Member Article

4 Main Issues Why Experts Criticize Innovative Smart City Projects

Have you ever realized that technological development, modern healthcare, manufacturing and the standards of living is dictated by the city life and city dwellers? By 2050 more than 70% of the population will be urban residents.

Moreover, the economic growth of any country generally proclaims cities to cradle it. With the development of networking, sensor manufacturing and namely theInternet of Things technology, various projects, such as Smart City and Smart home development came into existence.

There is no doubt that Smart City is the solid foundation of the success of any future generation no matter which country we take into consideration. With the proper development and nourishing, this concept works on any ground and introduces a new era of prosperity and better-paying jobs for everyone living in a city by reducing energy consumption, better transport and foot trafficcontrolling, improving healthcare sphere and generally lessening the cases of human error on any level.

In 2017, many Internet of Things companies claim that the first steps have already been done towards bringing smart infrastructure, built environment and networked cities into reality. At the same time, the changes are not happening at a rate of knots and there are some obstacles that are slowing down the whole process. Let’s discuss some of the key issues, the so-called “setbacks” of Smart City development.

1. Complexity of Smart City infrastructure

The infrastructure of any Smart City project is quite complicated. Usually, connected devices have their own protocols to communicate. Sometimes, devices can exchange data mutually; it means that they speak the common programming language. However, frequently, gadgets do that through the gateway – an intermediator or, speaking figuratively, a translator that adapts the communication channel, making it understandable for all points of the smart network. Therefore, the complexity of a Smart city concept is covered in an umpteen set of connected knots and in their smoothly-built collaboration.

2. IoT world sensors overloading

The things connected to the Internet are growing and in a very short period of time, there will be an urgent need for its adequate regulation from the side of the government or any other institution. There are various things and sensors used to measure air quality, bridge safety, food and transport traffic and other. And it’s quite logical that the bigger the scale is, the more potential issues it could bring.

• Shortage of sensor batteries First of all, the question under discussion is how to provide billions of sensors worldwide with batteries. According to the survey data provided by Lux Research, the world is about to deploy around a trillion sensors by 2020. We all know that the battery production consumes a lot of energy and results in air pollution. So, it’s difficult to imagine how the countries around the world are planning to cope with this rising danger to the environment.

• How to recharge sensor batteries Secondly, when the full-functioning sensors are deployed there is another question that needs answering: how to prolong the life of the battery. For example, it is doubtful that there is an opportunity to provide high-level maintenance of the batteries in New York City only with over one billion things connected to the Internet under the scope of Smart City project in that region. The only one way out is to wait until the technology makes it possible for the batteries to recharge through Wi-Fi.

3. Privacy issues of Smart City and the Internet of Things development

According to the research conducted by Hewlett Packard and aimed at IoT privacy issues, around 70% of devices are vulnerable when it concerns safe data metering. The devices reviewed didn’t use encryption and had issues with access authorization. The most common reason to such malfunction is that the software used doesn’t have an opportunity to update as frequent as it should. Some IoT devices don’t update at all causing potential troubles to their owners.

4. Data collection only isn’t of much value

This issue is quite important as it sheds some light on who exactly will be in control of huge amounts of data pouring through sensors. Who will decide what data is valuable and what is not? How to make sure that a human life will be in the center of attention? We need wise and trained specialists to interpret the data received from IoT world and Smart Cities as such platforms need adequate guidance and ruling.

Regardless of the reasons inhibiting development of smart city solutions, the Internet of Things has been gaining its popularity, and the question of worldwide allocation of its smart implementations is just a matter of time. According to some researchers, the annual smart cities IT market opportunity is expected to reach $34 Billion. No doubts, here we go. The only thing is that difficulties associated with criticism can make the way longer.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Margo Geras .