Data infrastructure to make our cities ‘smart’
Increasing urbanisation and growing populations mean that cities are growing at rate that many experts would say is ‘alarming’. Within a matter of just two or three years, 60% of the world’s population could be living in an urban environment, with all the challenges of energy and water supply, as well as delivering adequate transport and healthcare.
“The way we are shaping and developing our cities will be critical to ensuring a sustainable future,” says Patrik Sjöstedt, co-head of Hitachi’s Social Innovation Business in Europe. “At the same time, we need to make sure that cities of the future are about more than finding solutions to the challenges that exist today. Our focus should also be on how smart technology and the power of big data will help allow us to bring real social and economic benefits.” Research from Frost & Sullivan predicts that, by 2025, more than 25 cities around the world could be described as ‘smart cities’, with more than half of them located in Europe and North America.
“Smart-enhanced surroundings will become more interactive and capable of better responding to people’s needs,” suggests Sjöstedt. “What needs to be remembered is that smart cities are not just a concept; they will make a tangible contribution to improving society whilst mitigating the challenges we are currently facing.” The introduction to all elements of infrastructure of smart, intuitive technology, capable of autonomously reporting on and responding to its surroundings, will be determined by the availability and ability to process data in real time.
But that data will not only impact on individuals, businesses and governments, but also on how these various entities are integrated into a bigger framework. “Smart cities will essentially create an ecosystem which brings stakeholders together to support economic development, sustainability, and environment conservation,” explains Maurizio Colleluori, principal data engineer, Think Big Analytics. “Big data, mobile technologies and cloud computing have to be in place to enable smart cities to function effectively.” “But,” says Colleluori, “that data will need to be cleansed, validated, profiled, indexed, secured and correctly tracked.
Crucial to all of this is data governance, which ensures that data can be trusted and that people can be made accountable for how data is collected and used.” He also makes the point that, with a shortage of software engineering talent, data management is often left to inexperienced data engineers. Data at the heart “Data is at the heart of the smart city concept,” says Jackson Lee, VP of corporate development in data centre services at Colt Technology Services. “Real-time monitoring systems will generate vast amounts of it, and, routed through intelligent infrastructure, will help generate insights.” In the case of the smart city, those insights will help to address inefficiencies and improve processes.
“The volume of data being generated is surging and most of that is being sent to the cloud,” explains Lee. “While it is more cost effective, cloud farms are massive and can’t be housed near a city. They need to be in isolated areas, be cheap to build, have excellent network connectivity and many are looking to run them on green energy.” A good example in Europe of a data centre that has taken advantage of lower power costs, abundant green energy resources, connectivity and natural cooling is the Lefdal Mine Datacentre (LMD) in Norway.
