IPR AND ITS EFFECT ON SMART CITIES

ABSTRACT

The evolution of smart cities from science fiction to reality presents both challenges and opportunities that must be carefully addressed to realize their full potential. This paper provides a comprehensive examination of key factors influencing smart city development, including technological advancements, sustainability, security, and privacy.

Sustainable services and initiatives are highlighted as essential for the longevity and effectiveness of smart city projects, despite tensions between stakeholder inclusivity and technology agnosticism.

Security measures and economic growth promotion are imperative within smart city frameworks, given the rising threat of cyber-attacks and the role of smart initiatives in fostering regional competitiveness. Emerging technologies offer transformative solutions across sectors such as traffic management, healthcare, and waste management, emphasizing the integration of city services onto digital platforms.

Lastly, the paper addresses the challenge of leveraging digital technologies for informed decision-making and citizen participation in policy formulation. By addressing these challenges holistically, stakeholders can collaboratively work towards creating resilient, inclusive, and prosperous urban environments.

KEYWORDS

smart cities, Sustainable, challenges, digital technologies, environment, privacy and security

INTRODUCTION

For much of the 20th century, the idea that a city could be smart was a science fiction that was pictured in the popular media but quite suddenly with the massive proliferation of computable devices across many scales and with a modicum of intelligence being embedded into such devices, the prospect that a city might become smart, sentient even, is fast becoming the new reality. The convergence of information and communication technologies is producing urban environments that are quite different from anything that we have experienced hitherto. Cities are becoming smart not only in terms of the way we can automate routine functions serving individual persons, buildings, traffic systems but in ways that enable us to monitor, understand, analyse and plan the city to improve the efficiency, equity and quality of life for its citizens in real time. This is changing the way we are able to plan across multiple time scales, raising the prospect that cities can be made smarter in the long term by continuous reflection in the short term.

“Smart cities are often pictured as constellations of instruments across many scales that are connected through multiple networks which provide continuous data regarding the movements of people and materials in terms of the flow of decisions about the physical and social form of the city[1]”.

Cities however can only be smart if there are intelligence functions that are able to integrate and synthesise this data to some purpose, ways of improving the efficiency, equity, sustainability and quality of life in cities.

There are a number of definitions of what makes a city ‘smart,’

“one that makes optimal use of all the interconnected information available today to better understand and control its operations and optimise the use of limited resources.”- IBM

WHAT MAKES A CITY SMART?

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

the first step in becoming a smart city seems to be understanding how your city wishes to use smart technology and data to achieve its aspirations and vision that chime with their values or help overcome inherited problems.

Implementing forward-looking policies and regulations centred around their ‘smart goals’ is vital for each city to progress forward in its smart city transformation. In a post-GDPR world, it’s especially important for cities to consider how data will be handled and how citizens’ privacy can be protected – but more on that later on.

SUSTAINABLE SERVICES AND ONGOING INITIATIVES

Once leadership and established goals are in place, cities must ensure that their smart initiatives are sustainable.

Unfortunately, initiatives being implemented with two fundamental tensions have become a frequent problem in smart city development.

These two tensions are, the need to cater for as many stakeholders and users as possible, and the need to retain control and a level of agnosticism to particular system and platform providers.

PROMOTE SECURITY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

It’s important for administrators of smart cities to ensure that their smart initiatives are secure and beneficial to the overall economy.

As mentioned earlier, security and data protection must be a priority when creating a smart city, as cyber-attacks including denial of service attacks have become more frequent in recent years due to how connected systems are.

It’s crucial that cities implement measures such as encryption and authentication protocols to protect data from malicious actors.

Major systems should also be configurable but protected by encryption and IP Security systems such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN) to ensure only validated users and operators can access key parameters and data.

Fundamentally, the take up of smart city initiatives is not only about efficiencies or environmental change, but they are also seen as essential in terms of helping create economic growth and enhancing the image of the region or city.

Smart cities must also therefore ensure that they are creating initiatives that will help improve their local economy and create new jobs by attracting employers, employees, retailers and investment[2].

Many smart city initiatives can undergo lengthy requirements capture, public consultation and tendering processes. This, if successful, can lead to bespoke systems development and integration work that can take 2 to 3 years to complete.

By utilising existing tech, cities can begin to ensure that fewer resources are used, such as through smart grids and intelligent transport systems. This helps cities save money while also reducing their carbon footprint and becoming better stewards of their resources.

HOW CAN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES BE USED IN CITIES?

By using smart technologies, cities could ultimately connect and integrate their various services and sectors—such as utilities, energy, healthcare, transportation, governance, and security—onto digital platforms. There are numerous ways to upgrade city services with intelligent technologies, including:

Traffic Management: Smart systems can resolve congestion by informing drivers about roadblocks and delays. These systems can use Deep Learning algorithms to predict and reduce traffic, which will help lower carbon emissions.
Environment Conservation: Artificial intelligence (AI) can analyse data on energy usage in order to decide where best to implement renewable energy sources. AI can also predict pollution levels which will help authorities make decisions best suited for the environment.
Healthcare: Patient monitoring systems can detect chronic conditions in advance for better preventative care. Chatbots can provide medical assistance, informational support, and schedule appointments. Lessening the amount of unexpected or emergency visits can help free up local hospital resources.
Waste Management: AI can distinguish between different waste types and monitor how many waste containers are filled, preventing overflows. AI can sort recyclables much more efficiently and quickly.
Security: AI-enabled cameras can detect criminal behaviour and instantly report it to the authorities. Drones can recognize human faces and compare them with a database to trace their identity and authenticate a person entering the city or restricted areas. However, this use case does raise ethical concerns with citizens.

RESEARCH CHALLENGE

The major intellectual challenge that we and the rest of society face, is embracing the idea that as we develop new digital technologies, we use those same technologies to study the processes of their application, implementation and impact on society.

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us [3]“

-Marshall McLuhan in 1964 his seminal book

and this is the challenge that we need to resolve in developing truly smart cities that will benefit the quality of life of all our citizens. In this, it is likely that participation in formulating policies might be very different from the past when futures were dictated by the elite, primarily because of its access to information. New forms of preference elicitation are being generated using mobile and other applications, while the economy is essentially moving online with the disappearance of material tokens (cash). These are profound changes that we need to mobilize using the equally powerful science that FuturICT will unleash.

While most everyone can agree that smart technology has the power to make our lives much simpler – especially in highly populated urban areas – implementing that technology must be done in a carefully planned and highly secure manner. Rather than just focusing on what the solution can do, developers and tech companies must also consider how it will affect the people that come into contact with it. When technology, city governance, and communities of people come together to improve the quality of life for everyone involved, that’s when a city truly becomes “smart.”

“Every problem has a solution; the problem is to find the solution to the problem”

Pierre Filion

CHALLENGES AND SOLUTION ORIENTED APPROACH

INFRASTRUCTURE

Smart Cities utilize sensor technology to gather and analyse information in an effort to improve the quality of life for residents. Major metropolitan areas are already challenged with replacing decades-old infrastructure, such as underground wiring, steam pipes, and transportation tunnels, as well as installing high-speed internet. Broadband wireless service is increasing, but there are still areas in major cities where access is limited. Funding for new infrastructure projects is limited and approval processes can take years. Installing new sensors and other improvements cause temporary – though still frustrating – problems for people living in these cities.

SOLUTION

Developers can help make it easier to install and utilize smart technology by considering these challenges at the very early stages of development. By beginning with the end in mind – which is the full implementation of the solution – developers and tech companies can speed up the process of making our cities smarter by implementing easy-to-install hardware.

SECURITY AND HACKERS

As IoT and sensor technology use expands, so does the threat level to security. This begs the question…is technology really considered “smart” if hackers can break into it and shut down an entire city?

Recent discussion involving cyber-terror threats to vulnerable and outdated power grids has everyone a bit more concerned and sceptical about technology and security.

SOLUTION

Smart Cities are investing more money and resources into security, while tech companies are creating solutions with new built-in mechanisms to protect against hacking and cyber-crimes. With blockchain being the topic du jour in the tech industry, many developers are looking for ways to incorporate these encryption techniques to increase security in new applications.

PRIVACY CONCERNS

In any major city, there’s a balance between quality of life and invasion of privacy. While everyone wants to enjoy a more convenient, peaceful, and healthy environment, nobody wants to feel like they are constantly being monitored by “Big Brother.”

Cameras installed on every street corner may help deter crime, but they can also install fear and paranoia in law-abiding citizens. Another valid concern is the amount of data being collected from all the smart sensors residents come into contact with each day.

Last year, the ACLU of Northern California did a study about privacy concerns in smart cities. In it, the organization stresses the importance of understanding the technology, identifying the types and sources of data it uses, and determining what will be done with the data collected.

SOLUTION

Developers can help alleviate some of the anxieties of smart city residents by adding transparency and education to their solutions. By developing with the community in mind and considering how they might respond to new technology, companies can gain trust from the people their solutions are intended to help. Of course, local government officials and community boards need to be involved in the rollout and educational aspects as well.

CONCLUSION

The journey towards building smart cities requires a multifaceted approach that balances technological innovation with social, economic, and environmental considerations. By addressing challenges such as privacy concerns, security risks, and sustainability issues, stakeholders can unlock the transformative potential of smart city initiatives. Embracing emerging technologies while prioritizing citizen-centricity and inclusive governance is paramount for fostering resilient and prosperous urban environments. Moreover, ongoing research and collaboration across disciplines are essential for informing policy decisions and enhancing community engagement. As cities continue to evolve in response to rapid urbanization and technological advancements, it is imperative that smart city development remains grounded in principles of equity, sustainability, and human well-being. By navigating these challenges collectively, we can build cities that are not only smart but also resilient, inclusive, and future-ready.

[1] Yin, ChuanTao, Zhang Xiong, Hui Chen, JingYuan Wang, Daven Cooper, and Bertrand David. “A literature survey on smart cities.” Science China. Information Sciences 58, no. 10 (2015): 1-18.

[2] Batty, Michael, Kay W. Axhausen, Fosca Giannotti, Alexei Pozdnoukhov, Armando Bazzani, Monica Wachowicz, Georgios Ouzounis, and Yuval Portugali. “Smart cities of the future.” The European Physical Journal Special Topics 214 (2012): 481-518.

[3] Pereira, Gabriela Viale, Peter Parycek, Enzo Falco, and Reinout Kleinhans. “Smart governance in the context of smart cities: A literature review.” Information Polity 23, no. 2 (2018): 143-162.

Disclaimer: The materials provided herein are intended solely for informational purposes. Accessing or using the site or the materials does not establish an attorney-client relationship. The information presented on this site is not to be construed as legal or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon for such purposes or used as a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney in your state. Additionally, the viewpoint presented by the author is of a personal nature.