Report Sponsor: Featured Analyst M A Y 2 0 1 6 Smartening up the city New technologies promise a breakthrough for efforts to improve urban living By David Pringle 2 F E A T U R E R E P O R T THE RISE OF THE SMART CITY Strain in the city The world is quickly urbanizing. Every week, more than 1 million people move into cities across the world. At the end of 2015, more than half (54%) of the world?s population lived in cities, according to the CIA Factbook, following a 2% increase in the urban population each year be- tween 2010 and 2015. In rich countries, urbanization is a two-way street, as economic and cultural factors prompt population shifts between cities. People are migrating to highly diversified cities, such as London and Houston, while abandoning conurbations, such as Leipzig and Detroit, which rely heavily on now declining industries. Of course, both people and employers tend to gravitate towards cities perceived to offer a high quality of life. For example, Vienna, the historic and picturesque capital of Austria, claims to be welcoming five new inhabitants every hour. Although urbanization can have a positive socio-economic impact, it can also happen too quickly. In much of the world, the strain on city administrations is all too ap- parent. Across Africa, developing Asia and Latin America, cities are increasingly densely populated, congested and polluted. In May 2016, the World Health Organiza- tion warned that more than 80% of people in urban areas around the world are exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution: Ambient air pollution, made of high concentra- tions of small and fine particulate matter, causes 3 million people to die prematurely every year, accord- ing to the WHO. As more newcom- ers arrive, cities? limited bus, rail, energy and water networks also come under massive pressure. In China, where the number of people living in cities is rising 3% every year, air quality in Beijing and some other urban areas is of- ten dangerous to health, while grid- locked road networks mean people spend hours sitting in traffic jams each day. When urbanization reach- es 50% to 70%, social problems aris- ing from overcrowding also tend to increase, notes Dr. Wan Biyu, chief As the world becomes more and more urban, mayors and municipalities are striving to make their cities smarter. In theory at least, information and communications technologies can keep traffic mov- ing; detect and prevent crime; monitor the condition of roads, lighting, parks and other urban infra- structure; and efficiently allocate public resources. In practice, making existing cities smart is proving difficult. Many different stakeholders need to be involved, while sensors, controls and connectivity can be difficult to install in dense urban environ- ments. In response, some cities are now experimenting with low-cost, low-power ?Internet of Things? technologies that could usher in a new wave of smart city applications. In the medium-term, ?5G? technologies are also promising to give municipalities access to ultra-reliable, low-latency band- width. Is the smart city era finally upon us? 3 F E A T U R E R E P O R T scientist of National Smart City Joint Labs in China. In other words, city infrastructure around the world is under severe strain and local governments are grappling with pressing problems that need to be urgently addressed. Has the smart city come of age? ICT has long been regarded as key to addressing the growing chal- lenges faced by crowded cities. In fact, the notion of using connected sensors and controls to create a so- called smart city has been around for decades. Few cities have man- aged to actually become smart ? many solutions have been trialled and piloted, but few have been de- ployed on a large scale. The smart city has been a slow burn. That may be about to change. In the past year or so, interest in smart city concepts has leapt (see Figure 1) as urban challenges intensify and technologies improve ? the ca- pabilities of connectivity and sen- sors (including digital cameras) are increasing even as the cost of this equipment falls. For the ICT industry, the smart city represents a major business opportunity. Strategy Analytics, So u rc e: G oo gl e T re n d s FIG. 1: Google searches for smart city over time FIG. 2: Total Smart City ICT Revenue by Solution Area (US$ Millions) 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 Platform Consulting System Integration So u rc e: S tr a te gy A n a ly ti cs , O ct ob er 2 01 5 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 1M 900,000 800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 4 for example, has forecast ?urban ICT revenues? will reach $977 bil- lion by 2022 (see Figure 2). The re- search firm believes smart health, smart infrastructure and smart government represent the largest ICT opportunities. ?It is definitely the case that the pace of the excitement and engage- ment in this topic is accelerating,? said Paul Wilson, managing direc- tor of Bristol Is Open, the smart city unit for Bristol, England. ?It is a complete fast-paced ride right now. Ten years ago people were do- ing this work and it was slow and visionary. Today, it is extremely fast. So, yes, there is something of a tipping point. But we still have an- other 10 or 20 years of work to do. ? However, some experts remain skeptical about how fast smart cit- ies can develop, noting large-scale deployments are still relatively rare. ?We have lots of really good pilots, and some of them have made it to production grade. But they are gen- erally not in the operational guts of the cities,? said Jeremy Green, prin- cipal analyst at Machina Research. ?I don?t think we are at tipping point, not yet.? Pilots and trials abound One of factors holding back the arrival of the smart city is politics. Many different stakeholders can be involved in the decision-making process, both inside and outside the city administration, leading to ei- ther gridlock or an uncoordinated, piecemeal approach. ?City administrations can amount to a ramshackle collection of sepa- rate organizations under loose po- litical control with a lot of statutory obligations and nondiscretionary spending,? noted Green. ?Cities typi- cally don?t have a CIO, and if they do they are in charge of keeping the lights on and keeping the desktops running. They are managing the current estate rather than think- ing about the next five years.? Recognizing this issue, some cities have set up dedicated smart city units. Atlanta, for example, created a centralized smart city team with a dedicated director who works on nothing else. ?We have competing priorities and we are never going to move the needle unless we have a dedicated team working on it,? said Samir Saini, commissioner and CIO for Atlanta. ?You need the buy-in from your department heads and Jeremy Green, Principal Analyst at Machina Research Samir Saini, Commissioner and CIO for Atlanta F E A T U R E R E P O R T 5 your commissioners. All the data in the world won?t solve anything unless your department heads use that data to make decisions.? National and international poli- tics can also muddy the waters. Green notes European Union funding for smart city pilots is spread far and wide, rather than focused on the creation of a few centers of excellence. He says this approach tends to lead to duplica- tion and can hold back the learn- ing process about what works and what doesn?t. Elsewhere in the world, some countries are embracing the smart city concept at a national level, developing comprehensive strategies. China, for example, is employing a top-down approach in which the government is di- recting the use of ICT to improve urban living. Across the country, more than 300 metropolises are pi- loting smart city solutions, which use a combination of sensors, con- nectivity, data analytics and au- tomation to make more efficient use of resources and provide inno- vative new services. These pilot smart cities are located in more than 30 provinces around China, which differ greatly in many ways, said Dr. Biyu, who has visited more than 200 pilot cities and towns. Some of the pilots are well ad- vanced. Yinchuan, China, for exam- ple, started a smart city initiative in 2009. After striking a partnership with telecommunications equip- ment vendor ZTE in 2014, Yinch- uan?s initiative now spans 10 do- mains, including smart governance, smart transportation and smart cli- mate. Some of the technologies be- ing deployed appear futuristic: Bus passengers, for example, can now pay their fare via face recognition ? they simply look at a camera as they board the bus, said Carl Piva, VP strategic programs at TM Forum, who visited Yinchuan in 2015. Greenfield versus brownfield Of course, the most advanced smart cities tend to be those that have been built from scratch ? so-called green- field, as opposed to brownfield, cit- ies. New urban developments typi- cally embed ICT, including fiber broadband links, into the core in- frastructure. In China, South Korea, Abu Dhabi, Brazil, Spain and Portu- gal, smart cities or smart districts are effectively being built from scratch: street lights, car parks, traffic con- trols, waste disposal facilities and other city infrastructure are all built with connected sensors installed. Andrew Brown, executive director The 22@Barcelona district. F E A T U R E R E P O R T 6 for enterprise and IoT at Strategy Analytics, points to the 22@Barcelo- na project in Spain as a good exam- ple of what is possible when entire districts are being created or rede- veloped. Funded by taxpayers, the 180 million euro ($201 million) proj- ect involved changing 100 hectares of industrial land on Barcelona?s seafront into a business district be- tween 2000 and 2010. With the help of Cisco and other technology part- ners, the district employs tempera- ture, humidity, dust, noise and gas sensors; a parking management sys- tem; connected waste containers; smart lighting, a connected water- ing system; and bus stops equipped with digital kiosks. SMART CITY TECHNOLOGY: Lowering power requirements and costs Mobile operators have typically used their existing 2G and 3G cel- lular networks to support M2M con- nections. Designed primarily to con- nect mobile phones, these existing networks aren?t well suited to serv- ing the emerging IoT market, which increasingly requires dedicated networks specifically designed to meet the requirements of machines, vehicles and appliances. the next 12 months, before thrashing out the standards for the next generation of cellular technologies (5G), which is set to arrive towards the end of the decade. Step change in data processing Digital sensors are also improving fast. Green points to dramatic im- provements in image processing ca- pabilities, which can enable a video camera to analyze images and then transmit the salient information back to the city administration. ?You can now increasingly do pro- cessing at the edge of the network,? Green says. This technology could enable a city to deploy connected cameras to fulfill a number or roles, such as security, congestion monitoring and road charging. The combination of these tech- nology advances is seen as giving the smart city a new sense of mo- mentum. ?Why now? There is a perfect storm of technology evolu- tion that has enabled these things to happen,? said Brown of Strategy Analytics. ?The platforms are there. We are seeing M2M morph into IoT with the involvement of the big data analytics players, such as IBM, Accenture, Cisco and Oracle. The In response, both startups and major equipment vendors are de- veloping new LPWA technologies designed to make it increasingly vi- able to connect large numbers of de- vices, machines, vehicles and appli- ances. As the name suggests, these networks are frugal with power, en- abling a connected device to have a battery life measured in years, rath- er than weeks, and dramatically re- ducing maintenance costs, making it more feasible to deploy connected sensors in inaccessible locations. Al- though some proponents of LPWA technologies forecast battery lives of 10 years, Green believes that may not be realistic in practice. Still, LPWA networks are seen as low cost to deploy and run ? con- nectivity costs could fall to a few dollars for each connection per year, rather than per month. These advances promise to make it easier, quicker and cheaper for cities to use wireless networks to monitor and control large numbers of connec- tions in a small area. For example, it is becoming increasingly viable to connect every streetlight, every parking space or every waste bin. The mobile industry is set to finalize the LPWA standards over F E A T U R E R E P O R T Connections have the power to change the world. Seamless collaboration will connect people, spurring innovation. Connected devices will provide access to critical data, saving lives. Continuous connectivity will create new business models and services, enabling endless possibilities. This is future connectivity, this is the Living Network. Learn how InterDigital is helping to connect it here: www.interdigital.com/iot CREATE. CONNECT. LIVE.^ 8 communications part and the IT part are starting to operate togeth- er and there are signs that the mar- ket is moving from piecemeal pilots to a more systematic approach.? Indeed, smart cities are rising up the agenda of the TM Forum, a trade body that looks to straddles IT and telecoms. In May 2016, TM Forum launched a smart city maturity and benchmarking model, which is designed to enable an aspiring smart city to assess its strengths and weaknesses in five key dimen- sion areas and to set clear goals as to how it will transform over the next two to five years. The Shang- hai Academy plans to use the TM Forum model to support 200 smart city pilots in China. Harnessing data analytics There is also a sense the focus of smart city projects is moving from cost savings and greater ef- ficiency towards innovative so- lutions designed to enhance the lives of inhabitants and increase economic activity. ?Traditionally the vision of a smart city has been focused on making the city more efficient for citizens,? said Juanjo Hierro, CTO of the industrial IoT and smart cities platform product unit at Telef?ni- ca. ?But what is coming now, with the economy of data, are engines of growth. We are looking at how to transform the city and enable new services that are created around data. Data is the gold mine.? Telef?nica and rival operator Orange are advocating the wide- spread use of the open source framework FIWARE to enable data interoperability and porta- bility. Telef?nica says the Open and Agile Smart Cities initiative, which is adopting FIWARE as a standard, is supported by 89 cit- ies in 19 countries. Proponents see FIWARE as an international in- formation hub, which will enable services to be connected across multiple territories. Hierro envisions service provid- ers will be able to mashup data from multiple sources, including both the city administration and third parties, to create new proposi- tions and business models. ?It is es- sential to have central application programming interfaces, a common infrastructure, and common data models and a common single mar- ket,? Hierro explained. Others also see data analytics as the key to unlocking the potential of ICT to transform urban living. Jane Chen, chairperson of ZTESoft, the software arm of ZTE, says the ?Smart City 3.0? (the next phase in the evolution of smart cities) will use software platforms to analyze data from multiple sources to en- able the deployment of innovative new solutions. Setting data free Uber and its rivals have shown how real-time data can be used to Juanjo Hierro, CTO of Industrial IoT and Smart Cities Platform at Telef?nica F E A T U R E R E P O R T 9 or a change in behavior that might indicate the occupant has a prob- lem, and enable care workers to pri- oritize which houses they visit. The next step is to put people in the pilot house to find out which sensors they consider the most intrusive, and which feel acceptable and ignor- able. Once the pilot team have these insights, Bristol plans to scale up the solution to 50 houses, and then mak- ing a model that can be scaled up to thousands of houses. The programmable city The growing use of software within telecom networks could also give a smart city more control over the available connectivity and how it is deployed. In particu- lar, the advent of software-defined networks and network functions virtualization are making it easier to adapt telecom networks to serve the needs of specific applications. Bristol is working with the local university, NEC and InterDigital to deploy SDN across the city and en- able NFV. ?We describe what we are doing in Bristol as a programmable city,? said Wilson. ?The phrase smart city has so many meanings ? what we the traffic flow in the city in a five second delay environment,? said Wilson. ?The second one was around air quality.? Bristol is also looking to harness the creativity of its citizens and com- panies in other domains. The city is working with the local university on a project to improve the quality of life of elderly people occupying assisted living homes in the city. The project involves the development and deploy- ment of a large number of low-power sensors throughout a pilot house: in the shower, the kitchen, the floor and many other places. These sensors are designed to detect a fall, an accident allocate resources in real time to make the process of finding a ride faster and more efficient. Cities are increasingly experimenting with the idea of opening up their data and enabling private companies to come up with solutions designed to meet the needs of local consumers and businesses. Bristol, which is the third most congested city in the U.K., is giving developers access to near real-time data about the state of the transport network. ?The first API put out by the coun- cil is a transport API, which relates to all interactions of buses and off the traffic lights, so you can model So u rc e: A d va n ta ge E n gi n ee rs Millennium Square Bristol F E A T U R E R E P O R T 10 are doing involves programmable networks, it involves software- defined networks. We are taking quite a technical approach to the whole thing.? Bristol is seen as one Britain?s leading smart cities, according to new research commissioned by Huawei and conducted by Navigant Consulting. ?I see London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester Milton Keynes, Leeds and Peterborough as cities that I count amongst Euro- pean pathfinders,? said Eric Woods, research director at Navigant. SMART CITY APPLICATIONS: The low hanging fruit Right now, the most widely de- ployed smart city solutions tend to be those for which there is a very straightforward business case. That business case is usually based on significant cost savings. Strategy Analytics says cities are embrac- ing smart street lighting simply because the cost of the sensors re- quired to check whether the lights actually need to be on is lower than the potential energy savings. If the sensors are connected, they can also flag when a particular streetlight is broken and needs replacing. Some streetlight providers may even pro- vide this technology for free, if they are allowed to harness the data to provide ongoing maintenance and other services, reckons Peter Sany, CEO of the TM Forum. There is also a clear business case for connecting waste bins. Sensors can monitor when a bin is full, and then a wireless connection can relay that data back to the waste disposal team. They can then use the information to optimize the deployment of waste trucks and ensure bins don?t overflow. Chen of ZTEsoft says that in China the business case is even stronger. As some new buildings are full and others half empty, the speed at which garbage bins fill up can vary dramatically. ?We collect all this information and build an API and give all this data to the garbage company, so they know how often to visit each building,? Chen says. Smart parking is also gaining traction. In this case, a connected sensor can signal whether a space is empty or occupied, and that in- formation can be aggregated and made available to drivers looking for a vacant lot. As a result, driv- ers spend less time seeking some- where to park, congestion could drop, pollution can be reduced and the parking provider could poten- tially increase charges. In fact, connected parking sensors could be used to enable dynamic pricing So u rc e: 1 23 R F Singapore skyline F E A T U R E R E P O R T 11 in which parking charges surge at times of high demand (Uber-style) and then fall when there are many spaces available. Transport for London, for ex- ample, has introduced intelligent smart parking technology across its 61 car parks, which have ap- proximately 10,000 spaces. The technology provides real-time in- formation on space availability ac- cessible through smartphones and navigation devices to help commut- ers plan their journeys.. Tackling transportation travails In a similar vein, many cities be- lieve ICT could help them optimize the use of precious road space and encourage greater usage of public transport. In February 2016, Sin- gapore announced it has awarded a $556 million tender to develop a next-generation electronic road pricing system to the consortium of NCS Pte and Mitsubishi Heavy In- dustries Engine System Asia. Singapore?s Land Transport Au- thority said the system could allow for more flexibility in managing traffic congestion through dis- tance-based road pricing, where an on-board tracking unit enables mo- torists to be charged according to the distance they travel on congested roads and whether they travel dur- ing off-peak. It?s set to be implement- ed progressively beginning in 2020. For some cities, the focus is on getting people out of their cars entirely. Vienna has set some aggressive targets to reduce car usage, says Andreas Trisko, head of urban development department Vienna. The city administration wants to reduce the proportion of journeys by car from 27% today, to 15% by 2030. Vienna is using real-time data collected by connectivity to encourage greater usage of public transport and bike-sharing schemes, as well as to inform people of the cost and carbon dioxide emissions of individual journeys using different forms of transport. But, transport and related pollu- tion can be a tough domain to ad- dress, primarily because of the num- ber of different parties involved, notes Green. ?There are many dif- ferent elements, a complex set of systems and multiple players and it can be hard to align their interests,? he explained. North Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia F E A T U R E R E P O R T 12 Neighborhood by neighborhood Some cities are following a dif- ferent model. Rather than trying to address a specific challenge, such as congestion or waste col- lection, they are taking a street- by-street approach. Atlanta has begun by focusing on North Av- enue, a major artery that is home to Coca-Cola, Georgia Institute of Technology, theaters, parks and public transport stations. It is now using North Avenue as a testing ground for how ICT can help the city pursue all three of its prima- ry goals ? improving mobility, pub- lic safety and sustainability.. ?We are in proof of concept mode,? Atlanta CIO Saini told delegates at the recent TM Forum Live! event. If the results on North Avenue are en- couraging, the city plans to expand the pilot to another district. Saini notes North Avenue, which suffers from crime, congestion and water leakage, is a microcosm of the challenges facing the rest of the city. ?None of the traffic signals on North Avenue have communications. When they go down, we have to wait for a phone call from a citizen,? Saini explained. ?We have got peak congestion at key intersections and we have excess capacity at others. We have a completely underutilized bus and rail system.? The city has started by working with AT&T to install cellular-con- nected cameras at a single inter- section to get traffic flow data in real time. ?We will also do this on the other 18 signal intersections on North,? explained Saini. ?We?ll have a complete picture of what is hap- pening on North, counting bikes and people, as well as vehicles.? Atlanta then plans to feed the data collected by the cameras into a traffic management system and start changing lights based on re- al-time traffic information. It is also planning to pilot a bike-share scheme, deploy a citizen informa- tion kiosk and set up a public Wi-Fi network across North Avenue. Saini says the city also intends to install sensors into the water net- work to monitor flow, detect leaks and analyze the resulting data to see how the network can be im- proved. ?We are going to implement a sensor array with Georgia Tech that will measure air quality, sound and vibration,? he Saini noted. ?We will attach that array to the 180 poles we have on North Avenue.? NEXT STEPS FOR SMART CITIES: Fast fiber links required A core foundation of a smart city is fast and responsive connectivity throughout the urban area. In prac- tice, that typically means having an extensive fiber network in the ground that can be used to connect wireless hot spots and cellular base stations. Atlanta is using a $250 million dollar infrastructure grant, which was approved in a special election in 2015, to lay strands of fiber in main corridors to connect traffic lights and embed sensors in the concrete. ?We are rolling out our own mu- nicipal fiber network, built by the city, run by the city, that will be the backbone of all the smart city devices we lay on top,? said Saini. ?This is a major undertaking that will take us several years.? Howev- er, the city isn?t going it alone ? it has partnerships with AT&T, Cisco and Google Fi to improve connec- tivity across Atlanta. A citywide fiber network can be used to provide backhaul for the wireless connectivity used F E A T U R E R E P O R T 13 to connect individual pieces of infrastructure. For example, in Bristol, a wireless mesh network supplied by SilverSpring Networks complements the city?s fiber network. Settling on standards Bristol is also making use of Wi-Fi, 2G, 3G, LTE and even an experimen- tal form of 5G to provide connectiv- ity for its smart city solutions. ?Then you start plugging in all sorts of devices and deciding what these devices use to connect: then the nightmare begins,? said Wilson. ?Almost all industries are heavily pregnant with all of this. What?s Rafael Cepeda, Smart Cities Lead at InterDigital holding everything up is a lack of standards and a lack of confidence. Standards give you economies of scale, confidence and interopera- bility. I do think it is a serious prob- lem. ? 5G will be a big moment, but I am not sure it is a cure all.? Machina Research has warned using nonstandardized technol- ogy for IoT will increase the cost of deployment, hinder mass scale adoption and stifle technology in- novation for smart city initiatives worldwide. City authorities and their technology partners could squander $341 billion by 2025, if they adopt a fragmented, rather than a standardized approach to IoT solution deployment, Machina claims in a new white paper, com- missioned by mobile technology and research company InterDigital. Machina believes standardization could stimulate deployments and wider usage of smart city solutions (see Figure 3). ?There is a lot of buzz about the different radios and networks, but for us, that is not the biggest prob- lem,? said Rafael Cepeda, smart FIG. 3: Machina Research?s estimates of how standardization could increase smart city deployments So u rc e: M a ch in a R es ea rc h . 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Base Case Full Standardization Case W id e Ar ea Io T C om m un ic at io ns 2 0 2 5 Alarms & Monitors Waste Management Parking F E A T U R E R E P O R T CCTV Public Transport Other Street Lighting Road Traffic Management 14 cities lead at InterDigital. ?The real problem is how you integrate all the data that the sensors will produce and how you make sense of it.? Cepeda says the leading standards bodies need to address this issue. In- terDigital is supporting the use of the open standard OneM2M, which covers requirements, architecture, API specifications and security solutions. InterDigital said it has developed an OneM2M-compatible platform, which it is deploying with cities in the U.K. to help integrate data that was previously isolated. ?We started this project two years ago as a feasibility study,? said Cepeda. ?We are now in the pilot phase with four municipali- ties and we really see benefits in sharing knowledge with the local authorities.? InterDigital envisions city ad- ministrations may be able to earn revenue by making data available in a standardized format to large enterprises and startups that be- come successful. Cepeda adds that the use of an open standard to manage and organize data will also help cities avoid being locked- in to a single vendor. Bristol is alert to this issue. ?We are not going to rely on a vendor to sort this out for us,? says Wilson. ?If you outsource to a consultant, you can end up with lock-in. The local authority has been astute enough to hire people with quite sophis- ticated technology and procure- ment backgrounds to say: we are the city and we are the platform. We know our strategy and we will go to vendors to fulfill aspects of our strategy.? Vendor lock-in isn?t the only po- tential pitfall. City administra- tions also need to consider how their solutions will fit into the broader ICT fabric of their region. ?Smart cities are not alone,? not- ed Cepeda. ?As cities become suc- cessful, property prices rise and people travel longer distances. Cit- ies need to start integrating what they are doing on a regional scale and ensure their solutions are in- teroperable with deployments in other cities. You shouldn?t have to download new apps to navigate in each city you visit.? U.K. cities are working on com- mon approaches through the Brit- ish Standards Institute and the Future Cities Catapult initiative, said Woods at Navigant. ?But the nature of these innovation pro- grams means that they are mostly being shaped by local needs, pri- orities and opportunities,? Woods adds. ?There are opportunities for more sharing of successful ideas/ projects and perhaps the chance to collaborate on deploying those solutions more widely or testing them in different environments without reinventing the wheel.? The security challenge Beyond standardization, secu- rity is probably the other major hurdle the smart city sector will have to clear. If a city deploys con- nectivity and computing power in public spaces, there is a danger criminals or terrorists will try to hack into a smart city solution and cause damage. ?The risks are very big,? noted Green. ?You could break quite a lot. This technology exposes some of the interfaces that wouldn?t have been exposed and the more you ex- pose, the more scary it becomes.? Green also flags that installing sen- sors and cameras across public spac- es raises serious privacy concerns. However, if cities follow best F E A T U R E R E P O R T 15 practice in both security and privacy, Green believes these challenges can be overcome. The key in many cases will be balancing the commercial interests required to fund smart city deployments with the broader public interest in maintaining individual privacy and collective security. ?In 10 or 20 years, we will wake up and say who owns the data,? Wilson said. ?Who owns the data is actually super important and if it just cor- porations that own the data, there will be a backlash.? All eyes on the economics Assuming standardization contin- ues apace and the security and pri- vacy challenges are contained, the speed at which smart city solutions are deployed is likely to boil down to hard economics. Brown at Strat- egy Analytics notes cash-strapped cities will judge each solution on the net overall benefit, compared with other infrastructure invest- ments, as well as the likely sustain- ability of new solutions: will they stand the test of time? Employing cloud-based ?CityOS? solutions could help to keep costs down and maintain flexibility, Brown adds. But the major chal- lenge will still lie in addressing and integrating legacy infrastructure systems. ?Cities need to make sure the path they go down is one that they can switch out,? Brown said. ?They need to be careful not to be using obso- lete technology. ? You can?t afford to rip and replace if someone turns the lights off.? So u rc e: i B a rc el on a CityOS Data Flow F E A T U R E R E P O R T 16 InterDigital InterDigital, Inc. designs and develops advanced technologies that enable and enhance mobile communications and capabilities. The company?s activities are organized around the concept of the Living Network: a future where intelligent networks self-optimize to deliver service that is tailored to the content, context and connectivity of the user, device or need Featured Companies Featured Companies JUNE 2016 HetNet Series: Scalability, ROI and the Business Case for Small Cells JULY 2016 HetNet Series: View from the Top: Tower and Antenna Technology Trends AUGUST 2016 Telecom Software Series: Assuring the Virtualized Networks of the Future SEPTEMBER 2016 HetNet Series: Densification Strategies: Indoor or Outdoor? 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