipping them to make informed decisions.
- Increased public safety through efficient management of public emergency systems, civil defence, video surveillance and fire and other hazard prevention and detection.
- Holistic social development through provision of basic education for all the citizens including e-learning and teleworking, e-tourism and cultural information, e-commerce, etc.
Smart Cities are those that are able to attract investments and experts & professionals. Good quality infrastructure, simple and transparent online business and public services processes that make it easy to establish an enterprise and run it efficiently without any bureaucratic hassles are essential features of an investor-friendly smart city.
Adequate availability of the required skills in the labor force is a necessary requirement of a Smart City. Investors, themselves, look for a decent living and so they also look for smart housing, high level of healthcare, entertainment and quality education. Safety and security is a basic need for them as to any other resident. A city that is considered unsafe is not attractive. Besides, an investor needs to be considered as someone who helps a city to prosper rather than someone who only profits from it.
A Smart City needs to identify its comparative or unique advantage and core competence in specific areas of economic activities and promote such activities aggressively, by developing the required institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructures for it and attracting investors and professionals to take up such activities. It also needs to support the required skill development for such activities in a big way.
This would help a Smart City in developing the required environment for creation of economic activities and employment opportunities.
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Streetscape's contribution to the Smart City
- Smart Government –E Gov, Easy access, Transparent
- Smart Infrastructure –Connected integrated services
- Smart Utilities –Energy Efficiency, Ruducedemissions, Smart Meters
- Smart mobility –Smart Transport, Dynamic traffic control
- Smart environment –Green pollution control, Climate change adaptation
- Smart Business –Smart Economy
- Smart Living
- Smart Education
- Smart Citizen and Community
