Smart Cites are those that use such information to produce better services for their citizens, engage their community and become more competitive in the more increasingly global market place by analyzing the data in hand so they can be more effective and take better decisions.
With the existence of new sets of data and information, search engines may have a new role for both; city leaders and citizens, what’s the use of information if you are not able to search them and extract what’s valuable for you.
City information networks are now being formed, the same concept of “Internet of things” is being applied to cities because information are now becoming easier to be extracted from the different urban systems, easier to be transmitted and tools do exist to analyze them and intelligence in the systems can do future predictions as well, the missing part in the chain would be the search engine that can trigger the whole process from fetching the right data to analyzing them and presenting them to the researcher being a mayor, a city operator or simply a citizen.
Integrating the “real-time” information from the different urban systems will enable city officials to understand their cities more so manage them better. On a rainy day, the city official can ask the “City System” how would district A, where a major conference is being held, behave today? The system, which collects the data from the different urban systems in district A will detect a pipe blockage and anticipate an overflow problem leads to a traffic jam, being aware of the current traffic flow. He then search the available resources to fix the blockage before the overflow happens, but also search the available nearby public buses that can be rerouted to avoid the traffic jam, the available car routes in case some streets are closed and coordinate the police resources to be available in this district to help smooth the flow. The result is a better managed conference, i.e. a successful business city, hence more economic gains.
Cities can apply taxes on citizens based on their carbon footprint, knowing how John behaved this month will affect his CO2 tax, how much he consumed non-renewable energy for his car, home, etc. By using public transportation or by buying recycled products John can earn green points which he can exchange to reduce his CO2 tax.
Citizens can search for public information that can affect their daily lives like traffic patterns and status, possible power outages or water overflows, parks usage and availability or even daily or part-time hourly jobs availability. We can see search strings from a Citizen’s mobile like “Where do I go now outdoor and not crowded?” which will detect his location through his mobile, check the weather forecast, analyze the real-time data from the streets and parks through cameras and sensors like parking meters, restaurant data, people counting sensors, etc, identify a nearby spots and recommends available options.
In less mature markets, high percentage of the people depends on part-time daily jobs, so a search string like “I need workers in 30 minutes at location X” can be automatically matched with other strings like “who needs a part-time worker now?” will results in better utilization of the workforce and fast completion of job.
Both, anonymity and personalization should be introduced to the data, anonymity will prevent personal information to be shared to the public while personalization on search engines will allow individuals to safe their preferences for better recommendations based on their behaviors.
It may sound a bit “big brother” yet its coming and one can’t stop it, lots of implementations can be applied of data are available, why not share your views and ideas?
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