Expanded Smart Cities
There is no question that smart cities hold great promise in helping to make our communities safer and better places to live. But, as with every new technical development, there are risks. What are the components of a Smart City? What are the problems? More importantly, can governments keep up with technology?
People, when they first hear the term “Smart City”, tend to think of energy, specifically, the arguments surrounding the shift towards green and sustainable energy. But power generation is only one part of the Smart City concept. “I don’t like to just talk about energy when I talk about smart cities,” said Mr. Yasuhiro Kawai, a researcher at Nikkei Business Publications, the organizer of SCW 2014. “Smart cities are much more than that. A smart city is, in essence, a concept that introduces technology to create positive change and improve people’s lives”.
There is no single template for making a smart city, and the first step every smart city program must take is a local approach to solving local problems. Those approaches can be expanded to include a larger area, but it’s important to start small. The opportunities to apply technology in a community are numerous.
A major example in Japan right now is how many commuter rail companies in the country have integrated their monthly rail passes with an RFID chip, providing consumers with a kind of electronic wallet. Every major railroad company had its own system some seven to ten years ago, and each system was fundamentally incompatible with the others. JR East’s Suica network, for example, could not work at the Icoca terminals operated by JR West. Pasmo, operated by Tokyu, worked only on lines operated by Tokyu. A casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that this attempt to implement smart city technology was not very smart.
However, since 2009, most systems created reciprocal agreements and passengers can now transfer across rail lines with a single card. The point of sale has also been integrated. Mr. Kawai brought this up as a small starting point. “It seemed really disorganized at first. You had all these systems and they didn’t work well together. Now, as the technology and the operations that support the technology have improved, they’re almost seamless,” he said.
Connecting Towns and Lives
In addition, Mr. Kawai points to the pilot program in the city of Katsuragi in Japan’s Nara Prefecture, east of Osaka, where a group of seniors signed up to receive medical check-up wristbands. As Mr. Kawai explained, the town’s population has shrunk in recent decades as most of the young people have fled to the larger cities of Osaka and Tokyo to earn a living. That has left behind a sparse population of older people who aren’t as connected to the community as in previous generations. Medical bracelets monitor a person’s vital signs and will notify a nearby hospital via the Internet if a problem is detected. It’s just a pilot program, but it’s also a very real example of how even a small rural town can benefit from Smart City technology.
Perhaps the most attractive target for Smart City upgrades involves a community’s infrastructure and the cars that drive on its streets. There have been several notable advances in infrastructure science recently, the most notable of which is perhaps the concept of a solar highway.
A pair of entrepreneurs in Sandpoint, Idaho, USA, have developed a 1.5-meter hexagonal solar panel encased in heavy-duty tempered glass that can withstand the elements and the constant pounding of cars and trucks on the road. Thousands of these panels, interlocked and connected by software, can provide an intelligent driving surface that can do everything from illuminating driving lanes at night to outlining pedestrians crossing a street, all while providing electricity to the community. and, of course, electric cars. that will drive on those roads.
Cars are getting a facelift, too, and human drivers may soon become obsolete. Autonomous cars, as they are called, are cars with sophisticated onboard navigation software that can choose the most efficient or safest routes to take its passengers. Although Google has taken most of the limelight in this area, Audi, Volvo and even MIT are doing research on self-driving cars. Many of the cars have just come out of the lab and are in limited street testing. However, it doesn’t take much to put these two developments together to envision a city where electric and self-driving cars navigate lighted pathways that generate power for the community.
Challenges and opportunities
However, for all their advantages, smart cities have several hurdles to overcome. Perhaps the most important among them is the acceptance of some people in the community. What could be the problem? It turns out that the problem is twofold. First, people generally want to see a tangible economic benefit from an investment in the community. “For example,” Mr. Kawai explained, “if you invest community resources to put sensors on a bridge to notify maintenance of a needed repair in advance, that’s great. In fact, it saves money. But, people for “They don’t generally see the benefit. Sure, the bridge gets fixed before small problems become big problems, but that doesn’t mean people recognize it as a tangible improvement.”
While getting people to see that issues like civic maintenance are resolved before they become big problems is an obstacle to Smart City deployments, another bigger concern is what the technology represents. The ubiquitous location of technology in everything anyone does, from point-of-sale smart cards to public transportation and street cameras, plus geolocation functionality present in today’s smartphones, has raised fears. of creating a “Big Brother” state where the notion of privacy becomes a forgotten relic of the past.
Implementing a Smart City program is a delicate operation. Mr. Toshiya Mochida, also of Nikkei BP, suggests starting small. “Start with a small area of your city, with a technology for a very specific purpose. Test it for a while, then ask for feedback. Most importantly, governments and organizations need to be transparent about their goals. What information will they collect? and because?” Information gathering by governments and organizations is a primary concern, says Mr. Kawai. “The vast majority of information will just be files, locked away somewhere, never to be seen or heard from again. But still, it’s out there. Will it be managed? Will it be destroyed? These are things to consider as well,” he said. .
Governments also pose a potential problem for Smart City development. Laws often do not keep pace with change. Technology generally advances faster than governments can react, leaving many technological advances in a legal gray area. The best cited example is copyright law in the face of the rise of the Internet in the late 1990s. Copyright laws created in the mid-20th century did not provide for the complexities uncovered when record companies battled Napster and others. download services, and legal frameworks are still being developed to ensure that artists are fairly compensated for their work.
Driverless cars seem to be the next chapter as technology advances faster than the government’s ability to regulate it. A California Highway Patrol officer interviewed for this article said: “This opens up a whole new area of road rules. We need to look at licensing, insurance, safety standards, all of these areas. Until we fix it, we don’t may l”. I don’t see this becoming widespread.” Today, even with a smart car, a qualified and licensed driver must be in command of the vehicle.
The key question, of course, is: “Where will Smart City technology be in 5 or 10 years?” Although it’s tempting to do so, you can’t really use the technological achievements of the past decade as a roadmap for the future. If you were in 2004 and then tried to map out what things would be like in 2014, could you really see how a simple cell phone, which had basic calls and maybe email/text functions back then, became the “computer”? in your pocket” what are smartphones now? Innovative technologies being researched now, and those yet to be conceived, will undoubtedly change the world and the way we live by 2024. Technological developments are both iterative and explosive. Even a certain technology can branch into multiple applications. Wearables, for example, seem to be fading out of the exercise and fitness circuit, but are proving their value among seniors and people who require constant monitoring.
One thing is for sure: technology and those who develop it will continue to change the way we live. The Smart Cities concept is being tested and is an exciting and ongoing experiment.