Smart cities are here today — and getting smarter

Smart cities aren’t a science fiction, far-off-in-the-future concept. They’re here today, with municipal governments already using technologies that include wireless networks, big data/analytics, mobile applications, Web portals, social media, sensors/tracking products and other tools.

These smart city efforts have lofty goals: Enhancing the quality of life for citizens, improving government processes and reducing energy consumption, among others. Indeed, cities are already seeing some tangible benefits.

But creating a smart city comes with daunting challenges, including the need to provide effective data security and privacy, and to ensure that myriad departments work in harmony.

What makes a city smart? As with any buzz term, the definition varies. But in general, it refers to using information and communications technologies to deliver sustainable economic development and a higher quality of life, while engaging citizens and effectively managing natural resources.

Making cities smarter will become increasingly important. For the first time ever, the majority of the world’s population resides in a city, and this proportion continues to grow, according to the World Health Organization, the coordinating authority for health within the United Nations.

A hundred years ago, two out of every 10 people lived in an urban area, the organization says. As recently as 1990, less than 40% of the global population lived in a city — but by 2010 more than half of all people lived in an urban area. By 2050, the proportion of city dwellers is expected to rise to 70%.

As many city populations continue to grow, here’s what five U.S. cities are doing to help manage it all:

• Scottsdale, Ariz.
• Dubuque, Iowa
• South Bend, Ind.
• Seattle
• Boston

Scottsdale, Ariz.

The city of Scottsdale, Ariz., has several initiatives underway.

One is MyScottsdale, a mobile application the city deployed in the summer of 2013 that allows citizens to report cracked sidewalks, broken street lights and traffic lights, road and sewer issues, graffiti and other problems in the community.

Developed by App-Order, a company that specializes in applications for municipalities, MyScottsdale runs on Android and iOS devices and allows users to choose from a list of problem categories and make a report. Citizens can take pictures of a subject, such as a flooded street, add a description and then email the report into a call center that then routes it to the appropriate department.

In addition to citizens, other users of MyScottsdale include city crews working in the field, such as firefighters, police and transportation workers, who use the app to help identify and quickly resolve problems such as safety hazards. City workers can send and receive information on their devices using a secure wireless network that covers the entire city.

“The world is becoming much more mobile; so many people have smartphones, and we’re trying to capitalize on that to enhance services for citizens,” says Brad Hartig, CIO of Scottsdale. Through the app, the city has received dozens of reports of problems including graffiti, city code and zoning issues, street and alley concerns, and traffic signs and signals.

In another initiative, the city has built an intelligent transportation system for its Traffic Management Center (TMC) that monitors traffic in real time and is designed to combat the costs and aggravation associated with a continual increase in downtown congestion. “This is not new to our industry, but what is new is the level of control the TMC affords,” says Bruce Dressel, manager of the center.

The system uses a wireless mesh network linked to more than 300 traffic signal controllers and 110 high-definition video cameras that monitor traffic flow, as well as 36 electronic signs that inform drivers in real time about traffic congestion and collisions.

Connecting the digital video cameras across numerous city blocks using traditional Ethernet cables wasn’t feasible, so planners implemented a fiber optic network that leverages wireless mesh radios for the last mile. These mesh radios can deliver high-bandwidth live digital video in the most challenging conditions and topologies, Dressel says.

With the system, city managers can precisely match traffic light sequencing with prevailing traffic conditions. The ability to view live video feeds from heavy traffic areas lets officials make fast decisions on how to prevent or reduce congestion, improve information given to drivers via the signs and actively manage traffic affected by special events, weather and emergency situations.

This proved very useful in January, when one of Scottsdale’s motorcycle police officers had a traffic accident on the local portion of the Loop 101 freeway. The roadway was closed for four hours during the investigation.

Scottsdale’s Traffic Management Center and the Arizona Department of Transportation’s Traffic Operations Center worked together to reroute traffic off the freeway and onto city streets. The city’s traffic signals were put in timing patterns designed not only to increase the green light time along the emergency detour route, but also to adjust progression to favor improved traffic flow from signal to signal along the route, Dressel explains. Traffic operations staff posted specific messages on freeway e-signs that detailed which alternate routes drivers should take based on the signal plans.

“What used to take two days to change signal timing at an intersection can now be done in two minutes,” Dressel says.

Yet another project is Speak Up Scottsdale, a moderated online discussion forum where citizens can offer new ideas and comment or vote on a wide range of issues and ideas provided by other users. “To date we have primarily found benefit from the site by soliciting input on a particular topic, and we marry that with the other public input that we receive using more traditional channels [such as] open houses, email, council meetings, etc.,” Hartig says.

“We see this as one more avenue for reaching people” and getting their opinions on various issues of interest to city residents, Hartig says.

Dubuque, Iowa

The city government here is overseeing Smarter Sustainable Dubuque (SSD), part of the city’s initiative to help the city meet residents’ environmental, economic and social equity needs now and in the future.

SSD, launched in 2009, is a public/private partnership between the city, IBM Watson Research Center’s Global Smarter Planet initiative and others.

One completed project is Smarter Water, in which the city used data analytics and cloud computing offerings from IBM to reduce residents’ water usage. In 2010, as part of a pilot, the city created a cloud-based portal that helped 151 households conserve an average 7% in water consumption — an estimated 89,000 gallons of water over a nine-week period.

Water savings were measured by comparing the water consumption of the pilot households with another 152 control-group households that had identical smart meters, but no access to the analysis and insights provided to the pilot group.

A survey of people who used the portal showed that 77% said it increased their understanding of water usage, and 61% reported making a change to a water appliance or in the ways they used water.

The smart-meter system monitored water consumption every 15 minutes and communicated with the IBM Research Cloud. Data collected included weather, demographics and household characteristics. Using the cloud, the city analyzed the data to trigger notification of potential leaks and anomalies.

Participating households were alerted about any potential problems, and were able to get a better understanding of their consumption patterns and compare their usage anonymously with others in the community.

In the fall of 2013, in response to feedback from the pilot, Dubuque began offering a more simplified water portal from Neptune Technology Group called DBQ IQ.

“Citizen interest was in [getting] more direction and interpretation of what their data was showing,” says Chris Kohlmann, information services manager for the city. Citizens “want notifications based on deviations from their trends or exceptions and anomalies in their data,” he says.

When combined with the city’s paperless utility billing and online payment process, “DBQ IQ offers [an] online one-stop shop for customers to interact with their water usage information from the same website where they are paying their bill,” Kohlmann says.

Another pilot program called Smarter Travel, which was launched in 2011, uses a smartphone application developed by IBM Research and RFID technology to collect anonymous data on how, when and where participants travel within the community. IBM is analyzing the aggregated data. The city and its transit partners will use the findings to implement practices and policies to improve mass transit within Dubuque.

More study is underway at the county and regional levels, Kohlmann says. The data, gathered from 1,000 City of Dubuque volunteers who opted into the transportation study, will be used along with additional data gathered by the city’s public transportation system regarding ridership and use of the transit system.

The goals are to analyze movement patterns and model transit demand. The results will help create a route design that maximizes ridership while minimizing cost and average commute time, he says.

If new transit routes are implemented, Kohlmann says, operating costs are expected to decrease while the city’s ability to meet public transit demand should increase.

South Bend, Ind.

One of the initiatives here involves improving water management. The city’s sewers were built to collect both sewage and storm water and can, as a result, overflow and pollute the St. Joseph River during heavy rain. So South Bend turned to local technology company EmNet to develop a way to keep sewers from overflowing.

In 2005, EmNet created a system called CSOnet (Combined Sewer Overflow Network). It includes wireless sensors, which EmNet installed under manhole covers to monitor water levels in sewer pipes. The sensors can open and close “smart” valves in the system, enabling flow to be directed into pipes where capacity is available.

The sensors also send the flow data via radio transmission to a central monitoring station, where wastewater workers can see when problems develop.

As part of the water management effort, South Bend is using IBM’s Intelligent Operations Center for Smarter Cities software-as-a-service. The cloud service allows public works officials to view aggregated data related to water management in real time, to help predict where incidents will occur.

South Bend has invested $6 million to implement the smart sewer system, and has reduced wet weather overflows by 23% and practically eliminated dry weather wastewater overflows in its first year of operation.

In comparison, simply expanding the sewer system via the conventional approach would have cost the city an additional $120 million in capital expenditures.

“The biggest benefit is actually what we don’t have to do” to address overflows, says Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend. “The technology let us avoid an incredibly expensive capital project,” reducing costs in what is already the biggest public works project in the history of the city.

Development of the smart sewer system “is happening in the spirit of our efforts to be a beta city that’s willing to try different technologies if there’s a chance they can benefit the community,” Buttigieg says.

Another project, launched in August 2013, is the South Bend Open Data Portal. It provides municipal data in areas such as social services, code enforcement cases and abandoned properties.

“We’re creating a huge amount of data that people should be able to get their hands on,” Buttigieg says. “We’re making the data readily available and easy to work with.” One aim is to provide data sets and insights that any government worker, citizen or organization could potentially benefit from having, such as a company looking for a new location for an office.

South Bend housing data online helped to develop CityVoice, a new application for gathering feedback on vacant and abandoned properties.

Seattle

In July 2013, Seattle launched its High-Performance Building program, which allows real-time tracking of energy efficiency to help reduce both costs and carbon emissions. The “smart buildings” partnership among the city, Microsoft and the Seattle 2030 District (a public-private collaborative of downtown Seattle property owners) aims to reduce power consumption through real-time data analysis.

The pilot program uses analytics software and cloud services from Microsoft to gain deeper insight from data generated by building management systems, sensors, controls and meters. Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud provides storage for multiple terabytes of real-time energy data; its SQL Server 2012 processes the data for real-time analysis; and Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 provides a reporting portal where building managers can monitor building energy usage and efficiency.

The project is part of Microsoft’s CityNext initiative, a global effort by the company to offer more than 40 city problem-solving scenarios enabling cities to operate more efficiently.

Currently, integration partner Accenture is running scaled analytics in four buildings, with two buildings currently online and two others about to join in. The plan is to expand the program to as many as 500 buildings within Seattle’s 2030 District in the next few years, according to a spokesperson in Seattle’s office of economic development.

The goal is to generate savings of between 10% and 25% of existing costs for both energy and maintenance expenditures, and to help the Seattle 2030 District achieve a 50% reduction in building energy use across the entire downtown by the year 2030.

The program will create “building information systems” to capture and centralize real-time data from the equipment that runs buildings’ heating, cooling and lighting systems. The idea is to analyze data to identify and report items that could lead to inefficient equipment performance and energy waste. Building staff can use this data to adjust elements in each room of a building — such as lighting, temperature and the position of window shades — to maximize energy efficiency.

The pilot is funded in part by an “i6 Green Challenge” grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Economic Development Administration that supports the testing of next-generation energy efficiency technologies.

Pilot participants — including the University of Washington’s School of Medicine, The Boeing Co., Sheraton Hotel Seattle and the City of Seattle’s Municipal Tower — will share performance results. The idea is to increase public awareness of the potential for IT to help achieve energy efficiency and carbon neutrality.

“We think our smart building project will not only enhance Seattle’s energy conservation efforts and open new economic opportunities, but also serve as a model for other cities,” says Brian Surratt, deputy director of Seattle’s Office of Economic Development.

The city hopes other property owners will see that there’s value in adopting these technologies, Surratt says.

Cloud capabilities are important to the project because of the enormous amounts of data involved, adds Charlie Cunniff, strategic advisor in the Office of Economic Development. “Dealing with terabytes of real-time data, performing trend analysis on that data and adjusting specific pieces of equipment in real time requires serious data processing — a perfect application for the cloud,” Cunniff says.

Boston

In December, the Boston Transportation Department launched an initiative designed to proactively improve traffic flow in the city’s so-called Innovation District. The program includes the use of electronic Time to Destination message signs provided by All Traffic Solutions, which will access the vendor’s cloud-based application called DriveTimes. The signs will provide drivers with accurate, constantly updated travel times to key destinations across multiple routes.

The DriveTimes application integrates specialized traffic data from TomTom, a provider of traffic information and navigation technology, and allows transportation officials to quickly configure the signs and easily modify them if necessary.

The signs will initially be placed at key intersections in the city, where drivers have a choice between multiple routes to get to the same destination. “We’re just now refining the exact locations and messages” for the signs, says Chris Osgood, co-chairman of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics.

The goals are to reduce traffic snarls and help get travelers to their destinations faster; the city will monitor the impact the signage has on those goals through driver surveys, Osgood says.

Also part of the Innovation District traffic management initiative is the installation of 330 Smart Parking sensors in the neighborhood. The sensors work with Streetline’s free Parker mobile app to provide drivers with real-time data about available on-street parking spaces. The city expects the sensors to reduce traffic congestion caused by drivers circling around looking for open parking spots.

Another effort involving technology to enhance quality of life in Boston is Street Bump, a program started in 2012 and aimed at helping residents improve neighborhood streets. As users drive, a mobile application running on a smartphone collects data about the smoothness of the ride, and that data provides the city with real-time information that it uses to fix problems and plan long-term investments in road construction.

Drivers use Street Bump to record “bumps” that are identified and located via the app and its built-in GPS. Data is uploaded to a server for analysis, and likely road problems are submitted to the city so they get fixed or classified as known obstacles. Its biggest impact has been identifying the fact that the biggest bumps in the city roads are caused by sunken manhole covers, Osgood says. “Through Street Bump and in collaboration with utility companies, we’ve fixed [more than] 1,250 of these cases,” he says.

The Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics designed and developed the app in partnership with software provider Connected Bits and crowdsourcing venture InnoCentive. The app is free to download on iTunes.

Meeting challenges and facing the future

Building smart cities comes with potential challenges, not the least of which is ensuring information security.

“Networks are believed to be one of the least secure parts of the nation — often built with underfunded budgets by local contractors who have relationships with city officials but little experience with government-level security,” says Rob Enderle, principal analyst with Enderle Group. Nor are network attacks always reported, he says.

“This means that one of the first things that needs doing is hardening the network,” Enderle says. Otherwise cities risk having “a disaster that will make their smarter effort look pretty stupid in hindsight.”

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Security is indeed an ongoing concern for officials, “and if anyone [in city government] said they’ve never had an attempted hack I’d laugh,” says Scottsdale CIO Hartig. “Every single day we see hits against our firewall, and people doing port scans. You’ve got to try to keep one step ahead and make sure you’re doing things in a secure way. The more data you put out there, the more points of entry into your network, the more exposure you have.”

To counter this, Scottsdale uses a multi-layered security approach that involves both technology and end-user training. Training is focused on city staff, Hartig says.

“There are always cyber security concerns around any kind of platform,” adds South Bend’s Buttigieg.

Citizens’ privacy is another issue cities need to keep in mind. “The main challenges that we face … are increased citizen surveillance and civic data collection, which in many people´s minds inevitably leads to the infringement of citizen privacy,” says Naureen Kabir, director of the Urban (co)LAB at the New Cities Foundation. The foundation is a non-profit institution in Geneva, Switzerland, that promotes urban innovations through collaborative partnerships; the (co)LAB is the applied research arm of that group.

The foundation calls on government bodies “to promote increased transparency and dialogue with citizens,” Kabir says. In other words, more discussions and plain-language explanations “could help prevent surveillance technologies from having negative implications,” she says.

Cities also have to prepare for a new era of citizen engagement, where residents will more actively influence efforts such as the planning and maintenance of infrastructure components.

“When you look at what it means to be a smart city, some people focus on the technology aspects; things like sensors and business analytics,” says Jennifer Belissent, an analyst at Forrester Research. “But you need to consider governance and how government is changing toward being more open and increasing engagement.”

Mobile technology and social media use have reignited citizen engagement, and this will only increase with the growth of smartphones, tablets and social sites, Belissent says.

Getting government agencies to work with each other and with IT harmoniously is another challenge. “It involves a change in [management mindset] to move from siloed city departments to a more integrated and collaborative government unit,” Belissent says.

Success “depends a lot on leadership at the executive level, and how IT and leaders of individual departments can pull together and use technology for shared services and to [improve] workflows across different departments,” Belissent says. “It’s a huge change-management challenge.”

Yet another key obstacle involves the financing of smart city efforts. “Many cities are facing a dire economic financial environment,” and smaller municipalities in particular are struggling, Belissent says.

Cost-saving IT efforts such as asset management, server consolidation and the use of shared services such as cloud computing will help bring down the costs of some smart city initiatives, as will the use of shared infrastructures.

“Cities will come together to jointly procure IT infrastructure, and I think that model will really take off,” Belissent says.

This article, Smart cities are here today — and getting smarter, was originally published at Computerworld.com.