Understanding The Verticals Part 2: Transforming Transportation & Elevating Energy
Imagine if you will, your average city dweller named Charlie.
Charlie resides in North-side of the city and works downtown. He is an advertising executive and drives his car everywhere – office, clients’ locations, city parks, gym, docks for kayaking, etc. Charlie would love to live in a city with high standard of living at an affordable cost and his commute cheaper. In essence, Charlie is looking for the technology around him to work in sync with his very hectic life.
Now fast-forward to a full operational smart city and imagine this:
Charlie outfitted his condo with smart home capabilities and when he leaves for the office in the morning, the smart home system ensures that all lights are off, security system is on, external perimeter cameras are on, and forwards notification messages to Charlie’s smart devices of changes at home.
He walks to the corner and takes the subway to his downtown office. He was able to use his smartphone to go through the subway turnstile as a subscriber to the monthly subway ticket. During his 20-minute subway ride, Charlie inquires from the city website (i.e., open data access) about the free city-park concert for the coming weekend. He accesses the information, scheduled it on his calendar and forwards an invite to his friends visiting that weekend.
Charlie got off the subway and a pedestrian city map walk navigated him to his office building. On the way, Charlie was notified about stopping at the coffee shop for his “usual,” and used his smartphone at the cashier's. He enters his office building and elevator to his 25th floor office using his smartphone for secured access.
On entering his office, the lights were automatically turned on and so was his laptop on his desk with a landing page on his calendar page. The personal assistant app on Charlie’s smartphone reminded him of his lunch meeting with his #1 client and triggered an Uber car services 10 minutes before departure time of 11:45AM. In addition, all related information and prep material for the lunch meeting was downloaded to Charlie’s secured cloud database.
At this point in Charlie’s day, he has traversed (seamlessly with enhanced user experience) between multiple smart city verticals, five to be exact - energy (smart grid), transportation (subway and car service), city government (open data), safety and security (smart home), and IoT infra (communications, connectivity, data, cloud, security, analytics). This week (Understanding the Verticals Part 2), we’re going to highlight two energy and transportation.
Transportation Vertical
Challenges
Basically, the goal of any smart city initiative is to address the challenges faced by its citizens. For transportation, such challenges include inadequate transit options resulting in mobility systems dominated by the private automobile; high traffic density (i.e., into, out of and within city limits) that stretches beyond available capacity; heavy traffic build up during rush hours due to lack of smart highway systems; and more.
The goal for the transportation vertical, is to provide access to affordable transportation required for the needs of daily life with connections to work, home, school, services, and recreation. As a result, the primary objective of smart transportation vertical is to leverage data/information technology to enhance the safety, efficiency, and performance of the city’s transit options (e.g., buses, subways, ferries, trolley, street cars, personal vehicles, car rentals, city bikes, car service, share rides, etc.).
Solutions within the smart transportation vertical
The picture featured below, are only a few solutions that smart transportation vertical remedy. As you look at this diagram, think of your daily commute. How can some of these solutions improve the quality of your drive, bus ride, or train to work?
Opportunities
The Zpryme report estimated that the global smart transportation ICT market would grow from USD 10.1 billion in 2015 to USD 39.9 billion in 2023.
Energy Vertical
Challenges
According to Athgo Corporation report, “Cities use up to 80% of the world’s resources, while occupying only 2% of its territory.” The global economy is set to grow four-fold between now and 2050; while, and International Energy Agency (IEA) projected world primary energy demand will increase by 45 % between 2006 and 2030.
As migration of people into the cities continues, pressure on the cities’ infrastructures including energy increases. The challenges include:
Ensuring a stable and secure energy access to all residents and commercial customers. In addition, to support the needs of neighboring regions of the city as part of the regional energy initiative.
Reduction of carbon emission levels to mitigate the climate change impacts.
Improved energy efficiency based on low carbon footprint solutions and cost-effective transition of current energy sources to cleaner sources.
Meeting the energy demand of the city and scalable to meet the influx of additional residents.
Smart customer energy consumption to support energy and climate targets.
Cost effective refurbishing of residential and commercial buildings with smart instrumentations (a.k.a. IoT).
For smart energy, therefore, the city needs to advocate for new renewable energy sources, new assets on the grid, deploy smart grid, microgrid, and distributed power infrastructure.
Consequently, the intent of this vertical is to support the effective management of energy by applying IoT devices and technology to lower cost; while, improving the city’s efficiency in providing power/utility services to its residents.
Solutions within the energy vertical
The picture featured on the right, perfectly illustrates some of the many solutions that the smart energy vertical has to offer.
Opportunities
The Navigant Research report estimated a global smart energy for smart cities technology revenue to grow from USD 7.3 billion in 2015 to USD 20.9 billion in 2024. Further, according to the Markets and Markets Report, the global smart electric meter market is estimated to grow to USD 14.26 billion by 2021.