AI for Sustainability: An Overview on the Biggest Drivers and Barriers to Smart Cities

It’s been a while since the concept of smart cities gained popularity and is on the brink of becoming a sophisticated reality. A growing number of studies highlight the characteristics of smart cities since the idea was first proposed. The key elements that ought to be taken into account to make a city more intelligent and sustainable, however, are still up for debate.

Over the years, sustainable development has gained popularity and has an impact on urban development and planning. The continued concentration of the world’s population in cities suggests that challenges of sustainable development are becoming more and more important to address.

Rapid urbanization, as well as social, environmental, and economic issues in cities, have made sustainable urban development a top priority. An increasingly common strategy for ensuring sustainable urban development is the smart city.

The improvement of human life, transportation, health, energy, and education is significantly aided by smart cities.

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Many leaders have pointed out the significance of smart cities in achieving urban sustainability to have a healthy and sustainable future. The aforementioned elements demonstrate how important smart cities are for sustainable urban growth.

The process of enabling smart cities is difficult and countries are finding strategic ways to grapple with it. In this article, we are looking at the biggest drivers and the barriers for smart cities that are adopting AI for suitability.

AI for Sustainability – Drivers and Barriers

Cities are home to 56.2% of the world’s population and the challenges are felt everywhere. Increased urban efficiency benefits communities all around the nation and the world, from commuting and congestion to economy and supply networks.

The most basic requirement for smart cities to function smoothly and survive is a combination of funding, state-of-the-art technology, and partnerships. The necessity for legislative adjustments, the scarcity of resources, political unpredictability, and fragmented funding arrangements may deter investment in smart cities.

• According to the most recent research, the market for smart cities worldwide is anticipated to develop at a CAGR of 20.5% and reach $2.5 trillion by 2025.
• Statista predicts that global investment in direct digital transformation to reach $6.8 trillion by 2025, and by 2022, 40% of cities will be using digital space-planning tools. Investments in digital transformation and smart city deployments are also continuously rising upward.

The effective implementation of smart cities is influenced by a variety of factors including cutting-edge technologies like edge computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and 5G and 6G networks that are seen to be crucial.

Certainly, implementing new technology and readjusting the global business ecosystem present us as a society with many obstacles.

In addition to overcoming severe legal, regulatory, and compliance obstacles, we also need to include important players in cost management and closing the digital and financial divides across several global marketplaces.

In addition, cyber threats have resulted in significant security lapses in recent years and are predicted to rise along with the widespread adoption of developing technology.

The search for a long-lasting solution will necessitate a worldwide strategy as trust and privacy continue to be major challenges.

Experts have also noted considerable gaps in interoperability and portability, which would necessitate the creation of global standards, certifications, metrics, and quality assurance initiatives.

Top Key Technological Drivers

Traffic management

Maneuvering through traffic is an art but just imagine if this becomes a new normal for the rest of our lives. In the current times, most city dwellers detest traffic and the very idea of being stuck on the road haunts them, but thanks to technology, there are some potential alternatives.

For instance, intelligent traffic light systems can be utilized to reduce congestion and public transportation routes can be changed in real-time in accordance with demand.

AI has been the savior for the residents of the Chinese city of Hangzhou where the AI-based smart “City Brain” monitors every single vehicle and has helped to bring down traffic jams by 15%.

By giving artificial intelligence (AI) authority over a metropolis, City Brain operates. Massive volumes of data are collected, processed by supercomputer algorithms, and then fed back into devices all around the city.

According to TomTom, a navigation company, Hangzhou is ranked 30th internationally and fifth in China for congestion. The government worked with Alibaba and its cloud computing platform to eliminate this.

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Digitized Waste Collection

In its native Spain, the mobile and broadband provider Telefonica has made significant investments in smart city technology. With over 23,000 tonnes of waste generated in 2016 and 12% less in 2017, Telefónica is digitizing waste management in Europe and Latin America. Refuse collectors don’t have to waste time going to bins that are only partially full since sensors linked to the rubbish bins report how full they are, in real time.

This means that KPIs can be tied for closer impact by keeping a tab on the number of dumpsters that are nearly full and won’t be emptied within the next few hours.

Comparing this to more impersonal metrics like the number of garbage collection trucks on the road is much more insightful.

The new platform is now operational in Colombia and Spain, and it will soon be available in the other 15 countries where Telefónica has operations.

In 2016, Telefónica produced more than 23,500 tonnes of garbage, of which 66%, or more than 15,500 tonnes, were cables made during the transformation of the internet, of which 98% were recycled.

A Safer Environment

Cities may use technology to increase resident safety and speed up incident response times because Wi-Fi access is so widely available, IoT technologies are advancing, and CCTV cameras are becoming more commonplace.

For instance, in New Orleans, real-time video data from Bourbon Street is examined to enhance public safety by better tracking and allocating personnel on the ground.

Energy efficiency

Smart cities use technology to closely monitor real-time energy use, cut energy use, and invest in sustainable energy sources.

The city of Schenectady, New York is enhancing its street lighting by upgrading to LED technology, which enables the lights to be changed or muted depending on real-time data, and residences in Amsterdam are receiving smart energy meters that are intended to encourage decreased energy consumption.

Better Citizen Connectivity

Smart city technology encourages inhabitants to participate more, which is one of its most fascinating features. Examples include apps that make it easier for residents to report neighborhood problems or social networking sites that let neighbors interact and exchange resources.

Another illustration is a low-cost environmental testing kit that encourages locals to gather environmental data. The Smart Citizen Kit can be positioned on windowsills and balconies to collect information about the neighborhood’s environmental conditions, such as noise and air pollution.

The Smart Citizen Kit can enable communities to create regional noise and air quality maps or use it to bring attention to and discover solutions for problems that are important to your neighborhood.

It can also be employed as a tool for gathering and analyzing data. Real-world deployments will help you better understand how people, the environment, and technology interact.

Real-time data generation and awareness raising about urgent environmental challenges will enable communities to look for solutions.

A crowd-sourced map of data from all across the world is effectively created by the data being transmitted to an online platform.

Top Barriers to Smart Cities

Cities cause new types of physical issues such as resource depletion, air pollution, trouble managing waste, traffic jams, and inadequate, failing, and aging infrastructures, among others. Let’s take look at the most common barriers to smart cities adopting AI sustainability.

Lack of collaboration

Create a procedure that brings together individuals with various experiences, skill sets, and viewpoints once your plan is in place. Create a sensible project performance baseline first. This will make it easier to decide who and what is required to deliver the needed functionality.

For example, careful alignment of all stakeholders, regardless of duty or area of expertise, should support airport sustainability efforts. To create more effective transportation hubs or smart infrastructure for large regions, it is necessary to combine supercomputing with transportation resources.

Whether you’re discussing wearable medical devices or smart airports, crucial technology-building components like antennas, hybrid flexible electronics, wireless power, human-machine interfaces, and more must be considered.

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Find ways to involve everyone from the design of the system’s architecture through development, deployment, user experience, end-user adoption, and continuing maintenance.

Transparency in Deployment plans

By using smart technology, there is no such thing as too much communication. To ensure that everyone understands the objective and purpose of the plan, be clear about what you’re going to do upfront and provide frequent updates.

The general population must be able to properly understand how the implementation of smart technology would enhance their lives without posing unnecessary dangers to their security or privacy.

Interoperability, above all

The need to connect one smart device to another will force an enormous web of interconnectivity across a smart IoT ecosystem as smart objects multiply.

Interoperability standards, which do not yet exist, are needed to ensure that objects can communicate and share relevant information. Although plug-and-play functionality is the ultimate objective, the majority of smart devices in our homes still don’t function in that way.

It’s important to not just acknowledge high-level data security, interoperability, and redundancy but also addresses them. The challenges to establishing universal connectivity must be addressed in every conversation about smart everything.

It’s a fact that standards for communications, security, and interoperability will continue to be the prime focus, it’s important not to lose sight of the broader vision of sharing communities, where the collective access to resources is simple.

Mass Acceptance

Till the time there is a lack of mass acceptance, cities, and project teams must gather proof of results and success stories that support initial hypotheses while establishing a schedule for ongoing funding and innovation. Although technology will continue to advance, for it to be widely accepted, people must accompany it.

Examples from the real world highlight the advantages and provide helpful understandings of some commonalities and fundamental components that apply regardless of industry or application.

With the assistance of groups that promote collaboration, components including sensors, actuators, data analytics, and communication linkages are being used in Singapore and throughout the United States.

Let’s take a look at a few more examples of barriers.

• Open data and its availability are a problem in smart cities, which may delay the delivery of smart city services to citizens and businesses.
• The growth of smart cities may be hampered by limited openness and ambiguous lines of political accountability in the provision of the majority of services. The absence of openness runs the risk of alienating the very people that smart city technology is meant to help.
• One of the major obstacles to the development of smart cities is the lack of uniformity across metrics (such as smart technologies, security, privacy, quality of life, environmental sustainability, physical infrastructure, mobile networks, etc.).
• Absence of a more sustainable and conscious city (e.g., traffic control, parking availability notifications, petrol emission reductions, etc.) results in a lack of better living conditions and experiences for all.
• Lack of technology integration and the convergence of heterogeneous networks (such as Bluetooth, WLAN, and heterogeneous cellular networks like 3G, 4G, and 5G, etc.) could be obstacles to the development of smart cities.
• The creation of smart cities is sometimes plagued by privacy and security concerns (e.g., dangers from hackers and viruses, poor privacy, exorbitant expenses, etc.
• Population growth could be a problem for the development of smart cities.
• The enabling or revolutionary technological knowledge that would be required for the establishment of smart cities is not available to planners and policymakers.
• Geographical imbalance can impede the growth of smart cities.
• Citizens’ lack of involvement in understanding how precisely smart cities might look in their experiences is evident. The submission and evaluation of innovative ideas for smart city design from the public should be encouraged.
• The growth of smart cities is hampered by the high cost of IT, professionals, consulting, installation, operation, and maintenance, as well as training.
• Absence of IT infrastructure (such as solar-powered electricity systems and cloud computing) and artificial intelligence capabilities (e.g. smart communities, smart energy solutions, e-health, intelligent transport system, smart grids, etc.)

Final Thoughts

In the end, there will be a flood of new business models, technological advancements, and industry changes when a single smart city can communicate with a neighboring city as readily as with one that is across the country.