4 critical IoT challenges for smart cities · smart city sensors will be available to governments—evolving their role into solutions enablers. Additionally, cities can then monetize

4 critical IoT challenges for smart citiesWhat it takes to improve your city’s services—and how to do it

Rapid urbanization and abundant connectivity have converged at just the right time. With 70% of the world’s population estimated to live in cities by 2050,1 IoT-enabled smart communities are laying the foundations for a sustainable, prosperous future.

In essence, the goal of a city remains much the same—create a sustainable environment for citizens and businesses to thrive. But explosive growth and demand for increased connectivity turn this promise into an entirely new paradigm.

Already, cities are reimagining their core services through the lens of technology to make cities more livable, workable and sustainable.

For pioneering cities, a multitude of wireless sensors already links infrastructure to deliver actionable intelligence—energy-saving lights, congestion-reducing traffic sensors and crime-preventing intelligence. And with investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) expected to reach $158 billion by 2022, their widespread adoption is imminent.2

To fully capitalize on these technological advancements, the infrastructure that enables them must be rolled out first—a complex feat that requires significant funding, an end to departmental silos, vigilant security and privacy practices and reliable private-public partnerships. But the critical nature of this infrastructure isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s a model you can derive value from as you build it.

Here are the four mission-critical components you need to master on your journey to building a truly smart city—and how to get started.

Why our cities need to get smarter

1. www.un.org/development2. www.helpnetsecurity.com

2Sprint Business 4 critical IoT challenges for smart communities 2

01 The smartest cities start small and go broad

01The smartest cities start small and go broad

There are immediate opportunities in smart initiatives today—especially as sensors, connectivity and IoT platforms become more accessible.

And the sooner communities start smart projects, the sooner they can reap the benefits of data from those early projects to unlock new use cases. Because smart cities are constructed piece by piece, each new project can leverage the information from previous successes to create a network of interconnected solutions that benefit citizens.

The best starting point is a small-scale pilot that proves value and viability upfront. That way you don’t lose sight of the bigger picture—and you can demonstrate the impact of the project before making a big investment. And that impact isn’t just in the dollars and cents—truly smart initiatives demonstrate a real impact on people’s lives.

Here are three examples of cost-saving, life-improving initiatives that are already underway.

4Sprint Business 4 critical IoT challenges for smart communities


Wireless sensors fight crime in San Francisco

In San Francisco, authorities are immediately alerted to gunshots via sensors that triangulate the location and generate detailed, real-time, location-based information. This speeds up the deployment of personnel to the location and has helped reduce gun crime by up to 50% in neighborhoods where the technology has been deployed.3

Energy-saving smart lighting in San Diego

The city of San Diego has invested in connected street lights which dim to save energy. They’ve already seen a drop in energy usage of 60%, estimated to save $2.5 million annually—savings they’re using to upgrade the rest of the city.4

Self-healing energy networks in Chattanooga

Smart grid technology in Chattanooga, Tennessee, a medium-sized town, reduced the length of power outages by more than 50% during severe windstorms. Automated switches on the power grid helped the electricity provider identify and resolve outages faster, saving the utility $1.4 million* in repair and operational costs in the process.5

3. www.smartcitiescouncil.com 4. www.news.itu.int 5. www.greentechmedia.com


It’s easy to look at these successful smart initiatives and see them only as large-scale projects. But the truth is, they all started small.

That’s not to say that building a smart city is an easy undertaking. Each project involves a number of moving parts that span departments, technologies and expertise. But once the ball’s rolling and stakeholders can see the value of smart projects in action, getting further buy-in for new projects becomes a whole lot easier.

In fact, this is equally relevant in the private sector. McKinsey research shows that companies trialing a wide variety of IoT use cases often have greater economic success6 (around 30 use cases is considered optimal). The thinking here is that a breadth of use cases helps to maximize visibility over the impact of IoT applications and builds momentum for more projects – a lesson the public sector can certainly use.

But before kicking off a handful of IoT initiatives, it’s important to keep the big picture in mind. Consider how smart solutions might integrate with others— and how different types of data and infrastructure can be used across multiple use cases. For instance, the data from a smart lighting project might also provide valuable insights on foot traffic in the area. Insights that city planners could use when planning future developments.

Working project by project and leveraging every new data source that becomes available along the way is how lasting smart communities are built.


6. www.mckinsey.com


Kansas City gets smarter through public-private ventures

Take the creation of Kansas City’s smart zone, for instance, along a 2.2-mile-long streetcar line. The initiative was designed to streamline traffic in the area. In parallel, smart streetlights use sensors to detect pedestrian traffic and adjust street lights to real-time needs—reducing the wattage of the LED lights by as much as 25 percent.7

The key to the project was the city’s collaboration with a total of 14 technology vendors, providing network connectivity, wireless access points and kiosks, as well as sensors and data analytics.

Going forward, these kinds of public-private relationships will become increasingly valuable in the implementation of smart communities. (For what it’s worth, Kansas City worked with Sprint on this project because we’ve been in the IoT game for more than 20 years, dating back to our Telemetry solutions in the 1990s. And we’re backed with whole-ecosystem expertise from SoftBank—the world’s largest family of tech experts. This combination of experts and the latest technologies is essential for IoT success.)

7. www.business.sprint.com/blog

01

Sprint Business 4 critical IoT challenges for smart communities

02 Breaking down departmental silos

02When data is locked away in departmental silos, it reduces the potential impact of the intelligence you’re collecting.

Data from one department is hugely valuable to another—take a water main break for instance. It affects multiple departments: First Responders who need to reach an emergency fast, public works personnel who need to fix the pipe, and drivers who may get stuck in traffic. But that information isn’t always available to all of those parties.

In a smart city, a sensor on the pipe could alert operations and maintenance personnel as soon as there was any change in pressure. It could inform First Responders so their emergency response isn’t held up by a flooded street, and it could redirect traffic to reduce congestion.

It might even prevent the break altogether by notifying the public works department of the potential problem so they can dispatch an engineer before the pipe bursts.

Departmental silos won’t disappear overnight though—it’s estimated that only 7% of government data sets are open and only 50% of government data is readable globally.8 This is a gradual process.

Unlocking siloed data is about keeping one eye on the bigger picture and tying all of the related departments together. But showing departments how smart projects are improving services, and how data is enabling these improvements, will go a long way towards eroding these silos. The fastest route to this future is by sharing the success of every smart initiative and loudly communicating the value of data in those successes.

Breaking down departmental silos

Spotlight on Curiosity™ IoT

Sprint’s Curiosity™ IoT brings data together from connected devices across disparate systems and turns it into immediately actionable intelligence. The industry’s first native IoT network and platform, Curiosity™ combines a dedicated, distributed and virtualized core network and operating system to connect data endpoints and help analyze the data from those endpoints to derive city-shaping insights. What’s more, it’s built on an open architecture, which makes for easy integration.

8. www.opendatabarometer.org


02Breaking down departmental silos

One exception is New York’s DataBridge, which is leading the charge with a common set of standards for sending and receiving data across over 20 city departments . They even put this data to work during Hurricane Sandy. Using information from six different departments,9 Emergency Response teams could identify exactly where their efforts would have the biggest impact. It’s this kind of thinking that’s unlocking the full benefits of connected devices.

As the network effect of data sharing is realized, scores of available, proprietary data from smart city sensors will be available to governments—evolving their role into solutions enablers. Additionally, cities can then monetize this data, understanding that businesses will pay a premium for specific data sets that help them reach prospective and existing customers in new and unique ways. Data on footfall, for example may help businesses decide the best location to open their next retail store. Or it may help advertisers who want to know when an area is busiest to maximize their ad exposure.

To realize these possibilities, data needs to flow between disparate systems and applications on a reliable, stable platform. One that can promote service improvements, transparency, and collaboration with other public and private sector entities. One that supports innovation and that can benefit the entire community.

9. www.accenture.com


03 Smart cities need smarter privacy and security

03Smart cities need smarter privacy and security

So you’ve put your entire energy grid online. What if someone hacks it?

The connected nature of IoT creates a wider surface area for cyber attacks—every sensor and endpoint becomes a potential entry point for hackers.

This is a humbling thought, especially when our reliance upon connected devices is dramatically increasing.

Just look at the Dyn cyber attack, a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks that targeted between 50,000 and 100,000 connected IoT devices,10 such as printers, IP cameras and baby monitors. The attacks caused major internet platforms and services to crash for users in Europe and North America and caused estimated damages of approximately $110 million.11

Smart communities need security and privacy based on practices that remain vigilant to prevent threats that might be lurking around the corner. There’s no fool-proof way to protect against cyber attacks, but there are a number of measures you can take.

10. www.networkworld.com/article11. www.kaspersky.co.uk/blog


03Smart cities need smarter privacy and security

5 IoT security imperatives

1 Build on a secure network with a dedicated IoT platform—sensor information is too sensitive to be transmitted over a public network. To stay safe, smart communities need a dedicated, secure network provider that can secure data on every level: device, network and application.

2 Develop policies and procedures in collaboration with device manufactures and network provides to stay on top of security threats from chips to operating systems. Nothing is static—not the criminals, not the ecosystem, not any part of an operating environment. Study data, explore new collaborative relationships, revise strategy regularly and evolve with cybersecurity trends.

3 Perform regular audits—take advantage of Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM) tools to scan network activity and identify suspicious internet traffic.

4 Assess connections, especially between legacy systems and new ones by leveraging basic application scanning tools that can help identify vulnerabilities.

5 Create a detailed attack response plan in place, test it and include a communications plan in case of a breach.

Data privacy

Today we’re collecting more personal data than ever before, and the data-hungry devices that power our smart cities are only adding more. To complicate things, data legislation is evolving in parallel, which has a ripple effect onto products, strategies and customers —think of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is already being adopted by companies—and governments - worldwide. (One of the GDPR’s primary goals is to give control to individuals over their personal data.)

And as smart communities become more widespread, they’re going to inform a whole new set of regulations to keep up with. To stay ahead of the curve, systems need to be approached with a ‘privacy by design’ mindset, meaning adequate privacy protection is based on controlling private data through a product or service’s entire life cycle.

But ultimately, cities that don’t get smart will be left behind. So while security and privacy are a completely valid concern, the solution lies in pre-empting issues, remaining vigilant to new threats and building within the right tools and frameworks rather than in avoiding IoT altogether.


04 Reliable, future-facing infrastructure

Reliable, future-facing infrastructure

If your entire public transport runs on your wireless network, and that network goes down… what then?

A smart city is only as connected as the network it’s built on. To reach its full potential, smart cities need three network assurances:

Back-up systems

Critical IoT connections place new demands on the network: ultra-reliability, availability and low latency. Assurance that the network will remain operational in an emergency is vital—particularly when things as critical as emergency services or driverless vehicles will come to rely on their intelligence. Failover communications are essential in case the network does go down.

04


04On-the-ground infrastructure

Municipalities must work with network providers to smooth out the deployment of next-generation wireless network infrastructure so connectivity to smart cities is evenly distributed and available to all citizens. This will hugely benefit communities and is a prerequisite of setting up smart city initiatives for success.

An innovation-ready network

Looking forward, IoT devices will only become more complex and data hungry. To keep up, connected cities will need advanced networks like 5G that are capable of supporting new innovations. 5G will provide high-speed connectivity, low latency and increased capacity that will unlock even more smart city use cases—autonomous cars that can react in real-time, remote machinery operation or automated drones, for example—laying the foundations for economic growth in communities of all sizes.

Reliable, future-facing infrastructure

Spotlight on Sprint 5G

As the Sprint 5G network continues to improve and add new capabilities, its lower latency, better coverage, higher capacity and greater density will offer smart cities a whole new level of connectivity – one that simply isn’t possible on existing 4G LTE networks.12

When coupled with Sprint’s fast, high-capacity mobile 5G service, Curiosity IoT’s dedicated, distributed and virtualized IoT core network will be capable of supporting artificial intelligence, robotics, edge computing, autonomous driving vehicles and other IoT systems requiring ultra-low latency and high bandwidth.

How fast is 5G?

• On a 3G network, a two- hour-long film takes 26 hours to download

• Using 4G, download time is reduced to 6 minutes.

• With 5G, that same film takes 3.6 seconds to download.

12. www.howtogeek.com/340002/what-is-5g-and-how-fast-will-it-be


Smart cities promise a more livable, workable and sustainable environment — offering better services and living standards to their citizens.

But becoming a smart city is a complex, long-term endeavor that requires strategic planning and financing, open data, security and privacy provisions and supporting infrastructure.

This becomes possible on a network that enables your smart community to develop in a non-fragmented, self-perpetuating way.

Delivering on the promise of smart cities


To find out how we can help you get started building your smart city, learn more here or call your Sprint rep today on 1-866-414-3225 for Federal Agencies or 1-866-653-1060 for State and Local Agencies

Let’s talkWe’re Sprint Government. We’ve been providing IoT solutions for more than 20 years—before IoT was even a “thing”. We’re not just your supplier, we’re your partner—and we can help you build the right framework to tackle the challenges facing your community, today and tomorrow.

https://government.sprint.com/

Documents

4 critical IoT challenges for smart cities · smart city sensors will be available to governments—evolving their role into solutions enablers. Additionally, cities can then monetize