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Significance of IoT infrastructure for Cities

The wave of IoT is soon going to change the way we interact with devices, appliances and, of course, the surroundings. Imagine a sensor that responds to an event like an accident on road and immediately alerts the emergency department. Building the IoT-enabled infrastructure will enable new services, innovation, cost savings and most importantly, reduce human intervention in areas where the response to an acute emergency is critical. To implement IoT-enabled smart city solutions, the cities need to adopt smart city technology and establish a robust infrastructure. Unable to track local events in a city, the municipality department oftentimes faces many challenges owing to the lack of accurate information such as timely response to events and emergency.

IoT can solve complex governance issues and improve the standards of cities in a faster and efficient manner. Moreover, the cities will be able to expand the tax base, reduce the crime rate, optimize processes and even track local events like the impassable waterlogged roads caused by heavy rainfall at a faster rate. Deploying IoT on scale requires robust planning and addressing several pre-installation challenges, such as ‘how and where the sensors need to be installed?’, ‘How to develop standards for sensors?’ ‘Who should have access to data?’ ‘Which is the right entity to collaborate with for data management?’ among others.

According to Gartner research, 25 billion new devices are going to be connected by 2020 that clearly hints that today is the right time for city governments to implement IoT. The government can derive value from collaboration with private companies in protecting data and incorporating access-control and privacy policies.  Besides, the collaborative approach can help the city governments in turning data collected from sensors into insightful information for better decision making to tackle the most challenging governance issues.

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