Three Challenges That Smart Cities Navigate Effortlessly

Challenge 2: ICT as a tool, not as a goal in itself

A Smart City is often a City of Things. Throughout the city, countless sensors and cameras collect and transfer data to an infrastructure for analysis. The resulting insights can serve to determine a course of action. For example, you can count numbers of cars and then propose alternative routes on information boards along the road to redirect traffic automatically during peak times. Crucial factors here are functioning equipment and a good infrastructure to bring everything together. With an Edge platform, you can manage all the various sensors and cameras. It displays their general operational state, allows you to perform updates and reconfigure settings remotely, and enables secure data processing. As images are used immediately, for example, these can be processed locally and needn't be saved. These are just a few examples of ICT applications a city can incorporate. The main thing is that everything be rooted in a policy objective, not in the urge to show off with a smart camera.

Challenge 3: Implementation based on internal capability and support

Organizations are complicated things. Very often, departments operate in isolation, with collaboration and cross-pollination virtually non-existent. Furthermore, resources are often scarce, and ICT is not always assigned its correct role. To achieve a vision of a Smart City, this must be supported throughout your organization. Agile and Lean can help you establish this support. The implementation must take place in stages, with listening as the first, critical step. To create buy-in, you identify the needs and expectations of all stakeholders, designate the key people responsible for each area, and determine what is needed and when, together. During the implementation, regular feedback on the process and results can help you to make prompt adjustments as required.