Understanding the Smart City IoT Verticals Part 1: How IoT Can Revitalize Your City
Let’s start with the basics
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What is a smart city vertical you may ask? To answer this question, we have to go back to the genesis of the smart city, a.k.a. Internet of Things (IoT). Gartner defines IoT as: “The network of physical objects that contain embedded technology to communicate and sense or interact with their internal states or the external environment.” As for Whatls.com, “IoT is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.”
Varying Definitions, Same Goals
Although the definition of IoT may vary depending on the stakeholder’s viewpoint, there are some common threads from these definitions (Wikipedia, IBM Watson, IDC, etc.) – intelligent data sources, data, connectivity for forwarding data, processing of the collected data (analytics, visualization, reporting), and actions taken to support the next best action.”
McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report estimated a potential economic impact – including consumer surplus – of as much as USD 11.1 trillion per year in 2025 for IoT applications in nine settings.” Noting that a group of apps constitutes a solution; while, a group of solutions make-up a solution vertical. And solution verticals, in turn, will make up an IoT setting (a.k.a. segment) such as Smart City.
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Now, focusing on the Smart City IoT setting, which the MGI report estimated as USD 930 billion – USD 1.7 trillion IoT applications per year in 2025; a follow-up question to what is IoT then is what is a smart city? There is no one definition since it varies from city to city based on varying parameters such as resources, willingness to change, aspiration for a higher standard of living, and more. However, according to the business dictionary, “A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas can be done so through a strong human capital, social capital, and/or Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure.” What constitutes a smart city, is a logical question at this point. Structurally, an IoT smart city setting consists of several solution verticals.
Why Smart City Verticals
This brings us back to where we started – smart city verticals and how they are structured. Noting that a smart city is an ecosystem of multiple verticals; where a smart city vertical consists of multiple solutions that address related set of projects and leverage on a solution platform (a.k.a. PaaS). For example, the energy solutions vertical may consist of a smart meter, smart grid, and smart building projects, all leveraging the same PaaS. The successful realization of a smart city, therefore, is based on implementing the initiatives from a smart city verticals framework perspective, i.e., holistic view.
The solution verticals framework consists of 11 verticals, ten specific solution spaces plus one IoT Infrastructure. The ten solution verticals are transportation, energy, safety & security, emergency management, water management, waste management, government (city), economic development, health and wellness, and education. The key to a successful smart city initiative is the IoT infra that allows for vertical and horizontal integration and connectivity, data driven and open data management, security, analytics, and cloud. The smart city initiatives must not only be addressing the challenges of the city but also ensuring that it is a citizen-centric smart city program. And the city’s ability to implement smart city projects should fit into the “big picture” plan. That is, regardless of the smart city initiatives, they must relate to the overall smart city ecosystem; thus, the advocacy for the smart city verticals framework.
In the following weeks I will unpack the verticals in Unpack IoT's newest series “Unpacking IOT Verticals” Next week we start with Part 2: Transportation & Energy.