smart cities infra integration

Implementing Intelligent ICT Infrastructure for Inclusive Smart Cities

Smart city infrastructure is an aggregation of 4IR technology, which connects physical urban infrastructure, such as streetlights and buildings, and intangible digital assets like networks, applications and data in the cloud. The integration of these technologies on a single platform encourages service innovation.

Analysing 31 cities’ infrastructures, this report found that many leading cities have recently implemented 4IR-based technologies like integrated Data Platforms, Integrated Smart City Platforms, Integrated Operating Centres (IOC), Open Data Portals, free public WiFi networks, public-cloud computers and publicly owned IoT networks to achieve data-driven smart city developments. Further, several cities among the 31 are promoting the concept of smart cities as a way of bridging the digital divide and, at the same time, are preemptively responding to the prospect of a hyper-connected, hyper-intelligent society by making advanced ICT infrastructure universally accessible within the city.

Enhancing Smart City Data Infrastructure Through Building Publicly Owned IoT Networks

The systematic implementation of urban network infrastructure. has the potential to transform city’s collection of data into a platform, enabling it to become a smart city. In establishing a city’s own infrastructural or IoT network, a new round of development can put public users and consumers in the driving seat of infrastructure networks. IoT-network developments may become the basis for fast-growing IoT-based urban data services, collecting real-time data through various sensors. Most cities have been laying down the groundwork for IoT infrastructures driven by the private sector across their entire city area. Seoul and New York City, meanwhile, are promoting concrete smart city infrastructure policies and setting up a city-owned IoT network. Both cities are aiming to complete implementation for their entire region by 2023.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to build 1,000 LoRa(Long Range)-based stations exclusively on a public IoT network by 2023, linking public buildings such as community centres. Coverage will extend to three boroughs in 2021, connect 19 more in 2022 and three more the following year. The pilot IoT-based services launched with 103 sensors in aged buildings in Eunpyeong-gu, putting in place a safety management service anticipating major hazards. 4,500 smart street lights will detect any malfunctioning in Guro-gu, and will link to a messaging service in Seocho-gu, alerting operators to potential areas contaminated with fine dust particles based on AI analysis. The city government’s further plan is to capture and analyse any urban incident in its entire metropolitan area using a public IoT network, as well as Data of Things (DoT), to improve citizens’ experiences of smart city services. The DoT initiatives that are to be established over the whole area in 2022 plan to collect and measure data of 10 different types (fine dust, temperature, humidity, light quality, noise, vibration, ultraviolet light, wind direction, wind speed, and number of visitors) through 2,500 sensors, of which 1,100 were installed by 2021. 1,100 of these were up and running by 2021.

New York City also plans to adopt IoT initiatives developed in collaboration with academia and industry. The first public IoT network in the US was promoted in tandem with Cornell University and has targeted 100% LPWAN coverage, with $1.5M of funding coming from the National Science Foundation. New York has launched a pilot, the CityScanner Project, in cooperation with the City Sensable Lab of MIT. The project collects various forms of environmental data (in parameters such as air quality, air temperature, humidity and road conditions) through photovoltaic energy sensors installed on vehicles’ roofs. The project will run in areas where the air quality has already given cause for concern. The scheme will identify further potential sites of pollution, which will be investigated to identify their sources of carbon emission. These mobile sensors provide more accurate and detailed data at lower cost than the existing stationary sensors.

In keeping city-owned IoT network development, both Seoul and New York have established new forms of connectivity across the whole city region to complement the groundwork already laid for an urban data ecosystem. Real-time data obtained through sensors will power citizen-centric services and lead to the refinement of policy shaped by analytics and supported Public-Private-Academic Partnerships(PPAPs). The city will be data-centric in a rational and scientific way.