How AI Can be Used in Smart Cities: Applications Role & Challenge

Vikram Singh Bisen
VSINGHBISEN
Published in
7 min readMay 14, 2020
AI in Smart Cities: Reference Image

As per the international organization reports, more than fifty percent population globally living in urban areas, and by 2050, more than two-third population will live in cities providing big investment opportunities of tech development companies.

As per the IDC report, by 2021, the spending on smart cities likely to reach more than $130 billion to make the urban areas and cities more livable with advanced infrastructural facilities and society management systems.

AI in smart cities is going to play a big role in making urbanization smarter aim to be sustainable growth making the cities equipped with advanced features to live, walk, shop and enjoy a safe and more convenient life in such an environment.

Actually, while developing cities to make smart, several challenges like administration, sanitation, traffic congestion, security surveillance, parking management and many more that AI can help to provide a sustainable solution to habitants.

USE OR APPLICATIONS OF AI IN SMART CITIES

The use of artificial intelligence in smart cities can be life-changing if implemented in the right spaces. There are multiple zones in cities or in urban development where AI can be used to improve the performance and efficiency of the system.

Advance Security Camera & Surveillance System

AI-enabled cameras and sensors can keep an eye on the surroundings to enhance the security level in the city’s neighborhoods. Such cameras can recognize the people and their faces or track the unusual activities done by them in restricted areas.

Watch Video: How AI-enabled Security Cameras Helping Police Monitor Illegal Activities in the Cities

The high-resolution AI cameras can track the movement of all registered vehicles and can monitor crowd density and cleanliness of public spaces round-the-clock.

And thanks to the historic data available from different departments of the city, police can predict category and intensity of crimes monitoring all such activities in a particular area.

Vehicle Parking and Traffic Management System

In cities, most of the people have their own cars and also there is a huge movement of commercial vehicles to transport people as well as goods. So, parking of such vehicles and traffic management is another space where AI can help.

Watch Video: How to AI is Solving the Car Parking Problems in the Cities

Using the road surface sensors or CCTV cameras incorporated into parking spots allow cities to create real-time parking and traffic maps, helping drivers to save their time by avoiding waiting to find an empty space to move smoothly or be in traffic.

AI-supported traffic sensor systems can use cameras to collect real-time data of vehicles on road, and send it to a control center, which collates the data fed from other points and adjusts the signal timings to ensure smooth flow of vehicles.

Smart transportation also includes the public sector, and thanks to AI, there are lots of opportunities for improvement of public transit. And now cab services like Uber are also using AI to give a better riding experience to its customers.

Autonomous Flying Objects for Ariel View Monitoring

AI-enabled drones or autonomous flying similar objects can be used to monitor the inner-city and houses or other concerning areas. The in-built cameras in drones help to provide the real-time visuals of the different locations where humans cannot reach easily or quickly helping the administration and security departments to take timely actions.

Autonomous flying drones can track humans, monitor traffic movement and provide the 2D aerial view imagery mapping for better urbanization of cities. It can be used for advanced security and surveillance for security departments and crime squad.

Watch Video: How Autonomous Flying Drones used for Ariel View Monitoring

Face Detection Cameras and Movement for Public Safety

AI in face recognition technology is capable to detect the different people from their faces disclosing their personal identities.

AI in security cameras or drones can recognize the human faces and match with the database to trace his identity and authenticate the person entering the cities, societies and other restricted areas.

Video: How AI Cameras used for Face Detection & Public Movement

Landmarking annotation is the technique used to train the AI-based model in the face recognition system. And to make cities smart, such high-level of face detection technology is necessary to make the surroundings more safe and private.

Smart Waste and Disposal Management System

People living in cities produce a huge amount of waste that is another challenge for urban management to find the right way of managing garbage and keep the environment clean to maintain the hygiene level in society.

AI-enabled cameras can detect trash thrown on the street and recognize the types of garbage for categorization.

Watch Video: How AI-enabled Smart Waste Management System Works

But AI-enabled installing sensors on waste bins can make the waste collection more efficient. Authorities can receive notifications when the bins are about to be filled and ensure reducing operational costs by eliminating unnecessary pickups, providing dynamic collection routes, and schedules for optimization of waste management.

Better Governance and Planning Management

While developing the cities or urban townships, AI or machine learning techniques can be used to map land use across time to generate crucial insights using the satellite imagery and aerial view 2D or 3D images of geographical areas.

The algorithms trained through machine learning can analyze satellite images for city planning and development with scope to adjust the formation based on changing data, areas prone to calamities like flooding, earthquake and storms. Such real-time as well as historical data, can continuously be monitored to enable better governance.

BENEFITS OF SMART CITY DEVELOPMENT

The integration of AI in smart cities has multiple benefits for humans as well as the environment. From an eco-friendly environment to sustainable development, AI in smart cities comes with multiple types of advantages for everyone discussed below.

Positive Impact on the Environmental

One of the best benefits of smart city development is that there will CO2 emission and it would be the main driver behind the development of smart and sustainable cities.

And it would be possible due to energy-efficient and eco-friendly, waste and traffic management, which helps to curb pollution and makes the environment less polluted.

Optimized Energy & Water Management

Similarly, in smart cities, the power generating grid and smart water management are leading factors that help to produce energy with less pollution. Such an approach also helps to get clean drinking water to keep our environment clean.

More Accessible Transportation System

In smart cities, clean and efficient transportation of goods, services are essential for the people. In the hope of optimizing mobility, many cities are turning to smart technologies to ease traffic congestion and provide users with real-time updates.

Advance Security and Safety in the Public

The safety of the people in the cities is at topmost priority in such cities. The AI-enabled development of smart cities allowing municipalities to better monitor their citizen’s thanks to CCTV cameras with facial recognition.

Furthermore, AI cameras are also equipped with motion and smoke detectors for better security surveillance.

AI SMART CITY CHALLENGE

Achieving the AI in smart cities is not a simple task, as there are multiple challenges in making the cities smart. Apart from lack of funds, lack of technological edge and other things discussed below make it difficult to develop such cities.

Infrastructure and Costing

Most of the devices, equipment, systems, and machines installed in smart cities use sensor technology to gather and analyze information such as rush hour stats, gather a huge amount of data from AI cameras or other security systems or air quality or crime rates. The implementation of these sensors requires a sophisticated and costly infrastructure.

Security and Privacy Concerns

Another challenge in developing such metropolises is the security and privacy of people living in such cities. As the data of monitoring people or watching their activities gathered can be regarded as a challenge as the use of IoT and sensor technology increases.

Besides, the threat of cyber-attacks is a critical issue for smart cities. Hence, to avoid concerns about data use, smart cities need to involve their citizens.

Awareness, education, and transparency on the purpose of data collection are crucial to make the community feel that they are truly taking part in making their city more sustainable.

Risk of Socialization

While developing such cities, inclusive urbanization must be a priority to deal with the increasing vulnerability of poor and slum populations.

That is why we need to ensure that no population is excluded from smart city data collection and use. Covering all age, gender, class and income group of people from society is necessary.

How Do Smart Cities Aim to be Sustainable?

AI in smart cities development can play a crucial role in urban planning, development and management with the an advance security systems, traffic monitoring and disposal management to make the societies more secured and livable with access and control of their home and other activities making their living experience more enjoyable and comfortable.

And to develop the AI-enabled systems for smart city development, machine learning and AI companies need a huge amount of training data for smart cities to train the models like drones, AI security camera and face recognition system to work with accuracy and provide the correct information making the smart cities really smart for sustainable growth.

This article was originally featured on www.vsinghbisen.com

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Vikram Singh Bisen
VSINGHBISEN

Content Writer | Stock Market Analyst | Author & News Editor at The Telegraph Daily