Smart Cities & IoT - The Opportunities and Challenges Ahead
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Dr. Mazlan Abbas
CEO – FAVORIOT Sdn Bhd
Smart Cities & IoT
- The Opportunities and Challenges Ahead
Khazanah ICT Day – August 29, 2018
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The Final Aim of Smart City
• To support better living, create more opportunities, support
stronger and more cohesive communities and improve the quality
of life overall for all residents
• To make a better use of the public resources
• Reducing the operational costs of the public administrations.
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Multiplier Effect of Economic Growth via Technology
With greater use of technology, a number of cities are accumulating data, delivering innovation, and
enhancing lives of citizens.
“What Is Our City’s Health Index?”
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Building 3 types of cities
1. ROI-driven
• the aim of rolling out smart city technologies is to generate
income which pays for its deployment and more. There are
many cities in the western hemisphere which fall into this
category, such as Los Angeles, London.
2. Carbon-driven
• The aim here is to reduce the carbon footprint and ideally
become carbon neutral long-term. These are mainly cities
in Middle and Northern Europe, such as Luxembourg,
Helsinki, etc.
3. Vanity-driven
• Finally, “vanity” driven cities are mainly driven by events
where the entire world is watching and they want to be
perceived as “modern”
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Let Users ”Adopt"
City Property
— trash cans, call boxes, trees, fire
hydrants, etc. — so the city doesn't
have to spend money sending
personnel to tend to them.
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3 Key Challenges in Data Collection
Integrating data from
multiple sources
Automating the
collection of data
Analyzing data to
effectively identify
actionable insights
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There’s a
crime!
No Parking
Spaces!
Flood is bad!
No one is
handling the
garbage!
Building is on
Fire!
Buses didn’t
come on
schedule!
Pollution
getting
worse!
Cities
Different Countries - Different Problems
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Ad Hoc ,
Chaotic, VIRAL
SMS
Whatsapp
Facebook
Twitter
Radio TV
Capacity To Hear And Respond
Traditional channels
(web portals, emails,
phone calls etc) and
methods unable to
handle effectively
PEOPLE AUTHORITIES
“Black hole” issue
Mobile App
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Citizen-Centric • Building Trust
Citizen-Centric Data-Driven Decision
Smart Tools Responsive
Cost Effective
Accountable
Transparent
Collaborative
Benefits to Citizens Benefits to Local Councils
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Vision - City Of The Future
Open source and
open data
Make
visible the
invisible
Sensing the city Provide tools for
the citizens to
interpret and
change the
workings of the
city
Technology may help mitigate the “black hole” problem.
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favorsense
favorsense - is a
CrowdSensing platform
that allows public and
private parties to build
better Communities
and Cities
Crowdsensing Management
Platform (CMP) - Problem
resolution backend system
that eases the workflow in
handling issues
Field Force - The public,
private or communities can
join hands in resolving any
problems.
Insights - Crowdsensing data
are aggregated and decision
making can be made based
on the insights.
favorsense
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Tip (1) – Buy-in
From Both Parties
• It requires the active participation of both
parties. It’s like “chicken or egg” question.
Who starts first?
• Residents felt that their complaints would
go down the deaf ears of the local
councils – just like going down the black
hole.
• The local authorities that are sensitive to
the citizens feel that the citizens need to
channel their grouses into a proper
channel rather than letting their anger on
social media and become terribly viral.
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Tip (2) – Publicity
• If you ask 100 or 1000 people on the
streets whether they have heard such
application. We can almost guarantee
you that none have heard that.
• It’s easier to get a ridiculous publicity
message across the WhatsApp rather
than something which is more useful
• ”Engagement fatigue”
• Staff intensive
• Time consuming
• Little return of Municipal investment
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Tip (3) – Finding The
Right Concerned
Citizens
• Who are these people? What type of
individuals that are concerned about the
cleanliness or safety of the surrounding.
• The NATO and the SELFIES – the non-
concerned citizens
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Tip (4) – Gamification
If Necessary
• People wants an incentive to participate
in crowdsourcing initiative. Either get
themselves paid in monetary or prizes.
• The other way is to gamify the app in such
a way that gives some form of status
within the community app. Give them
points and elevate them into a different
status or higher rank on the leadership
board.
• Launch contest with prizes for being the
most active users.
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Tip (5) – Pressure
Groups
• No administrators of the cities would love
to receive complaints every day. Nobody
likes to handle hundreds or thousands of
complaints each day throughout the
whole year. But if they did not manage
and close the complaints, how could they
solve all the problems which are already
in the queue?
• Why need to be in a reactive mode when
local councils can be proactive?
• Sometimes, city authorities need a little
push or “pressure” from the people.
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Tip (6) – Social
Media Channels
• The most popular official channels by
local councils are either through phone,
fax, web portal or email. But technology
has rapidly changed the landscape of
communications with the advent of
smartphones, mobile Internet, and Social
Media.
• Allow the citizens to communicate on
their favorite social media channels.
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Tip (7) – In-house
Vs Outsource
• It’s NOT only the front-end but also the
backend system.
• Thus, a lot of cities who thought that they
could just develop the mobile app (i.e.
the front-end) in-house did not realize
what they are going to end up.
• Nearly all local council IT departments are
not set up as a product development
house. The budget given to them are only
enough to operate, manage and
maintain the IT system but not to become
innovative and develop their application.
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Tip (8) – Product
Roadmap
• Handling a continuous development and
future enhancement of the backend
system requires a sustainable IT support
resources.
• New technology emerges and thus it must
quickly be adapted with the current
process workflow.
• Developing and supporting this in-house
will probably give the IT department of the
local council a horrible nightmare that
they will always regret.
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Tip (9) – Smart
City Vision
• Citizen engagement is only one of the
single component in a Smart City. They
are many applications which require
integration to a smart city platform; thus, it
cannot be developed in silo manner.
• Remember that IOT also requires input
from physical sensors (other than the
sensors from the smartphones).
• A real Smart City need an integrated
platform that collects and aggregates
various sources of data (structured or
unstructured) to discover the insights of
the city and make cities a better and
sustainable place to live.
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Tip (10) – It’s Not
An IT Job!
• Of course, any IT company can develop
the mobile app.
• However, IOT requires different skills that
encompass embedded programming,
understanding different communications
protocols, cloud services, and big data
analytics.
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How-To Invest In
Smart Cities
• Educate key decision makers
and build support.
• Use success stories from other
cities and vendor ROI and
other performance metrics to
make the business case.
• Aim for investment in discrete
point solutions as pilots.
• Find key private sector and
university partners.