Article Review: Technical Discussion of Smart City Implementation in London

The article entitled Smart, Smarter, Smartest: Redefining Our Cities written by Claire Thorne and Catherine Griffiths examines the efforts of the UK government, which like many other governments is placing the implementation of Smart City systems high on its agenda. The article explains the components that make a city smart and examines the emerging needs for creating a smart London. The “smartness” may not come entirely from technological solutions, but from the mechanisms used to engage and deliver a new kind of city.

Claire Thorne and Catherine Griffiths divide this article into 7 parts. The first part contains an explanation of the history of the industrial revolution from time to time which ultimately led to the point where the world was faced with big data and open data which drives innovation to utilize the data. Technologies that create, collect, manage data, and enable the extraction of value from data are all being developed and adopted rapidly. From this development, then there are new platforms, everything related to the internet (Internet of Things), social media, almost ubiquitous mobile connectivity.

The reason for the creation of Smart Cities is the prediction of an increase in the urban population. The increase in the number of urban residents will have an impact on increasing the burden on logistics, resources, and infrastructure. This condition can be seen as a challenge in how to make old systems work easily with new technologies, while designing cities that can offer an increase in the quality of life for citizens. This hope is offered by the digital revolution where the creation of a future city that is bigger, faster, easier and can be realized with the integration of digital platforms, products, and processes with city infrastructure and city spaces. Through coordinated systems, it is hoped that all citizens will benefit.

The second part discusses pervasive integration. The word smart is now like a global brand. However, many still misunderstand the implementation of embedding words. smart. For example, teachers who teach children using the latest blackboards (next generation blackboard) called teaching with smart board. Then the small vehicles on the road are called smart car. Words smart become familiar to our ears and are increasingly used by public officials and consultants to build their credibility. Justification of intelligence is what real life requires, where the key to intelligence is engagement (engagement) and the language used. In the context of technological sophistication that requires connectivity, the right category is digital, not intelligence. The intelligent category is more towards interconnectivity and interactivity that runs smoothly (from and to other devices or between systems), responsive to events.

Claire Thorne and Catherine Griffiths also criticize the 6 elements of a smart city: smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart living, smart governance,and smart people. In his writing, these 6 elements only describe who and what, but this framework does not describe how. In the third part, this article discusses how to make a city smart.

The figure above is the framework offered by Claire and Catherine in this article as an attempt to answer how to realize a smart city. This framework consists of 5 descriptors, each of which is explained as follows:
• Need : driving growth of city centers and technical innovation.
• Enablers, which consists of 3 things, namely:

Skills – develop a group of people with special skills

Appetite – readiness and willingness of citizens to adopt new technologies and smart interventions by making the population digitally literate and engaged with each other.

Data – customized and personalized information, accessible to individuals, businesses and governments online. real time

• Implementation environment (infrastructure, economy, governance)
• Approach (engagement, implementation/deployment, adoption)
• Outputs as a core principle that basically provides quality service facilities, quality of life, and engagement. In it there is smart living, smart mobility, smart economy.

In the UK at the moment the situation is only at the smart initiative stage. (smart initiatives). There is a possibility that smart cities will fail because there is no clear definition of vision and strategy and shared goals. The fourth part of this article discusses the characteristics of cities in England that vary. Although the characteristics of each city are different, there is a common thread that can be drawn, namely the aspiration as a standard solution to urban problems.

In the fifth part of this article is a crucial part because it discusses one by one the case studies of the implementation of Smart City in the city of London in the indicators that have been explained in the third part. However, out of 5 indicators, Claire and Catherine only discuss 2 indicators, namely enablers and implementation environment. From the point of view enablers, in terms of expertise, the city of London is trying to create a smart environment, working with higher education institutions to respond to the needs of digital and smart education and research offerings. There is an opportunity for the UK to take these learnings and apply them at scale across cities across the UK. appetite, there is still a perception that smart cities are just an imagination and waste public funds because their implementation has not been delivered effectively. This is the challenge going forward to train marketing to inform the public about the integration and benefits of a smarter London future.

Based on the data, the challenge faced is in creating the same ecosystem in the private domain. How public and private datasets are combined. Claire and Catherine did not discuss further the impact of merging public and private data. In fact, there are a number of things that can be discussed from the consequences of this merger such as issues of ownership, regulation, IP, competition, law, security, privacy and the value of the dataset. From the scope of the implementation environment, Claire and Catherine briefly discussed infrastructure, economy and government. In terms of infrastructure, not all households and individuals in British cities are able or want to be digitally connected and many still do not have internet access. Economically, there is evidence that the UK sees the opportunity for a new digital revolution and supports industrial activity by making several areas integrated. In terms of government, there have been initiatives carried out by the government such as the Smart London Board, The Digital, and The Government Digital Strategy. However, the problem is still the ownership and value of data.

Section 6 and section 7 contain real-world examples of systems being built in London and conclusions. The Research Councils UK funded an interdisciplinary research project called The Digital City Exchange. This research project focuses on the real-time, cross-sectoral integration and adaptation (transport, energy, water and waste city datasets) to enable business model innovation and transform the planning, management, use of city services and resources. This project is a new platform that supports individuals and organizations to combine, trade and exchange city datasets. By connecting citizens, businesses and governments to real-time intelligence and intelligent decision-making, the project is expected to better monitor and control public services, improve health services, increase productivity and quality of public services, create new business models, centralize one-stop data, and ultimately improve people’s quality of life.

The 11-page article clearly explains the development of smart cities in London technically. Claire and Catherine managed to get out of the discussion about the concept of smart cities which until now has not been clearly defined. Dameri and Sabroux (2014) and Cocchia (2014) confirmed this argument by stating that until now there is no standard definition of a smart city and until now it is very difficult to define a smart city. Until now there is a big conflict in viewing smart cities from an academic perspective and an empirical perspective. Cocchia (2014) assessed that academically the emphasis of smart cities is on community culture and education levels. Meanwhile, from an empirical perspective, the main component of a smart city is technology. This debate is not in this article and in my opinion, with the absence of this debate, this article becomes comprehensive and applicable to be read by policy makers to further study how the British government, especially the London city government, implements smart cities.

Overall, this article is worth recommending to policy makers and readers who are writing studies on smart cities because this article also reveals the potential for smart city failure in the UK, where this potential may also occur in Indonesia. The potential is that there are still many assumptions in society that assume that the words smart city are just branding and have no benefits for society. Here is the challenge that must be faced by various stakeholders to make smart city marketing easier to digest for all groups, not just focusing on the concept level alone.

References:

Cocchia, Annalisa. “Smart and Digital City: A Systematic Literature Review” in Progress in IS (2014): 13-44 Dameri, RP and Sabroux, CR “Smart City and Value Creation” in progress in IS (2014): 1-12