The Skeleton of a Smart City
A ‘bare-bones’ discussion on simplifying urban innovation & infrastructure, featuring Alexander Schmidt, CEO/Founder of BABLE Smart Cities
Over the past 15 years, ‘smart cities’ have emerged as a means to offer new solutions to known problems. As cities around the world face alarming changes and numerous challenges in delivering citizen services, smart cities can accelerate sustainable urban development through the use of sustainable technologies and the creation of intelligent connections between people and devices.
But rather than describing a complete revolution in urban planning processes, the term ‘smart city’ (and its variations for rural regions and districts) continues and re-focuses existing trends to facilitate new possibilities. Here, we sit down with BABLE Smart Cities CEO and Founder Alexander Schmidt to explore this idea further and discuss how we can simplify urban innovation to provide better services and infrastructure toward improving urban life:
Moving from ‘magic’ to reality
We can talk in circles and at a high level all day about how to define a Smart City, but at the end of the day, there’s no ‘magic’ that comes from endless exploration at a theoretical level:
There is nothing magical about a Smart City. The same way we plug our computer in and it does things such as charging or sending data, other things do that too and often times they are not as smart as we think they actually are. If you stay too far away from the actual thing that is happening on the ground and you just talk about Smart Cities too theoretically, you don’t actually grasp what they are.
The things are all rather simple, they follow a logic: “if… then”. It is easy actually if you talk about a solution, an improvement of one specific place and technology implication. It is easy to take away the magic to really make people understand: “that’s what it is about”.
— Alexander Schmidt (CEO/Founder of BABLE)
This is why the importance of best practices (e.g. Use Cases on the BABLE platform) are so vital. They aren’t theoretical but rather are real-world implementations. For example, the city of Ettlingen took one challenge — inner-city logistics traffic — and created a last-mile delivery solution. Following the aforementioned “if…then” logic: If you have an inner-city logistics problem, then create a last-mile delivery solution. Of course, the details of finding financing, pulling in private partners, confronting procurement issues, and facilitating implementation are complex steps along the way, which is why in this case Ettlingen asked for support from BABLE to offer additional expertise in facilitating specific processes.
While technology can even seem magical at times, the importance of knowing when and when not to use technology is sometimes the purest form of magic within Smart City projects. For example, sometimes art is the simplest form of magic for citizens — like creating a public art gallery on renovated Soviet-style apartment building in Tartu. Or sometimes simple forms of digital surveys and mobile probing through an in-depth process with citizens can be the best way to understand citizen needs. Technology, at its core, is about the citizens. As Alex explains:
Digital technologies give us the opportunity to bring our private needs and public efficiencies together. So the good thing is we can have more personalised and more individualised services. We can live the life that we want to have while not exploiting the natural resources that we have available. We can use space more freely and flexibly. I hope it [technology] will free up more of our public space for the things that we like doing and not for the things that need to be done.
The Skeleton of a Smart City
Data and infrastructure cut through the bottom line of how a city functions. However, one of the underlying problems with connectivity revolves around the same reason why Bluetooth headphones became popular: cables and wires are annoying.
In the sense of connectivity, the main issue is getting it into the ground and finding space within the city to connect the places. With wireless technologies, investments are imperative.
— Alexander Schmidt
We know already that a strong data backbone network is a key element of a Smart City. However, how the backbone is built on the ground and how the data is used in practical terms will define the success of each project built from the underlying infrastructure.
Alex emphasises:
One example is traffic lights that adapt to the demand so that you don’t have to wait at the lights as long. The system recognises there is a car coming and turns the light green because there is no other car coming from one of the other lanes. All these small things improve our life in business, in the world and in the public space — and for that purpose, data needs to be transferred. We do all of that based on data.
We can improve all parts of our life because it is infrastructure, underlying infrastructure. The infrastructure does not do anything unless we use it for something. It allows us to use it for many different things and that is the beauty of it.
On the ground, a strong skeleton (infrastructure + data) can help push forward grass-root innovation challenges and can help our children make it safely to school. It can save lives through flood prevention and can help citizens make informed choices (BABLE Community). And so much more.
Before we put a cell phone in the hands and meat on the bones, build a strong skeleton.
One key element when we talk about data is how it interacts with governance. Along with the uptake of big data solutions, privacy concerns have also grown exponentially and are not to be taken lightly. For instance, we have seen data-driven policing threaten basic human rights (The Economist).
On another level, the debate on whether data should be open to the public can also be simplified. Alex clarifies :
I think a generally good rule for the publication of data is that the data that a city has where there are no privacy concerns, meaning the data does not allow to get the information on a specific person… If there is no reason to not open them, open them.
I feel that data that is collected in public spaces should be available publicly. But then there is a large amount of data that is collected in homes etc. that should not be publicly available. There are good criteria to decide which ones to open and which ones not to open. A good way of doing that is with data principles.
We have done this with multiple cities, for example in Belfast. You have a small sheet of paper, even just one page, that tells you in basic terms how to handle data. One of these principles is that you only collect data that is really necessary. For example, in order to count vehicles you don’t have to have a camera that transmits the pictures somewhere. Instead it is ok if within the camera there is an algorithm that identifies whether it is a car, truck or bike and then only sends this data. This is called privacy by design. And if you tackle this all at the right stages, then a lot more data can be opened up.
The Small Fish in Big Ponds
These opportunities (and challenges) of smart cities are not only applying to big cities anymore either. Processes can be simpler within smaller municipalities and similar principles as in their larger counterparts still apply. Alex believes that now is the time for smaller cities to react and create:
It is not a big city thing only anymore. We used to start with the top 100 cities in Europe 8 years ago and now we are moving in the range of 50.000 + inhabitants of cities in Europe. There are around 1000 such cities across Europe. In the next stage, there are over 100,000 municipalities, cities, villages with less than 50,000 inhabitants. And they should not be afraid of this topic. There is something in there for them as well. They don’t have to do it at the scale of big cities. The lovely thing about digital technologies is, they can be cheap also for smaller scales, which are already doable.
You are never too small of a fish to do something.
The overarching solution to everything related to Smart Cities is simplifying the process — whether you are big or small. Strip down the exterior and make actionable steps:
The whole problem is that it is super complex. So you need to look into really where to start and you cannot “smartify” a city in one step. So you have to cut it down into pieces. You have to do it step by step and put puzzle piece by puzzle piece, together.
And that is something that is not easy because for many of us you cannot see, [e.g.] what are the heritage systems, what kind of computer systems are there, how are all these technologies that they have at the moment integrable… they all use different standards, they use different technologies. Some of them are connected to a company and not to the city.
One of the major obstacles in going from where we are to where we want to be is to be able to do it stepwise. For that, we need to be able to do it in puzzle pieces. And these puzzle pieces need to be connected by open standards.
Putting the puzzle pieces together
Luckily, for cities just getting started or maybe even already a few steps into their journey but looking to do more, there are resources and experts available to help. As a first step, these include the opportunities available for free on the BABLE Smart Cities Platform. Join us today to gain access to information and resources, including:
And for cities seeking more tailored advice, be sure to explore BABLE’s Services and Support to learn more about ways we can collaborate on the journey to driving the change for better urban life.
Want to read more about Smart City implementations? Find them on the BABLE platform!
Make sure to also take a look at our other Medium articles, and always feel free to reach out to us for any inquiry.
