WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY?

Transcription

1 WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? CityVerve Manchester Roundtable JANUARY 2017 Produced by

2 Contents Introduction... 3 What is a smart city?... 4 Stakeholder Involvement... 5 Financial Sustainability Connectivity... 6 Open Data... 7 Collaboration, Cooperation and Coordination... 8 Happiness! Trends The Future of the Smart City... 9 So, what is at the heart of a small city? WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable

3 Introduction In September 2017, Manchester s CityVerve hosted a round table discussion with three leading figures in UK smart city projects to discuss current challenges and ask: what s at the heart of a smart city? Among the participants from industry and local authorities were: Adrian Slatcher, Manchester City Council, currently working on CityVerve, Manchester s Smart City Demonstrator David Cummings, Head of IT, working on smart cities projects for Southend Borough Council Paul Garner, Head of BT s IoT Research Team, formerly worked on the Milton Keynes MK Smart Project This report captures the key points discussed and participants views. WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable 3

4 What is a smart city? Although the term smart city has been around for around a decade, it is only recently that the dream of a smart city, with integrated digital and physical infrastructure, linked data sets and the delivery of benefits to businesses, the public sector, and citizens has started to become a reality. The key to the realisation of the smart city is the acknowledgement that it is a process; a city doesn t just become smart overnight. Although there can be quick wins, the main benefits of smart city projects will only be seen after a significant period of investment, for example in technologies, and skills development, and stakeholder involvement. DAVID CUMMINGS said that a smart city is about getting people en masse to be able to do whatever they want and gave his own definition of smart as a set of three rules: Does it bring people together? Is it an analogue service that is due to go digital? Is it desirable - does it make you happy? Although these rules make sense (and more of happy later), our round table agreed that the successful delivery of a smart city project comes from a combination of: Stakeholder Involvement Sustainable funding Connectivity Open data Collaboration, co-operation and co-ordination 4 WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable

5 Stakeholder Involvement Participation across stakeholder groups is essential for a smart city project to work, but stakeholder groups are at different stages of involvement: CENTRAL GOVERNMENT HAVE CO-FUNDED SPECIFIC PROJECTS, such as CityVerve in Manchester and Future City Glasgow. LOCAL GOVERNMENT have also invested and delivered projects, often with specific frames of reference and desired outcomes. Devolution and the appointment of a Mayor in Manchester have created more discretion and flexibility over funding allocation. ACADEMIA, who advise and provide resources to local government smart projects. ENTERPRISES, which provide the necessary technology, infrastructure and some of the funding. LOCAL BUSINESSES, which will often be users of smart services - but in the view of our roundtable - are currently often not involved. CITIZENS - the main recipients of the benefits of services, but who are probably least aware and least involved. Whatever their stage in the smart journey, all the stakeholder groups need to feel part of the process: We can t exclude our businesses and our residents from the conversation; we need to make sure that no-one is left behind in terms of technology. Adrian Slatcher The term smart city doesn t really resonate with the general public: there is still a job to do with demystifying jargon and technology. Sometimes people still associate smart with strange news items such as the talking fridge. Many people own smartphones, tablets and computers and they have expectations of what that technology can give them. It s important that people are not left behind digital should be inclusive. Local authorities increasingly appreciate the need to take a holistic approach across procurement; to prevent stovepipe thinking ; and identify areas where technology can have clear, realisable benefits. There s now a much better understanding by the smart city stakeholders of what they want and greater focus on specifics such as transport management and air quality management. Paul Garner WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable 5

6 Financial Sustainability Smart cities projects have to be self-funding. Some projects co-funded by central government or the EU have not been able to continue once the period of funding ended. Pressures on city finances have created some momentum behind the drive for local authorities to be more creative in finding ways to generate funding for smart projects: Greater Manchester Pension Fund has been keen to invest in Manchester s city infrastructure. Southend has used the Green Investment Bank to help fund lighting programmes. Technology vendors have been persuaded to spend some of their R&D money on smart city projects for example, BT and Cisco have made significant investments. Disruptive procurement has also had a significant impact on the ability to generate project funding. Cities work within a legal and regulatory framework and procurement has historically focused on cost, but by using techniques such as challenge-based procurement and framework contracts, cheaper and more effective outcomes can be obtained. Procurement has played a huge part in how we built a sustainable smart city within Southend using disruptive procurement to use the money that you already have to do things better and more collaboratively David Cummings To make less money go further, smart cities need to have more spending power and be able to buy more for less. This can be achieved by: Longer funding cycles purchasing larger volumes in each cycle. Converged funding cycles across the procurers departments and locations, everyone buying the same things at the same time. Collaborative procurement - across local authorities. Sharing practice and raising the profile of the smart agenda. Flexible funding giving local authorities more discretion on funding allocation. Central Government can help maintain, for example by funding infrastructure, education and skills. These could be skills in managing complex IoT projects, apprenticeships in digital skills including machine learning and AI, supporting connectivity deployments in technologies including WiFi, broadband and low power wide area networks (LPWAN) and more. Connectivity For a city to be smart, it has to be digitally connected and have the appropriate digital and physical infrastructure. Southend have been able to deliver a fibre infrastructure across the whole Borough. Full fibre programmes have had funding and support from government to provide the foundation layer. Projects and skills are needed to make use of the fibre infrastructure laying fibre is one thing, having the skills required to exploit this technology is another. Issues still remain around the provision of rural connectivity. 6 WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable

7 Open Data Sharing data across functions, data controllers, locations and even countries is essential if the full benefits of a smart city are to be achieved. This represents both the biggest opportunity and the biggest obstacle to smart city delivery. As an example, sharing traffic monitoring data enables smart LED street lighting to be reduced to 10% of the normal level when there is minimal road use thus making an instant saving on energy cost without compromising an important public amenity. Data controllers have a big decision to make do they share their data or keep it to themselves? Privacy issues apart, data controllers need to be confident that open data and private data can co-exist in one place and shared under the control of the data owner. This was a particular focus for the Milton Keynes Project. Data privacy rules vary from country to country, but consensus is being achieved that countries should take the lead on data control on privacy and not service providers (such as Facebook and Twitter). Data on different systems, created by different organisations over many years were never designed to be shared and can be markedly different. Data might come from sensors and physical things, such as street furniture and buildings, where standardisation is easier. Data on people is much less standardised, making it difficult to create a homogenised dataset. It also costs money to open data and there is an expectation that data can easily be made available which is not always the case. Practically, it is probably better to open some of the data first than to wait and do it all at once. Roundtable participants thought that collaboration and initiatives on data management and sharing, and standards and interoperability, could be helpful. Current UK initiatives include: Hypercat is an initiative to link datasets. The Hypercat specification allows Internet of Things (IoT) clients to discover information about IoT assets over the web. With Hypercat developers can write applications that will work across many servers, breaking down the walls between vertical silos. The Context Information Management Standards Group is looking at common APIs for city-based meta data CityVerve is looking at creating a standardised framework for the control and release of data by citizens, allowing citizens to more easily see what data is being collected about them (by mobile) and why its required (There s broad acceptance from people that they will provide a bit of data in return for a service) The point was made that vendor lock-in (solutions only available from a specific vendor) and city lock-in (inability to transfer solutions from one city environment to another) must be avoided as part of this process. This is because the technologies are still developing. What one company may be doing today could be a failed project tomorrow. Open source projects are attractive to smart city managers because they leave the options for additional applications, technologies and projects to be built on top. WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable 7

8 Collaboration, Cooperation and Coordination A key theme of the discussion was collaboration: within projects, across cities and regions, and all kinds of UK organisation and functions. This enables the delivery of the smart city promise quicker, more creatively and more cost effectively. Nobody has all the answers, we have to work collaboratively. Adrian Slatcher We need to work together with local authorities, businesses and academics to discover the new great opportunities and change the way in which we live in cities. Paul Garner Collaboration can be between tech businesses and local authorities where vendors might use R&D budget for projects in cities. Businesses often have a desire to co-innovate with customers and are keen to have contracts which include co-innovation elements. In public sector procurement, customers might create contracts based not just on price, but ones that encourage co-innovation and build on what has already been put in place. Collaboration can be between cities and citizens. At the outset of the MK Project, the programme managers set out to include citizens (via a Citizen Engagement Work Pack) with a pre-existing group Citizen Action MK (described as non-technology people who can relate better to the community). This citizen engagement had a ring-fenced budget for citizen initiatives, ideas for smart initiatives were submitted via a dedicated website, Our MK, and there was a crowd-sourced vote to select the best ideas, each of which was given a 5k grant to further their ideas. Funded ideas included: Map of cycleways (MK has many!) Feedback to the MK local authority on cycleway location Pop up shop for recycled furniture Bore hole at allotment site Food passport scheme which then became MK Food Revolution To encourage future collaboration, examples such as the MK Project are invaluable. To bring people together, demonstrable in-service applications that are selfsustaining and can be templated can help show other public sector organisations that some cities have adopted smart technologies that bring significant benefit to the community. It should also be recognised that creating a smart city is a combination of quick wins and slow burners. A smart city programme has to be seen to be delivering something tangible and valuable early on in the programme lifetime. We all need incremental outcome benefits along the way. Paul Garner LED street lighting is visible, its use is clear - as is its ability to save money. Autonomous vehicles (soon to be a trial in MK) will attract media attention and public comment. For other initiatives, the benefits will be incremental, success will be more difficult to quantify and the process may just appear as a natural, organic evolution rather than the achievement of a smart city programme. Transport and healthcare integration are long term goals for the smart city, and will probably deliver the greatest benefits to citizens whether these are judged to have come as a result of a smart city programme is yet to be seen. 8 WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable

9 Happiness! Returning to one of David Cummings three rules, it seems that happiness is definitely on the smart city agenda. Dubai has a Ministry of Happiness and Barcelona and Vienna are both described as happy cities (To assist its smart programme, Vienna has a department called TINA which ensures smart integration across all government departments). Some cities in China and the Middle East are investing heavily in smart infrastructure it is a much easier task to build smart into a new city. It was argued that nobody has yet cracked how to bring smart quickly and effectively into established cities and, more broadly, the UK is at a particular disadvantage because of our lack of an integrated transport system (compared to Germany, for example) Trends The Future of the Smart City We asked our experts to give us the aspirations and expectations for the smart city initiative in ADRIAN SLATCHER thought that change would be the major feature for 2018 with Brexit, the impact of local devolution and the influence of the Greater Manchester Mayor (who has said that he wants Manchester to be the UK s leading digital city). Smart city programmes should become even more cross disciplinary bringing together a wider range of specialist disciplines - not staying within silos. The IoT will continue its development based on more user experience. Adrian also thought that it was time to stop talking technology and start talking benefits. DAVID CUMMINGS said that we need to ensure that we adapt to global and regional trends in smart cities and cited the example of autonomous vehicles they are coming, so how do we adapt to that? David felt that every year everybody seems to gets more comfortable with digital technology; making smart city programmes more of an expectation. PAUL GARNER spoke about his anticipation of the autonomous vehicle trial in MK 40 pods (not cars) will be seen on MK s cycleways next year. Staying with the transport theme, Paul was also keen to see the arrival of non-fixed bus routes, which use smart technology to take you where you want to go, when you want to go. Paul was also looking forward to the arrival of 5G technology and what that will enable for the smart city citizen due to higher data capacity, better coverage, and quicker response times. So, what is at the heart of a small city? The answer is probably MOMENTUM. In the view of those taking part in the discussion, local authorities and the local public sector, central government, business and academia need to maintain momentum behind smart city initiatives - continuing to support existing projects (like Manchester, Milton Keynes and Bristol) and by creating new ones. The UK is not, at present, leading the way in smart city development, but is at least on the journey. The momentum behind visible successes has to be maintained, the time for talking has to be replaced by the time for action. Smart city outcomes, wherever they are (connectivity, transport infrastructure, energy saving etc.) need to be seen. Successes as they occur should be highlighted, making the changes that are occurring more visible to citizens across the UK. Collaborative working between the public sector, business and citizens has to be the way forward and is an area where some momentum needs to be generated. Citizens are not being involved in smart city programmes consistently and in meaningful ways, and this needs to change to gain co-operation and acceptance. Procurement can be a big enabler and momentum needs to be created so that other cities can learn from good practice. To find out more, visit: Digital Strategy Group and The Hive Business Club WHAT S AT THE HEART OF A SMART CITY? l CityVerve Manchester Roundtable 9

10 Produced by INTERNET OF THINGS Digital Catapult, 101 Euston Road, London, NW1 2RA IoTUK.org.uk