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How Smart Cities are Shaping the Future

By Saquib Ahmad

The turn of this decade saw many first world countries advocating the concept of Smart Cities and promoting them as the (new) need of the hour. A smart city is a place where traditional networks and services get upgraded with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies to increase efficiency and problem-solving capabilities.

A report by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Smart cities: Digital solutions for a more livable future, found that cities can use smart technologies to pull up the quality-of-life indicators by 10 to 30 percent!

In addition to that, the report concluded that using technologies for everyday life concerns also translates into lower crime rates, shorter commutes, reduction in the burden on the health sector, and carbon footprint. Some of the most notable smart cities in the world include New York, Singapore, London, Barcelona, Toronto, and Tokyo.

Pakistan can take a page from the book of these smart cities and take small steps towards the intelligent city model. The country can save significant money by investing in automation that encourages cost savings. Automation of essential services such as water and electricity with the help of AI-based and IoT technologies will cut back on wastage of resources and save money.

Water conservation is one of the main issues Pakistan faces today. The government can start an extensive drive to change old, rusted pipes with newer, efficient ones. Doing this would make it easier to detect leaks that have gone undetected for years and have led to wastage of water. The city council can also re-adjust water pressure to reduce wastage hence improving the overall management of water to a great extent.

Smart cities are for smart citizens. With impactful changes at the very grassroots level out of the way, the intelligent city design will help educate responsible citizens about the advantages of water conservation. The mass educational drives will trigger a snowball effect as more and more people will take charge of their localities and ensure water wastage remains to a minimum.

This change at the rudimentary level can then branch out into solving other types of wastage issues such as proper disposal of plastic waste. The government of Pakistan can take a page out of the progressive recycling systems in Ghana. Activating digital systems to track the volumes and types of plastic and where it’s used the most has helped the country curb its ever-growing plastic waste problem.

With reliable data backing up the entire system, the government and businesses can pinpoint the areas that require recycling plants and which industries need to invest more in plastic-free alternatives.

Smart cities have a streamlined system that runs like clockwork and reduces risks and damages during a natural disaster. With Pakistan’s recent locust attacks and persistently rising inflation, the smart model can help cut down expenses and increase safety. Improvements in the quality of life can reap economic benefits as happy citizens are more likely to give back to the community.

Better connectivity, one of the key smart city features, will enable homegrown Pakistani businesses to engage extraordinary talent from other countries. An increase in the inflow of top talent will lead to a rise in the GDP.  Moreover, Smart Infrastructure helps buildings access faster connection, self-generated heat, and electricity, adding to economic stability.

The Smart Model will help the government facilitate public-private partnerships (PPPs) for an efficient transportation network. It will also open routes to innovation in the automation industry, for example, electric cars, solar cars, and dockless vehicles. In short, the physical and digital infrastructure of the Smart Mobility model will reduce pollution and the rate of emissions in the air pulling up the overall standard of living in Pakistan.

One of the biggest challenges the leadership faces today on their journey to become a smart city is integrating a highly responsive roadmap without any loopholes, fragmented data, or applications running in silos.

The blueprint of a smart city in the making should have flexible processes both between the front and the back end as its underpinning. Flexibility enables cities to receive and decode data from multiple sources and then use that data to automate processes.

Luckily, there are several steps leaders can take to dodge these issues. As a first step, the government should maximize the potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

The ICTs include wireless networks, computers, software, the internet, and other applications and services that will assist cities in reaching the ‘smart’ stage much faster without depleting their already-scarce resources. ICTs accelerate the spread of knowledge and networking, eventually creating new value and promoting sustainable growth.

Secondly, along with ICT companies, the city leadership needs to collaborate with NGOs with global footprints and expertise in systems integration to make this transformative journey more sustainable. Just like building a city, the move to the smart model is a step-by-step process. City leadership needs to innovate and automate persistently and target one sector at a time, for example, advanced waste disposal facilities, upgraded water system, etc.

The most important thing is that city leaders should integrate better connectivity into the heart of the smart city roadmap to avoid the risk of several initiatives working in silos and defying the sole purpose of Smart Cities.

Saquib Ahmad is the Managing Director at SAP Pakistan.

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