Planning For A Smart City

Smart city services are born from a desire to be a good steward of public funds in the same way that innovations of the past were.Municipalities have always sought to provide top-quality services to their constituents as efficiently as possible and smart city initiative takes the service delivery to next level.

Planning smart city requires both a well articulated planning at the city level and a involvement & support from the community at large. Using data insights to streamline city services requires changing the physical services delivery and also the way administration works to approaches city planning. Creating smart city is not possible without involvement of the people, elected representatives,administration and private service providers. I was invited by one of the officials of the Smart City team to look at their new office and meet his team. It was an interesting experience and I got an opportunity to understand how the local administration was planning to integrate various services under the smart city initiative. On the path to becoming a smart city, the first implmentations are the most crucial to your project’s overall success. Being a software architect I could not help but give the team an overview of how we help Fortune 500 client to implement their project from defining the vision to a successful implementation. Like any new implementation , smart city planning is a set of processes to ensure that you are engaging your residents when necessary while also effectively managing the elements of your plan that are within your control. Every city has its unique footprint and one needs to understand that though the strategy remains the same the roadmap for Smart City implementation will be unique to each city.

1. Prioritize your city's priorities

Your local city community needs will drive which technologies and data you decide to collect first. As a city government, your priority may be anything from improving sanitation or stay animal management to improving transportation within city limits. You may even have existing services in place but may need a better system for managing existing assets. Way to start would be to conduct and audit, review your existing processes and identify areas that are in need of improvisation and innovation and then create a preliminary wish list to inform your planning process.

Once you have conducted an audit, it is important to engage your community to determine what common pain points that are affecting the people. This can be done at a public forum or town hall meeting, using any existing feedback mechanism or conducting contest to determine the most innovative ideas that your citizens can come up with. Local insights are invaluable as you decide where to most effectively allocate your resources, so get creative with how you solicit feedback. The services that affect most people if prioritized will deliver better support for next stage of implementation.

2. Define the vision for your City as Smart City

Very few people know that for implementing great software companies invest a lot in creating great training programs for the employee who are going to use the software. To get your community on board with your vision and start winning champions to your cause, you need to ensure that everybody is working toward a consistent set of goals. Smart cities are meant to be population-centric, so your goals should be measured against the impact your services will have upon the daily lives of your constituents. You may even consider making mission statement to guide your initial project and to provide a touch point to encourage future innovations. As an example, Columbus, Ohio “has a bold vision to be a community that provides beauty, prosperity and health for all of its citizens.” With this mission in mind, Columbus outlined a series of smart systems that led them to win the U.S. Department of Transportation Smart Cities Challenge in 2016.

3. Identify the business model

Many cities have a grand vision of what their smart city could look like, but not all communities can fully implement smart technology on their own due to budgetary or personnel constraints. You may be able to build, own and operate your own system, or a full public-private partnership could be attractive. Evaluate all of your options, including any models that exist between the two, to determine an implementation model that makes the most sense for your city.

4. Perform a gap analysis

A gap analysis is a method of assessing the differences in performance between a business' information systems or software applications to determine whether business requirements are being met and if not, what steps should be taken to ensure they are met successfully.  In order to evaluate your existing infrastructure and identify the steps necessary to realize your Smart City vision, conduct a gap analysis. If you are unsure of how to get started, there are several templates and tools available online that can be found with a quick search. Focus on determining what types of data need to be collected, and be sure to identify the technologies you would like to use relatively early in your process. This way, you can identify the seams and overlaps between different systems, reducing the likelihood of incompatibility issues arising later in your implementation.

5. Outline financing and budgets

While your budget will inform your implementation model as noted above, at this stage it is imperative to focus on short-term, mid-term and long-term implementation ranges. Now is also the time to build a business case for any efficiencies that you expect to gain through the implementation of smart technology. Even this far along in the process, it is a good idea to sell the benefits of your vision to stake holders.

6. Capture the low-hanging fruit

Low hanging fruits give quick and assured results. With a clear view of your budget, identify and group existing assets that are readily scalable to city-wide use. For example, you may be able to integrate your existing transportation infrastructure with utilities and community services. This is the time to focus on the big picture, and you will want to have access to any data and visuals that will allow you to do that. Look to your geographic information system (GIS) or technology department to perform scenario analysis using digital mapping or similar platforms to understand potential areas where connectivity would be required and to identify weaknesses. Parcel data, zoning, and land use information available through location intelligence will all be vital when the time comes to scale your deployment following the pilot phase.

7. Develop and implement pilot projects

When the time comes to deploy your new smart systems, be as targeted as possible with how you roll out your pilot program. Start small in order to better maximize learning opportunities and measure your early successes, and look for an early win you can use to create momentum and positive buzz in the community. Regularly review your smart city vision against the available data to ensure your plan will grow with your community’s needs. If you are struggling to replicate early successes as you expand your offering, then look for patterns in the data that may illuminate ways that you can do so.

Ultimately, the long-term success or failure of any large-scale implementation of smart technology will be determined by the measurement and optimization efforts that take place after deployment. However, by mindfully applying these few steps, you can be assured that your community has placed its best foot forward on the path to becoming a smart city.