Smart for Sustainability
By: Prasham Sheth
Tags: Smart Cities, Digisoc3, IoT

IoT gives birth to Smart Cities

IoT enabled indoor waterfall in Singapore Smart City Airport. Photo by Pang Yuhao on Unsplash

The UN projects that 68% of the world population will be living in cities by 2050 and The World Bank says cities generate over 80% of the GDP. This data is enough for us to know that we need to improvise our current infrastructure to adapt to the growing needs. IoT can do miracles here by shaping the lives of people living in cities to create ‘Smart Cities’So what are smart cities?

Like any smart system, a Smart City is one in which sensor-driven data collection and powerful analytics are used to automate and orchestrate a wide range of services in the interests of better performance, lower costs, and lessened environmental impact.

A smart city is capable of solving many issues in society.

Healthcare

A Smart City can be very effective in tracking and locating diseases and Infections. South Korea, like many other nations, was hit hard by the Coronavirus. However, it used smart technology to fight it more effectively than any other nation.

Water and Power

Photo by Alessandro Bianchi on Unsplash

Water and energy are some of the most important resources and their availability is limited. IoT devices can be used to create smart homes and offices. Now, resources will be used only when needed and will shut off automatically when we don’t need them. This can save us a humongous amount of these resources. This technology can also be used in city resources to save energy.

Pollution

In 2019, the UK became the first country to declare a Climate Emergency. IoT can be used in smart cities to reduce pollution levels at magical rates. Devices can be installed in factories to trace pollution output and help the government develop policies to reduce these levels. IoT can be used in traffic lights to reduce traffic congestion, to suggest smart care most efficient routes, and to increase fuel efficiency.

A model to tract the virus. Credits

However, Designing and installing IoT devices in a smart city is very costly. The global market for the Internet of things (IoT) end-user solutions is expected to grow to 212 billion U.S. dollars in size by the end of 2019. You also need a strong network with a massive database.

Drawbacks

So now you must think IoT is so good and revolutionary why does every home have IoT, why is the government not investing to make every city a smart city?

“Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, and it’s only going to grow from there. By 2020, it’s estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second for every person on earth.”

A question that arises is, who owns this data?

If the government can access it, so can hackers. Facebook and google trade this date, but there are criminals who can potentially access this data and trade it without caring about the law. Capitalism is of the past, the digital society has given birth to ‘Surveillance Capitalism’.

Privacy is now a myth. Every movement and every activity is recorded. Any mistakes, any past opinions of yours can come back to haunt you in the future. There should be new laws and code of ethics and a global cyber law body to enforce it.

Facebook knows what you see, hear and want. Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

Cybersecurity

Advancements in cybersecurity are not keeping up with the advancements in technology. There should be more investment in cybersecurity so that people feel more safe using IoT devices and living in smart cities.

It is my opinion that cyber warfare is the future of wars and more dangerous than nuclear warfare