IoT and smart cities

Smart cities add “digital intelligence” to existing urban systems, creating an integrated and intelligent urban environment where IoT solutions are used to interconnect, interact, control and provide information about the multitude of systems, today fragmented, within cities.

The ultimate goal of a smart city is its integral sustainability, in three axes: economic, social and environmental. IoT solutions can help achieve this goal when combined with a number of other technologies. We can affirm that these solutions seek: 

– Save costs, 
– minimize the carbon footprint, 
– optimize the flows of people and materials,
– increase the quality of life of citizens

The application of IoT solutions within Smart Cities can be found in systems such as:

• Connected street lighting.
• Intelligent transport, e.g. smart parking, connected traffic systems, autonomous vehicles.
• Smart utilities, e.g. smart metering and use of electricity, water, including public irrigation and recycling systems, gas, smart containers for waste management.
• Electric vehicles, e.g. management of charging stations, connected infrastructure.
• Public safety, e.g. emergencies, weather monitoring, video surveillance.
• Participatory processes: it is the citizens themselves who collect data or incidents that are occurring at that same moment, at the point where they are.

To launch IoT initiatives and solutions in the field of smart cities, the collaboration of public and private institutions is necessary , often with triple-helix innovation models (where academic, industrial/commercial and governmental are involved).

It is worth mentioning at European level, the European innovation partnership on smart cities and communities (EIP-SCC-European innovation partnership on smart cities and communities-). It is an initiative supported by the European Commission that brings together cities, industry, small businesses (SMEs), banks, research centres and university centres, with the aim of improving urban life through more sustainable integrated solutions and addresses the specific challenges of the city from different areas, such as energy, mobility and transport, and ICT.

In this European framework, a project of great relevance is SynchroniCity. The project, sponsored by the program Horizonte 2020, brings together 18 European cities with more than 40 pilot projects, where ioT and AI services are being developed to improve the lives of citizens and grow local economies.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this project is the creation of an IoT service enabling architecture model, compatible with the MIMs (Minimum Interoperability Mechanisms) defined by the OASC association (Open & Agile Smart Cities). The OASC is an international network of smart cities focused on open platforms and citizen participation, which has more than 140 cities in more than 30 countries (including nine Spanish cities). We believe that this type of initiative is of vital importance to overcome one of the most serious problems of IoT implementations: The lack of standards and interoperability mechanisms.

In the same direction, it is worth mentioning the work of the AIOTI  (Alliance for Internet of Things Innovation), created in 2015 by the European Commission as a catalyst for the creation of a European IoT ecosystem to accelerate the adoption of IoT, with a focus on the convergence and interoperability of IoT standards.

There are many IoT references in the field of smart cities. Next, by way of illustration, of real projects of cities with IoT applications:

Santander, as a smart city, can be considered a pioneering case and world reference for different reasons.  The main one is the wide deployment of connected devices, both fixed and mobile, throughout the city.

This was possible thanks, among other European projects, to the project SmartSantander. There are currently some 20,000 devices installed and, as a result, Santander is today one of the largest 

living laboratories in the world and one of the few that allow to operate throughout the city.

 TeTel Aviv: The city of Tel Aviv has deployed smart infrastructure in several areas, including citizen security, crisis management, environment, energy efficiency, traffic and transportation. For example, in the traffic control area, the city operates an integrated traffic control center, from which it monitors the flow of traffic, which allows authorities to solve immediate problems. The center uses an automated system to monitor the city’s traffic flow. The system uses data collected from sensors that measure vehicle volume, traffic cameras, and third-party systems such as Waze, to automatically or manually set traffic policies for traffic lights or to intervene with traffic in other ways.

La Rinconada, in Seville: This municipality has, today, with:- Public Lighting: Remote management of a street with 104 street lamps (sodium vapor luminaires), as well as point-to-point management (90 luminaires of varied technology such as sodium vapor, halides and LEDs). With fully functional and customizable control possibilities to the needs of luminosity, activations by presence, etc.- Waste: La Rinconada has a total of 41 sensors in the two urban centers for organic waste, paper, packaging … This management consists of a series of alarms and operating procedures that indicate to the City Council the optimal way to collect garbage, selective or organic, obtaining the percentage of occupation of the containers in real time and remotely, which in turn has an impact on cost savings.

As we said, there are many IoT projects in cities. We can find many more examples, such as Amsterdam, Melbourne, Barcelona, Dubai, Nice, San Francisco or Chicago.

We live with IoT solutions that are so widespread and have been so well accepted, that we hardly stop to think about the innovation they have meant and what they really are IoT. For example, the fact that at the metro or bus stops the time remaining for the next metro or bus to arrive or that in many cities the free spaces in the main parking lots are indicated on panels.