Yasmine  Badawy  MSIS  -­‐  2015  

Smart  Cities  &  Technology  HARNESSING  TECHNOLOGY  TO  BUILD  THE  FUTURE  

       

   

   

 

Table  of  Contents  1.   Introduction  ............................................................................................................................  2  

2.   Economic  Impact  .....................................................................................................................  2  

3.   Cloud  Computing  .....................................................................................................................  3  

a.   Cloud  computing  model  [2]  .................................................................................................  3  

b.   The  main  Characteristics  of  Cloud  Computing:  ...................................................................  4  

c.   Using  Cloud  Technologies  for  large-­‐scale  house  data  in  smart  city  ....................................  6  

4.   Barriers  to  entry  ......................................................................................................................  7  

5.   Architecture  solutions  .............................................................................................................  9  

6.   Citation  Paper  ........................................................................................................................  11  

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Introduction  Smart  city  is  the  next-­‐generation  city  planning  to  achieve  maximum  reward  and  

development  to  the  city.  The  major  cities  economy  around  the  world  is  becoming  

more  creative  and  attracting  talent.  The  main  development  approach  of  policy  

makers  is  attracting  smart  people  from  all  over  the  world  and  bringing  talent  to  the  

cities.  Information  system,  system  thinking,  and  analytics  are  attracting  highly  

educated  people  to  work  in  those  cities.    

 

2. Economic  Impact    Economic  Development  starts  with  smart  people.  Technology  works  to  bring  

smart  people  to  technology  savvy  cities.  “Today,  more  than  half  the  population  is  

living  in  urban  environments.  The  related  efforts  to  facilitate  viable  living  conditions  

are  tremendous;  solutions  are  urgently  needed,  and  quickly  advancing  technologies  

may  just  be  the  answer”  (1)  

Major cities,  as  centers  for  global  economy,  are  the  main  points  for  this  

transformation.  In  the  near  future,  three  interconnected  factors  will  place  more  

emphasis  on  the  role  of  cities  in  economic  development:    

• The  world  never  reached  this  level  of  urbanization    

• Large  cities  are  inhabited  by  the  world’s  most  educated,  highly  skilled,  

entrepreneur  mentality  in  almost  most  fields.  

• Large  cities  with  its  large  population  and  finance  can  absorb  new  

business  and  investments  that  can  create  a  better  economy  

The  purpose  of  establishing  smart  cities  technology  is  to  decrease  costs  and  

increase  efficiency  while  aiming  for  long  term  growth.  Policy  makers  should  make  

sure  to  create  quality  jobs  vs  quantity  jobs.  Through  technology  and  smart  city  

approach,  the  goal  can  be  created.  

According to IBM statistics, the number of highly educated international migrants

around the world is expected to increase more than triple, from 29.5 million workers in

the 1990s to almost 99 million in the next decade. On top of large cities, smaller cities

can merge within this technology to become hub cities. Some of the main advantages of

smart cities are: reducing costs, supporting solutions during emergencies, reducing time

in duties and errors in information.  

3. Cloud  Computing  With  all  being  said  about  the  advantage  of  Smart  City,  the  answer  to  facilitate  

future  smart  city  logistics  is  in  an  effective  IT  System  usage  based  on  cloud  

computing.    

a. Cloud  computing  model  [2]  Cloud  computing  is  a  model  for  enabling  ubiquitous,  convenient,  on-­‐demand  

network  access  to  a  shared  pool  of  configurable  computing  resources  (e.g.,  

networks,  servers,  storage,  applications,  and  service)  that  can  be  rapidly  

provisioned  and  released  with  minimal  management  effort  or  service  

provider  interaction.  It  is  composed  of  five  essential  characteristics  (on-­‐

demand  self-­‐service,  broad  network  access,  resource  pooling,  rapid  elasticity,  

measured service),  three  service  models  (Software  as  a  Service-­‐SAAS-­‐  the  

capability  provided  to  the  consumer  is  to  use  the  provider’s  applications  

running  on  a  cloud  infrastructure  and  are  accessible  from  various  client  

devices.    

The  most  important  factor  from  the  management  point  of  view  of  cloud  

computing  model  are  its  essential  characteristics.  (Mell  &  Grance,  2011).  

 

b. The  main  Characterist ics  of  Cloud  Computing:  • On-demand self-service. A consumer can access computing capabilities such

as server time without human interaction.

• Broad network access. Capabilities are available over the network and can be

accessed through phones, laptops, etc.

• Resource pooling. Customer does not have an idea of exact location of

resource, but can identify location on a broader length. Examples of resources

are network bandwidth and memory.

• Rapid elasticity. Consumer gets rapid access to capabilities with no time and

unlimited quantity

• Measured Service. A metered capability is used to control cloud system and

optimize recourses

Center for Economics and Business Research, 2010, implied a list of characteristics

which will be summarized below:

• Reduced IT capital expenditure

• Reduced spend on IT headcount

• Rapid access to faster computing capabilities

• Improved IT capacity utilization

• Rapid rollout of an demand resources

• Pay-per-use model

• Lower barriers to entry

Cloud  computing  shares  among  users  elastic  resources  over  a  limitless  network  

due  to  its  characteristics.  The  most  important  benefits  for  respondents  of  Ovum  

Survey,  conducted  in  2011,  concerning  cloud  services  usage  representing  

multinational  corporations  are  presented  in  figure  below.    

c. Using  Cloud  Technologies  for   large-­‐scale  house  data   in  smart  city  A  wide  variety  of  data  are  collected  sensors  and  devices  to  achieve  value-­‐

added  services.  These  data  are  taken  from  smart  houses  in  smart  cities.  Data  

includes  all  what  is  vital  to  make  major  decisions  in  improving  the  city  if  used  

efficiently.  The  data  include,  for  instance,  traffic  conditions  of  roads,  power  

consumption  of  houses,  health  status  of  inhabitants  and  environmental  

measurements.    This  data  is  analyzed  with  advances  data  processing  technologies  to  

achieve  smart  city  services.  These  smart  city  services  are  achieved  by  house  data  

sent  to  external  cloud  from  every  smart  house  in  a  smart  city.    

House  data  is  any  data  collected  from  smart  houses  to  achieve  smart  city  

services.  Typical  house  data  include  energy  consumption,  status  of  appliances  and  

environmental  measures.  These  data  are  recorded  with  date  and  time,  

characterizing  dynamic  contexts  and  history  of  a  house.  This  data  is  dynamic  as  it  is  

related  to  AC  usage  for  example.  On  the  other  hand,  smart  city  services  require  static  

information.  Static  information  as  in  meta-­‐data;  examples  are:  address  of  house,  

number  of  kids  in  a  household,  etc.  Although  this  static  info  may  change,  as  a  mom  

can  deliver  an  extra  baby,  but  to  the  most  part  it  is  dynamic  as  electricity  rate  room  

temperature.  

A  smart  city  service  is  implemented  by  acknowledging  the  dynamic  

information  then  retrieving  the  static  information.  The  final  conclusion  is  summing  

up  their  values.  The  main  goal  of  a  smart  city  is  to  gather  data  of  the  city  then  

provide  services  based  on  the  data.  

 

Even  though  all  studies  prove  the  benefits  of  implying  technology  to  achieve  

smart  cities  and  develop  communities,  but  little  money  is  poured  into  this  new  

technology.  There  are  barriers  to  entry,  which  is  discussed  below.    

4. Barriers  to  entry  Although  the  need  of  smart  city,  as  mentioned  above,  is  essential,  it  is  not  

being  endorsed  by  many.  The  slowness  in  establishing  the  technology  related  to  

smart  cities  is  due  to  the  need  of  policy  changes  and  limited  capital  availability  and  

unsystematic  governments  funding  measurements.  In  addition,  the  inconsistency  in  

national  and  international  regulations  related  to  environmental  policies  does  not  

help  to  encourage  initiatives.  Finally,  there  is  a  lack  of  methodologies  and  metrics  

for  reporting  and  verifying  the  investment  returns  due  to  smart  cities  technologies.  

Since  the  recession  hit  the  economy  nationally  and  globally  badly  in  2008  

and  2009,  there  have  been  major  changes  in  finance.  Those  changes  are  reflected  on  

public  spending  and  risk  regulations.  As  risk  regulations  affect  investments  within  

the  private  sectors,  few  initiatives  compared  to  neediness  of  smart  cities  are  taken.  

Barriers to entry are not only economic or political. The geographical

scattering of people across cities makes it harder for people involved in Smart Cities

to achieve maximum reward. In addition, the complex technology required to achieve

the essential affectivity of smart cities models is complex and complicated. All of the

above results don’t provide promising investment environment for people in the

private sector to fund and get involved in smart cities projects. Similar investment

background occurred couple of decades ago during the development of IT. Policy

makers’ involvement and less freedom to business people to make sole decisions in

emerging IT, had discouraged business people to invest in IT. Nowadays, IT in

companies is solely under the responsibility of IT employees.

The last couple of years, major industry and service sectors have been taking

part in the industrialization of IT in the form of cloud computing and open service

delivery platforms.

IBM, as an example, offers a (Pay only for the services you use) service.

IBM’s model is to make governments pay only for the services they use and to have

infrastructure that can scale whenever new functional capabilities are needed or

additional governmental entities are added. A government can pay only for the usage

a particular department used, and add later other departments.

Below: Cloud deployment flexibility: Just in time software and hardware

5. Architecture  solutions  Startups that provide new services and deliver new applications for a variety of

smart city areas have been emerging into the market. Companies as Cisco, IBM,

Telefonica and other Global ICT players launch their smart city platforms. In

addition, big data structures emerge which allows storing and analyzing the general

information. Those general information could be offered to third parties through

standard interfaces in an open data fashion. Smart city platforms are designed to

provide services to support a variety of applications domains as in the figure below.

To make smart cities technologies grow and standardize, private sectors needs

to take a bigger role in making this mission accomplished. Those private sectors need

to work hand by hand with the public sector. Public sectors need to set the regulations

and offer a healthy investment environment for private sector. Another option can be

a public-private partnership (PPPs). PPPs can act as Internet of Things (IoT) service

operators and handle the delivery of new open data interfaces in a corporate fashion.

6. Citation  Paper  1. Vilajosana, I. , Llosa, J. , Martinez, B. , Domingo-Prieto, M. , Angles, A. , et al. (2013).

Bootstrapping smart cities through a self-sustainable model based on big data flows. IEEE

Communications Magazine, 51(6), 128-134.

2. Nowicka, K. (2014). Smart city logistics on cloud computing model. Procedia - Social and

Behavioral Sciences, 151, 266-281.

3. IBM Global Business Services. (2010.) Executive Report. Smarter cities for smarter growth.

How cities can optimize their systems for the talent-based economy

4. Yamamoto, Shintaro, Matsumoto, Shinsuke, Nakamura, Masahide. (2012). Using Cloud

Technologies for Large-Scale House Data in Smart City. IEEE Communications Magazine

5. IBM Global Business Services. (2011). White Paper. IBM Smarter City Solutions on Cloud

6. BATAGAN, L. (2011). Indicators for economic and social development of future smart city.

Journal of Applied Quantitative Methods, 6, 27-34.