Properly-functioning cities are critical to the wellbeing of modern society. Whenever the power goes out or the rubbish isn’t collected or a pipe bursts urban residents are reminded of what life without key services would be like.
Many cities are, however, operating on the same basic principles that were in place 20 years ago, and not taking advantage of the rapid advance of technology.
What is possible today is the reinvention of the city from the way it has always been to the smart city of the future.
Ahmed Simjee, Public Sector executive at IBM SA, explains that although we think of cities as service providers, they are often simply providing access to a service, such as water or electricity that is provided by other suppliers, such as Eskom or Rand Water.
“Providing access to these utilities is a key aspect of what a city does and often they are judged by their performance in this area, but utility provision alone does not make a smart city. A smart city is one that places its citizens at the centre of everything it does and aims to deliver these citizen-centric services smarter and faster,” he says.
He points out that it is possible nowadays to achieve a much more detailed view of the service usage across a city than was ever the case, enabling the city to keep close eye on exactly how and when various services are being consumed.
“One of the landmark projects where we were able to deliver this kind of service was the Mediterranean island Malta where IBM worked with the government to create a smart island. With a population of just under half a million and almost no significant natural water resources the island is dependent on rainfall and desalination for the provision of water. By creating a smart integrated system that covered the entire island it was able to closely monitor consumption and shut off supply remotely in order to ensure that the grid is not overloaded.
Another aspect of the smart city is intelligent traffic management. Simjee explains that in cities like Stockholm and London the implementation of smart traffic management systems has not only enabled the cities to reduce gridlock, but also to share the traffic data with users enabling them to avoid potential congestion points or for the city to actively direct them along alternative routes.
“A lot of the infrastructure that is needed to implement these smart systems has already been deployed, in the form of the extensive closed circuit television systems that blanket many cities. The problem is that these systems are being monitored by humans who have limited capacity. However, computer systems have now advanced to the point where they can pick up potential issues and flag them for the human operators,” he comments.
This can be used for monitoring traffic or spotting criminal activity.
Simjee says that another project that IBM was involved with was the creation of an integrated operations centre in Rio de Janeiro. In addition to the integrated system improving emergency turnaround times by 25% it also created a central point for the monitoring of a number of seismic monitors that are used to predict mudslides that plague the hills surrounding the city.
By being able to evacuate areas that might be hit by a mudslide the city is able to prevent loss of life and cut down on costly rescue operations.
Another aspect of the smart city is keeping track of all the assets that a city has under its control. Although it may not be obvious the assets of a city do not just include buildings and vehicles but also the thousands of kilometres of electrical cables, water and sewage pipes and, in some cities, gas pipes.
These all need to be routinely maintained and sometimes this maintenance is neglected or delayed simply because there is no system to ensure that the maintenance is carried out when it is required rather than when the pipe or cable fails.
Fixing a burst water pipe is much more expensive than preventative maintenance and avoids the disruption that this kind of event causes.
An additional part of building a smart city is the use of advanced analytics to pick up issues that might arise, rather than reacting to individual crises.
By monitoring the financial aspects of the system, such as procurement and billing, business analytics can identify where inefficiencies are and potentially where there may be abuse of the system.
In South Africa, Simjee says that instead of each city trying to build all aspects of the smart city from the ground up, they should rather be focusing on the areas of greatest need, for one city it may be power management, for another it may be traffic or even crime prevention strategies.
These best-practices can then be shared between the various municipalities to deliver a collection of smart-city strategies that are informed by real-life situations, but also customised to each city’s unique challenges.
By following this strategy it will be possible for South African cities to move forward faster than if they tried to go it alone.
This article originally appeared in the Mail & Guardian newspaper as a sponsored feature