Chicago shows the way to go with 'smart city' concept

The “smart city” concept aims not only to improve people’s lives and attract business and investment, but also to consume energy more efficiently.
Chicago was selected as host city for last month’s “Internet of Things World Forum”, a showcase and learning ground for media and information-technology experts from across the world.
In a keynote speech at the event, Chicago Deputy Mayor Steve Koch said his city wanted to be the centre for people seeking opportunities to start their own companies, creating new jobs and new value. The city wanted to be the test bed for new technology and a place that welcomed people in such industries.
Tom Schenk Jr, director of analytics and performance management in the City of Chicago’s Innovation and Technology Department, said the city was focusing on civil development with open data.
In 2011, Chicago began transforming itself into a digitised city. Billions of US dollars were spent to connect all needed infrastructures in the key areas. Chicago now provides more than 600 data sets online in machine-readable format, ranging from crime, water quality at beaches, traffic congestion, to licensing via its open-data portal, data.cityofchicago.org.

Wide use of CCTVs
Schenk said there were more than 25,000 closed-circuit cameras installed in the city to monitor the public and maintain their safety and security. More important, police cars and communication devices are connected via a fourth-generation cellular network to ensure they can get to problem areas quickly.
Chicago uses city buses to estimate traffic congestion by leveraging the on-board GPS (Global Positioning System) signals that were originally intended for destination announcements and workforce tracking.
To promote green transport, all visitors and residents can get to know the availability and location of bike racks for Chicago’s bike-share programme, called Divvy. This information is published every 15 minutes from each rack to let people know where they can pick up or drop off bicycles.
Chicago Park District reports water-quality data every hour from sensors at the city’s beaches. The portal provides water temperatures and wave height and frequency from in-water sensors.
All public and business sectors are able to find and utilise these data to develop related applications. The “Plow Tracker” application is an example. In wintertime, Chicagoans experience very cold whether. To cope with this, residents can see which areas have been cleared of snow by using this application.
To put systems like Chicago’s in place, digitisation needs to be driven by concrete local or national government policies along with strong support from the private sector.
Among the international places aspiring to develop into smart cities are: Barcelona in Spain, Songdong, Busan and Incheon in South Korea, Stockholm in Sweden and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Recently, India announced that it was aimed to build 100 smart cities around the country.
To make this vision a reality, Internet of Things expert Wim Elfrink, executive vice president for industry solutions and chief globalisation officer of Cisco, acknowledged that government leadership was key along with smart regulation and public-private partnerships.