October 29-30, 2018, Hyatt Regency Atlanta

City planners are increasingly marketing urban areas as “smart,” boasting of technological innovations, city-wide Wi-Fi, as well as the use of sensors in both utility grids and on our roads. However, for a city truly to be considered smart beyond the buzzword, technological adoption and IoT has to serve a purpose, whether this is of benefit to the environment, energy consumption, or the lives of residents. Connected technologies must also mesh together to create a more intelligent ecosystem made up of next-generation networks, mobility, and IoT.

Smart city technologies can emerge in a variety of forms. Mobile apps can connect residents directly to city officials, sensors and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technologies can reduce congestion and accidents on our roads, smart meters are touted as a means to reduce energy consumption and grid inefficiencies, and stations which support electric vehicles (EV) and transport sharing can reduce pollution levels.

Grand View Research estimates that the smart city market will be worth an estimated $2.57 trillion by 2025. IHS predicts that over two billion smart city device shipments will be made by 2030, and between 2016 and 2017 alone, the number of smart city projects being launched grew by 64% year-on-year. The research firm says that during 2017, the majority of smart city project rollouts were pilot schemes or partial projects, but more extensive rollouts are expected in the coming years, spurred on by the introduction of NB-IoT and LTE Cat-M1 IoT network deployments.

Planning, feedback, and structured rollouts are key to successful smart city projects. Here, we explore some of the most successful schemes currently operating in urban environments worldwide in which pilot programs are now being deployed on the commercial level.

Bettina Tratz-Ryan, research vice president, Gartner