OCTOBER 2019CIOAPPLICATIONSEUROPE.COM8IN MYOPINIONhe term Smart City invokes images of the future, a scene from Blade Runner or perhaps it is where Elon Musk park's his car at night. Big or small, we all live in a smart city today, we always have. But it was only relatively recently that we coined the phrase Smart City as a way to describe our aspirations and targets to address specific issues such as a growing population or climate change but also the increased adoption of technology and data within which can enable an even smarter city, if used carefully.Since ground was dug on man's first cities we've looked to use innovative new ways to make our lives more efficient. The Roman's created roads to improve transport and aqueducts to direct clean water into the populous. Sewers were introduced to combat disease and provide a cleaner living environment. In London, as the roads became busier with horse drawn carriages the Victorians dug underground tunnels to enable trains to take people to work more efficiently. The introduction of the car combined with an increase in population created the need for safety and the traffic light was invented, it's concept derived from semaphore.Street lights used to be powered by gas and lit by hand. The same lights now include sensors to turn them on at night and solar panels to charge them during the day. If you look at history these steps seem like perfectly logical points of evolution. We take enhancements in our day-to-day lives for granted.We've used data to create train time tables and formulate routines in traffic lights. This was unobtrusive upon us, whilst at the same time it was expected. But could we share more data alongside the date, time and destination of our train ticket to make that journey smarter?As our cities have become more polluted, governments have had to set carbon emission reduction targets. This has encouraged the adoption of hybrid or fully electric engines. We have made the combustion engine smarter, whilst also introducing technology that allows the driver to do less of the driving. So what does this mean for the smart city of the future? Governments could insist every car be electric to address the carbon emission targets, but also be self driving to reduce fatalities. Data could be used to plot planned journeys on a public ledger that all other cars in the area could reference to WILL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SHAPE THE FUTURE OF THE SMART CITY?TSAM BARTON, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, SMART PENSIONSam Barton
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