The digital revolution is forcing also cities to take action to act as part of a digitizing world. Digitalisation enables new business models and new services in urban environment. IoT and 5G technologies, as examples, enable data-based streamlining and development of operations in areas such as traffic, housing and public services. Development can be targeted at energy savings and the creation of new business models or products.
The amount of data is exponentially growing. It has been commonly estimated that the amount of data will increase in year 2025 at least 10 times higher than in 2017. The potential of data based on 5G technology is a good example. 5G is up to 100 times faster than 4G and certainly contributes to a huge increase in data usage. And especially smart city is powered by data.
Cities in particular have a huge amount of data, but its potential has not been fully harnessed for a better built environment. It goes even without saying, that improving urban data utilisation would support and increase real-time decision-making, transparency, forecasting and situational awareness of the cities and citizens.
Future Cities have to efficient, sustainable and smart
UN 2018 report says, that 68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050. It is clear that the cities of the future have to be efficient, sustainable and smart. One helping solution is smart city technology. Term "smart city" is refered only as technology term, but eventhough it is more like concept how cities can offer better service, achieve their goals and improve life of people. Eventually, building better society with sustainable services, energy, housing and mobility, health and safety.
The infrastructure investment for the cities will be tens of trillions euros, cumulatively, over the next 20 years. Significant part of investments will be focuced to the smart city infrastructure and it is the technology companies that should turn their attention to it.
Better and faster services
Smart city means in practice the opportunity for city administrators to provide better and faster services, monitor their effectiveness and focus on actions in areas that are not doing so well. Administrators can also communicate with citizen and improve creating transparent governance. But it also gives huge opportunities to business. The demand of Smart City services will explode. Before cities can realise smart city benefits, they need to improve their data management and be part of the data economy.
Beeing honest, this is one of the key reasons to me be involved in the Data Product Business. We want to enable the efficient use of the data economy and ultimately improve people’s lives.