ICT: The Fundamental Enabler for Smart Cities

13 Feb 2019

The world’s cities are relentlessly growing. Since the 19th century, there has been a steady flow of people from rural areas into the urban centers of the world. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the global percentage of urban population was approximately 30% in 1950 and has surpassed the 50% mark some time in 2008. It is predicted that by 2050, 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized.

This places an enormous strain on the fabric of cities. Urban infrastructure including utilities, transport, environmental services and housing are often overtaxed and under-maintained. Social services, healthcare and education become difficult to sustain. These are real concerns that affect every city. These issues can no longer be addressed using the traditional methodology of throwing more money at the problem or opening a new department in the municipality to deal with the challenge. A new, more intelligent method of urban management must be adopted.

Over the past few years, a very important, but often understated, concept has emerged to help alleviate these and other related issues: The Smart City.

What is a Smart City? A Smart City encompasses an urban development vision that emphasizes the intelligent management of a city’s resources for the purpose of solving urban challenges. This intelligent management almost always includes the participation of all the stakeholders of the city and not just the municipality itself. A vital prerequisite of this vision is the active participation and engagement of the most important stakeholder of all, the citizen.

ICT in the Smart City is used to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption, and to improve contact between citizens and city stakeholders. Smart City applications run on top of the ICT infrastructure and are developed to manage urban flows and allow for real-time responses that improve the quality of life.

ICT Smart City Infrastructure Characteristics ICT is the lifeline of a Smart City. Without it, the Smart City idea cannot exist. Consequently, ICT infrastructure design for Smart Cities must itself be smart. It is important to add intelligence to this network, and to provide scalability, robustness and flexibility. This can be done with several design network concepts including:

Automated and simplified network management This is a concept that allows for unified and central network management that helps simplify the often large and sometimes unwieldy networks required to support Smart Cities. Networks that are based on this concept fulfill one of the most pressing needs for Smart City ICT infrastructure by allowing the network to be managed as a single entity, reducing complexity and increasing efficiency.

Automatic security threat isolation and remediation A network security management model that blocks threats at their source while avoiding the introduction of latency and network bottlenecks of traditional Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS). This should include a flexible Software Defined Network (SDN) solution for both wired and wireless networks providing a more secure and improved end user experience.

IoT enabled networks As IoT is an integral part of the Smart City, ICT network design enabling IoT applications is essential. This is the case especially for wireless networks that can reduce the costs of wireless installations while providing for ease of deployment for IoT devices.

Robustness and scalability Redundancy is key to any large scale network, especially one on which the smooth operation of an entire city depends. Scalability is equally important as urban centers continue to grow and Smart City applications continue to increase in number and in traffic volume demand.