08 April 2022

Smart cities are popping up the length and breadth of the country to help us with our day-to-day lives. But why should businesses care? Robert Shepherd asks some smart people some smart questions

A smart city in modern parlance means something different to different people. The concept of a smart city is often perceived in popular culture as how things will look in the future. Robots doing our shopping, drones delivering our goods, unrecognisable cities where buildings reach high into the clouds, flying cars navigating their way through almost virtual motorways. Some might even highlight social classes and inequality; the elite residing at the very top, and the rest left on the ground and living in the past. You could argue the latter is already true in some ways, but now isn’t the time to get political. Getting back to the futuristic examples, let’s just say. one person’s Blade Runner is another’s Back to the Future 2.

The reality isn’t quite as sexy, as Nigel Thorpe, technical director at security system supplier SecureAge, explains. “The idea of a smart city is that the quality of life is improved, city functions are optimised, and economic growth is promoted,” he says. “This is all achieved by applying technology to data. A simple example would be to pool data about car parking so that the city visitor can be directed to the nearest car park with spaces, rather than touring the streets trying to find somewhere to stop. Aims also include more efficient heating and lighting, and even improving waste disposal.”

For Shahzad Nadeem, head of smart cities at tech consultancy Plextek, a smart city has an eco-system of hardware and software factors that create an intelligent and automated network. “This network can ensure that everyday necessities are delivered to residents, for example, transport, health services and supply chains,” he says. “Utilising IoT technologies can create greater efficiencies and reduce costs of running infrastructure. There are inherent dangers associated with ‘trusting’ technology – this is a human emotional concern, but also a security concern and when investing in smart city infrastructure it is key to make sure your security doesn’t let down the whole network.”

So, now that we know how and why the general public can and does benefit, but does the same apply to businesses?

Before we even go there, Mike Best, VAR channel account manager – UK & Ireland at Cambium Networks, says that while the tech experts know, or at least have a very good idea, what smart cities are, we need an even clearer definition and that it must come from the lawmakers and powers that be. “The biggest challenge for governments and local authorities is to define what a smart city is and what should be integrated into a city to make it ‘smart’,” he says. “Although, smart cities are not new, the technology being deployed is. It enables service providers to greatly enhance the experience of service users and allows local authorities to reduce operational costs.”

Nigel Thorpe, SecureAge

“A simple example would be to pool data about car parking so that the city visitor can be directed to the nearest car park with spaces, rather than touring the streets trying to find somewhere to stop”

Karen Burns, co-founder and CEO of Fyma, an urban analytics startup, invokes an esteemed Danish architect and urban design consultant who re-orientated city design.

“A smart city for me is one that uses Jan Gehl’s principles well, understands them and plans for its people and their activities through placemaking, from work and leisure to transport,” she says. “A smart city is an adaptive one: to climate change, population fluctuation, pandemics and demographics changes.”

Nick Sacke, Comms365

“As major contributors to global GDP, smart cities across the globe are running programmes to digitise their infrastructure and improve processes, with targets to improve healthcare, mobility, safety and security, and general economic output”

In fact, Burns argues that it might “be easier to define one a smart city by what it is NOT - and that is a city full of tech for tech’s sake”. She continues: “I recently saw a tender for a ‘pedestrian safe main street’ in a small town of a European country where the municipality was procuring a 1km stretch of road to be covered with multiple sensor-based street crossings that would blink and sound an alarm to pedestrians wanting to cross it in cases where a car was coming .As well as the immense light and noise pollution, how is such a solution safe? Instead, placemaking and physical changes to the road and street furniture would be much better - and safer - solutions.”

Back to the business question: why should enterprises care?

Karen Burns, Fyma

“As well as the immense light and noise pollution, how is such a solution safe? Instead, placemaking and physical changes to the road and street furniture would be much better - and safer - solutions.”

“Smart cities are about introducing new services that respond effectively to the needs of city residents,” says Michael Castle, product marketing manager at Antenova. “These services can optimise utilisation of the infrastructure and resources within a city. The results of implementing smart city services are a more productive environment for businesses. As an example, fitting parking sensors across a smart city enables drivers to find a parking spot quickly, so they are more productive.”

Nick Sacke, head of IoT solutions, Comms365 argues that there are significant challenges facing enterprises and the cities that host them; rising energy costs, climate change targets, sustainability of resources, increased inflation, migratory movements of citizens – and more. “As major contributors to global GDP, smart cities across the globe are running programmes to digitise their infrastructure and improve processes, with targets to improve healthcare, mobility, safety and security, and general economic output,” he says. “Enterprises can gain direct benefit from tapping into the substantial digital data that is being generated by smart city programmes and work in partnership with the city to innovate and deliver new solutions and services to benefit citizens and become more competitive. Several smart cities have now become incubators for a new generation of tech-enabled start-ups that are partnering with established enterprises to deliver highly innovative solutions to city challenges.”

Sacke says examples of these new partnerships can be seen in the provision of healthcare and assisted living, air quality and pollution monitoring, social housing asset management, waste Management, electric vehicle chargepoint networks, flood management and more.

Aare Reintam, CybExer Technologies

“The more the systems of the city are operated by sensors, networks, connections, switches and central IT-systems, the more technically complex and ‘smart’ the cities are”

“Enterprises, therefore, need smart cities and their investment in digital infrastructure, models and processes to fuel their own growth, increase competitive advantage and to take advantage of new opportunities afforded by partnerships with SMEs in the smart city programmes,” Sacke adds. “All parties seem to benefit.”

Furthermore, Burns says enterprises need to sell to large customers - cities are the biggest human ‘hives’ in existence. “When these cities are smart they are also not just good places to live in, but smart procurers of technology - on a massive scale,” she adds. “This is mutually beneficial - only enterprises can cater to such a massive need and really deliver, whilst huge infrastructure, communications etc. projects need enterprise-scaler solutions.”
Of course, when it comes to company networks and the role of IT bosses, it’s about data.

“Data is shared between all aspects of the municipality so that services, resources and decisions are all based upon up-to-date information,” says Thorpe. “From an organisational point of view, access to live data provides the opportunity to deliver services to where, and when they are needed. This is a much more efficient approach than relying on outdated or predicted data.”

Mike Best, Cambium Networks

“Although, smart cities are not new, the technology being deployed is”

However, Thorpe says that while data is the key, it is also the Achilles’ heel. “We are already seeing the sometimes devastating results of data attacks through ransomware,” he continues. “Where access to data is disrupted, organisations’ operations are severely curtailed. Data is subject to theft, scrambling or even destruction, while systems can be blocked using denial of service attacks. The smart city relies on data sharing, and therefore data movement across a ‘supply chain’. And an attack that starts at a single point in the supply chain can impact the entire infrastructure.”

Sadly, Thorpe points out that “we must assume” that any network or infrastructure will be attacked and will be penetrated. “This means that every point in the supply chain must prevent all unknown processes from executing, so blocking any malware in the system,” he says. “And data should all be always encrypted so that it is useless to a cybercriminal.”

It was only going to be a matter of time until security entered the debate. After all, smart cities rely on connected devices and applications – doesn’t that raise privacy and security of data concerns?

“AI needs to be built in a way that does not infringe on either,” says Burns. “Municipalities and real estate developers should always do proper due diligence on their suppliers, check whether they have internal policies in place, trained staff and record their activities properly - and that these are followed through. Regulators can’t be shy of placing hefty fines on companies that infringe on PII (e.g. Clearview AI); however, more is needed to safeguard our public space and cities from mass surveillance - and smart cities can take a lead on this by setting an example and being very strict on who they work with.”

Chris Dyke, sales director UK & Ireland, Allied Telesis, a company that creates networks for campus, branch and IoT solutions, says ICT infrastructure design for smart cities must itself be smart. “It is important to add intelligence to this network and to provide security as well as scalability, robustness, and flexibility,” he adds. “This can be done with several design network concepts, including: automatic security threat isolation and remediation, automated and simplified network management, IoT enabled networks and robustness and scalability.”

Another concern levelled at smart cities is that for them to function in the desired way, they need 24x7 connectivity and power supply. That might seem obvious, because almost everything we use in life has to be turned on for it to function. But if one of the end games is to reduce power consumption and give us greener living, isn’t that counterproductive?

Michael Castle, Antenova

“The results of implementing smart city services are a more productive environment for businesses”

“We are all connected 24/7 - why shouldn’t cities be?” says Burns. “Modern solutions can be built in a way that conserve energy (e.g. cameras that only switch on as movement is detected to conserve energy and processing power, and sensors have very low power requirements). Some things should be switched on 24/7 even if it is wasteful - for example, streetlights that switch on based on movement are not safe for (particularly female) pedestrians as they don’t allow you to see beyond a certain threshold, and so a solution that is built to conserve energy creates a hazard elsewhere.”

Castle uses the example of a parking sensor network as the base stations for a wireless sensor network are powered from the mains. “The remote sensors are battery powered,” he says. They are designed to have a long battery life, so that the batteries are replaced after several years. For safety critical applications, a backup power supply is needed. However, parking is not safety critical, if there is a power cut, it would be expected that the system does not operate.”

“Ultimately, the technology embedded within smart city environments generates vast amounts of data,” Best concludes. “This is due to a myriad of IoT devices collecting, monitoring, and analysing data. From this, smart city operators are able to enhance the efficiency of city operations and services. This enables stakeholders and service providers to monitor operations and available resources for their service users.”

Ben Pocock, Connexin

“We once viewed a smart city as a major global capital spearheading futuristic technology but now it’s here, becoming a reality, the societal impacts boundless, what makes a city really ‘smart’?”

So, where are all these smart cities, then? “According to the government, the UK cities that have implemented smart city projects include Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Hull, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Glasgow, London and Peterborough,” says Dyke.

However, Best warns that the uptake of smart cities across the UK has generally been slow and lags behind many other western European countries. “It is fair to say, however, that more recently, the smart city market is benefiting from significant investment from governments, local authorities, the private sector, and service users,” he concludes. “Increasingly, these organisations are realising that they must work together to bring smart city initiatives to life.”

Nevertheless, there are those who believe there are more smart cities and smart city projects around than the ones that grab the headlines. For example, Aare Reintam, chief operations officer (COO) at security firm CybExer Technologies, opines that most cities nowadays are smart in one way or another. “The more the systems of the city are operated by sensors, networks, connections, switches and central IT-systems, the more technically complex and ‘smart’ the cities are,” he says. “Since cities are artificial environments, they rely on many technical systems in their operations to keep the traffic, water, sewage systems, lighting, flood notification systems, etc., operational. All these systems are connected and use some kind of over-the-air or wired connections to control the mechanical, computer-controlled devices. Disruptions in operations of such systems can cause huge problems to the population, financial loss or even loss of life.”

Another key player is smart city specialist Connexin, which helped the city of Hull become a programmable city and move from outdated siloed service driven technologies to a central platform. The company has also done a lot of work in the fellow Yorkshire city that is Sheffield.

Chris Dyke, Allied Telesis

“It is important to add intelligence to this network and to provide security as well as scalability, robustness, and flexibility”

However, if you thought the definition of a smart city was decided on at the start of this feature, the company’s IoT product specialist Ben Pocock has news for you. “The term ‘smart city’ is an ever-evolving concept,” he says. “We once viewed a smart city as a major global capital spearheading futuristic technology but now it’s here, becoming a reality, the societal impacts boundless, what makes a city really ‘smart’?”

Over to you.