The Development Status and Focus Issues of Smart City

2017 2nd International Conference on Communications, Information Management and Network Security (CIMNS 2017) ISBN: 978-1-60595-498-1

The Development Status and Focus Issues of Smart City

Yan WANG

*, Ke FANG

and Yong-chao GAO

Shandong Institute of Standardization Jinan, Shandong Prov., China

*Corresponding author

Keywords: Smart city, Participants, Typical cases, Basic technical elements, Evaluation criterion.

Abstract. Smart City has long been regarded as a concept with vague connotation. This is not because it’s a pseudo-proposition, but that it involves so many aspects that the academic community has not yet reached an agreement in terms of what smart city is and how to develop it. On the basis of analyzing the participants, typical cases and basic technical elements of smart city, this paper presents the fundamental concern of smart city—its citizens, hoping it could provide references for future researchers on this subject.

Introduction

About the definition of smart city, in spite of the diversified sources of theory and various points of view, there is not a universal definition of the ‘Smart City’. Most definitions refer to the use of technology and evidence to improve cities/services, which is not fully reasonable. Dr. Sam Musa has put forward a relatively more precise and shorter definition: A smart city is defined as a city that engages its citizens and connects its infrastructure electronically [1], which is very representative and still used as the common reference.

Different subjects have different interpretations of this definition: Commercial companies and software service providers mostly regard it as a hardware & software integration system that can be used to develop various types of lifestyle functions. The city’s policy makers mainly focus on the incorporation of various intelligent systems into as many infrastructure elements as possible, which builds a faster and more transparent city operation system, and a more open and efficient city-citizens interaction mechanism. As for the participant-citizens, they hope that the development of smart city could bring them a connection between people and all kinds of services—from online order, smart logistics, to smart community. Every citizen seems to be ready to embrace the lifestyle revolution that the smart city is about to bring.

Building a smart city involves the government, enterprises, and the public. The government undertakes the responsibility of strategic planning and applies relevant laws to the construction of smart city. Enterprises provide supporting services and participate in concrete implementation. The public, taken as a whole, takes part in the developing process of the smart city as the subject who uses the product, enjoys the service and evaluates the performance. Technically, smart city is a superposition system which is mainly composed of IoT (Internet of Things), big data, cloud computing and other core technology in order to maintain the sustainable intelligent operation of the city ecosystem. As for study field, smart city maps almost every aspect of reality. For instance, ITS (Intelligent Transportation System), E-medicine, Intelligent construction and Smart Home. The ultimate goal of a smart city is to connect everything electronically.

Typical Cases

A variety of lists of typical smart cities are easily found on foreign and domestic search engines, such as Vienna, Tokyo and Yinchuan. The reasons of their ‘smartness’ can be various.

Vienna

The Viennese city planners have developed a long-term plan and a roadmap for the development of smart city. The construction plan is originally designed to be negotiated by all stakeholders in order to reduce resistance from different subjects in the process of implementation and avoid fragmented policies as well. With the aid of information and communication technology, it has achieved the development of intelligent application in the field of city management, transportation, energy utilization, etc. Figure 1 shows the ongoing smart city strategy of Vienna.

Figure 1. Smart city strategy of Vienna.

Toronto

Toronto is one of the best examples of the North America's smart cities that are being built, and it focuses on the individual parts and radiates out into other application domains. It is mainly demonstrated on the following points: developing green and circular economy, optimizing energy structure and upgrading value-added chain of industry, solving the garbage disposal problem, improving the efficiency of transportation, etc. Such measures can effectively promote the healthy development of the city as a whole.

Figure 2. Real image of Waterfront Toronto.

Waterfront Toronto, as shown in Figure 2, is one of the largest infrastructure projects in North America, and a leading example of how to build a smarter city. Waterfront Toronto has launched the newblueedge.ca, a powerful community portal and platform, which includes IBM social collaboration tools that residents can use to easily connect with neighbors, businesses and service providers in the surrounding area. The portal provides easy ways to view city-wide data on mobile or desktop devices,

strategy of city planning

strategy of environmental protection

protection strategy of

building

g renewal strategy of energy saving industry

-Strategy of

intelligentt ransport strategy of infrastructure facility strategy of efficient energy

allowing residents to keep a finger on the pulse of events, news and activity across the growing community.

London

London is a classic example of making the most of technology: Establishing government-funded research institutions, making full use of data that is generated by subjects of transportation, government, business, academia and consumers to make a more efficient and innovative city.

The innovation of transportation facilities is a microcosm of How London is built as a smart city, and London’s first driverless cars are based on Heathrow ‘pods’, as shown in Figure 3. At 25 kilometers per hour, it has delivered 1.5 million passengers in the past five years, with a total mileage of 3 million kilometers.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is committed to build a closed loop of urban ecosystem. Millions of smart cards are used for residential services, such as public transport, library access, construction, shopping malls and parking. The goal is to make Hong Kong a data-driven city.

The case of Hong Kong reveals the success of constructing a smart city in compact urban area. The land is properly planned and a large part of it is reserved to be used as environmental protection, as shown in Figure 4 [3].

Figure 3. Pods of Heathrow Airport.

Figure 4. Land-use analysis of Hong Kong.

Technology-related Issues

various infrastructures and municipal elements. This type of ‘connection’ is based on a large volume of data, thus smart city is essentially a subject that studies how to efficiently collect, process, and utilize the vast amount of data produced in urban operations. Figure 5 shows the rise of Web 2.0, clouding computing and big data from 2005 to the present, and we can learn that the interest in Big Data has continued to grow since its first measurable growth appeared in early 2011 in comparison with cloud computing and web 2.0 [4].

Data resources are never short -- Internet penetration rate in urban areas of China is up to 70 to 80 percent, and the mobile phone penetration rate is 93 percent, according to Bloomberg report. Powerful traffic entrances are in the hands of unicorn companies in almost every industry. The navigation companies know your daily commuter route and which bus you take; on-line shopping company stores the data of your spending per year and the types of items you bought; mobile payment firms, for instance, Alipay or WeChat Pay, even know which supermarket and small shop around your neighborhood you frequent and what exactly you bought; social softwares can memorize all your chat records and information of your online friends; takeaway companies know your office address and what your favorite flavor is...China will most probably challenge the US Big Data Industry in the near future. China‘s R&D spending, 174,9 billion US$ in PPP, is now second behind the US (427,2), ahead of Japan (152,1), and at more than half of Europe (326,7). For the supercomputers, China is number 2, and in 2010 the most powerful computer of the world, Tianhe-1A, was produced with 2566 Tflops [5]. Figure 6 shows the market size and the growth speed of big data in China.

Figure 5. The rise of Web 2.0, clouding computing and big data.

Figure 6. The market size and growth speed of big data in China.

Table 1. Stakeholders’ value co-creation roles.

Service Entity Role in the Service System Value Proposition

City Major

Strategic Committee

Smart City Alliance

Enabler:

Create a vision, allocate resources, provide strategic leadership, and promote networking.

Avoid political bottleneck, balance authority, clear accountability, enhance synergy of city stakeholders, strengthen project foundation, and improve users’ experience.

University

Research Institution

City Work Unit

Professionals

Provider:

Engage academicians and

professionals as innovator, provide innovative R&D methods, augment knowledge, and manage knowledge distribution systematically.

City is not only as client of the market, but also practice field to learn. Knowledge application and distribution to all service entities with attention to data security.

ICT Company

Consulting Company

Business Firms

ICT Start-up

Utilizer:

Create suitable products and services, set small-scale objectives derived from the vision, learn new practices to produce accessible knowledge, and innovate.

Increase profitability and skill in the field, gain symbiotic mutualism collaboration with the city

representative. Platform as basis for innovation, aggregation of data, and quality assurance.

Citizen

NGO Company

Visitor and Tourist

User:

Participate in experiments, empower citizens through co-creation, and produce place-based experience.

Realize the significance of

engagement and participation in the city development. Better experience of the city from the accessible information and service.

Whether it is technology of ICT, big data, or the Internet and cloud computing, technology to technology, hardware to hardware, they are both just tools and methods after all. And how to effectively make the best use of these tools and methods may be where the true wisdom of smart cities lie in.

Summary

Making the city itself ‘smarter’ is not the ultimate goal of the concept of smart city. For most of the new concepts, from a initial sketch to the market’s acceptance then to being put into practice, the ultimate goal is to serve the ‘people’, and the concept of ‘smart city’ is no exception. The final evaluation standard is whether citizens feel ‘smarter’ in a number of dimensions, and make intelligent responses quickly and effectively for their various needs. The idea of smart city should be integrated into the thinking of urban planners instead of thinking of it when problems arise and taking it as a cure for all urban development problems. After all, what we need to do is not to build a new city, but to optimize an existing city so that it can carry an increasing population within a limited urban space. Smart cities seem to be giving us directions.

Acknowledgements

Last but not least, I’d like to thank all my friends, especially my two lovely roommates, for the encouragement and support.

References

[1] Musa S, Smart Cities - A Roadmap for Development, J Telecommun Syst Manage 5:144. doi: 10.4172/2167-0919.1000144, 2016.

[2] Hannele Ahvenniemi, Aapo Huovila, Isabel Pinto-Seppä, Miimu Airaksinen. What are the differences between sustainable and smart cities?[J]. Cities, 2016.

[3] Yang J, Brandon P S, Sidwell A C. Chapter 4. Smart and Sustainable City — a Case Study from Hong Kong[M]// Smart & Sustainable Built Environments. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2008:33-42.

[4] Batty M. Big data, smart cities and city planning[J]. Dialogues in Human Geography, 2013, 3(3):274-279.

[5] Grumbach S. The stakes of Big Data in the IT industry: China as the next global challenger?[C]// 2013.