What’s up with Smart Cities?

The term “smart city” has been a growing term that is being used when talking about urban development. But what constitutes a smart city? A smart city is a city that implements technology that helps guide policies to create an urban environment that is beneficial to not only the population but is also friendly to the environment. With the aid of technology, cities will be able to operate at a much smoother rate. Technology such as sensors can be applied to almost every single facet of a city to help with managing resources and energy, traffic, and public health. Smart cities have high levels of community engagement. Having so ensures that cities are being planned and designed to meet the needs of the city itself.

This definition fully encompasses what goes into a smart city as it places a high emphasis on the technology that will be involved to create a better functioning environment. An important aspect of smart cities that cannot be ignored is the people. It is so im

portant to include the citizens in a definition of a smart city as they are the people that will be affected the most.

Congestion and Cars

With the ever-growing urban environment, populations in these cities will just get bigger and bigger. There is going to be a point where cities cannot just simply construct more roads. At some point, the road capacity in cities will not be able to sustain the demand. However, with the implementation of new technology such as smart cars and the usage of sensors, traffic congestion on the highways and streets can be a thing of the past.

Using the power of the internet and wifi technologies, cars will be able to communicate with others cars and sensors installed on standing infrastructure about current road conditions and the position of other cars. Each one of these cars contains CPUs that help interpret the data as well as upload the data into a cloud database.

The data collected by the sensors on these cars and infrastructure can be used to program different algorithms to control traffic. For example, traffic light sensors can analyze current traffic data and optimize the wait time that drivers experience at a four-way stop. As mentioned previously, the data can also be stored in a database. With the help of machine learning, cities can use historical data to train their traffic lights to anticipate when traffic will be busy. By doing so, they can adjust the time when they go green or red.

How are Different Cities Dealing with Congestion?

Kansas City, Missouri

In 2016, Bob Benett, the chief innovation officer for Kansas City stated he wanted the city to be the smartest city on the planet. The main goal of the smart city initiative was to help with tourism. In doing, the city decided to implement an elective streetcar line and implement digital kiosks. The streetcars were installed in the busiest parts of the city, areas that are often bustling with activity.

These streetcars and the kiosks being built are helping with the congestion in Kansas City by removing additional cars that would be on the road. With a population of 500,000 people, congestion would be alleviated a lot if even a segment of the population used the streetcar service. The kiosks that are being installed also have the option to find available parking spaces for drivers. This would also really help with congestion as it would allow people to seamlessly find parking rather than driving in circles just to hope that a spot would open up.

I think the smart city plan that Kansas City is implementing is a really good idea to help with congestion as well as bring their community together. By having a streetcar service, people are able to help with congestion by not driving their cars as well explore the city in a new and unique way. With no commercially available autonomous vehicle, implementing other forms of transportation that will help with congestion in the meantime will be the best option for most cities.

Las Vegas, Nevada

Las Vegas is a city that is busy all throughout the day, with an average of 42 million people visiting the city every year. All that activity involves countless cars driving through its streets. Michael Sherwood, Las Vegas’s innovation officer partnered with Cisco to implement a system using IoT to better help the congestion.

Using the Cisco platform, the sensors that are around the city are capturing data and analyze data. For example, the sensors will be able to figure out where the busy streets are in the city and it is able to collect that data. An alarm system is also being implemented where it would notify whether there is a traffic backflow. These data points are critical as they can be utilized by future planners so they can create new ideas for congestion alleviation.

I think the amount of traffic that will be smoothed out will be minimal. For the most part, the traffic that will be affected will be cars that are waiting at traffic lights. In order to be more effective, autonomous vehicles would have to be used to get to the next level with intra-vehicular communication. However, I think the collection of different data is very important as it can serve as a basis for different cities and how they implement new policies.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Dubai is one of the richest cities on the planet. With those resources, they have been pioneers in dealing with traffic congestion. In 2020, the city inaugurated the Dubai Intelligent Traffic Systems Centre. This was all a part of an initiative by the city to become one of the smartest cities in the world.

This traffic control center uses an assortment of traffic management systems for real-time traffic data and predictions for traffic and congestion. The system can also be used to create simulations based on historical data. For example, these simulations can be created to see pressure points in the road system whenever there is a massive event that could overload the roads. Drivers can also access a dedicated app that can help drivers find the most efficient routing and find available parking spaces.

The implementation of an app is an ingenious way that drivers are able to reap the benefits of this new traffic technology. To further improve this though, it would be interesting to see if they would be able to import this data onto the onboard displays that are present on most modern-day cars. If drivers are able to find the next available parking space seamlessly, it would help with congestion greatly.

 

Citations

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Intelligent traffic systems on Dubai Roads Cutting travel time and … Arabian Business. (2022, October 23). Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://www.arabianbusiness.com/industries/transport/intelligent-traffic-systems-on-dubai-roads-cutting-travel-time-and-saving-lives

Maddox, T., Staff, T. R., Abdullahi, A., Shacklett, M., Greenberg, K., & Stone, B. (2016, August 12). Inside Kansas City’s goal to become ‘the smartest city on planet earth’. TechRepublic. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.techrepublic.com/article/inside-kansas-citys-goal-to-become-the-smartest-city-on-planet-earth/

McDonald, C. (2017, June 29). How Vegas is using IOT and Cisco to improve the City Experience: Computer Weekly. ComputerWeekly.com. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450421635/How-Vegas-is-using-IoT-and-Cisco-to-improve-the-city-experience

What is a smart city? – definition and examples. TWI. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/what-is-a-smart-city