With rapid advancement emerging in the fields of technology such as AI, IoT, data analytics, smart cities have been one of the fast-paced innovations using the technologies mentioned earlier. What’s a smart city, then? A smart city signifies to an urban area well designed with virtual infrastructure to provide a quality lifestyle for its citizens.
According to the UN estimate, it is predicted that by 2050, 68 percent of the global population will be residing in urban areas. This now leads in a push to make our cities more connected, more productive, and more citizen-friendly backed by strong management and smart technology. Big data lies at the core of technological innovation for every smart city. The cities will now be able to advance their activities and manage the changes with greater efficiency by gaining insight into the data from connected devices, organizations, and other data sources.
BENEFITS OF BIG DATA FOR SMART CITIES
Smarter Traffic Management
The smart cities have already begun to leverage data to deliver enhanced urban mobility, and it is projected that this trend will grow in the coming years. It is estimated that by 2023, revenue from traffic-focused smart city innovations will be measured at $4.4 billion, compared to $2 billion in 2019.
Big data analytics is the foundation for the smart-traffic decision-making framework. It helps to break down the information and to communicate the information across departments. This solution then gathers all types of traffic information using sensors to allow monitoring and control of traffic in real-time. It can also be used to predict traffic trends, which are based on practical simulations and mathematical models. Smart city planners are using data analytics to identify the reasons behind any traffic congestion. City planners also aim to use data analytics to evaluate trends relating to the car owners’ preferred parking spaces.
Better Public Safety
Significant insights into the data can be used to explain the most likely causes of crime and can be used to locate these areas of the city. Smart cities are predominantly data-driven, and this promotes crime-related initiatives. Data are used to assess the city’s high crime-prone areas. In these places, the authorities can behave ‘smarter’ by detecting crimes and then stopping them before they strike. It can also be a great benefit to the emergency services and will redistribute resources in areas of the high risk of crime occurrence of improved productivity to combat crime. In unexpected cases of a crisis, various data sets can be combined to deal with situations like emergencies.
Enhanced Spending
There’s a lot of investment being made in every city to change it. The money that the city planners invest can be used either for city renovation or remodeling. While using big data, collected data is used to determine what kind of upgrades the city wants to make to the significant areas concerned. By conducting a proper analysis of this data, investments for the appropriate areas can be made accordingly.
Planning of City
Mapping infrastructure needs in a smart city becomes relatively easy when high and accurate data are used precisely to illustrate the areas of development. For the cities that are on the track of becoming a smart city look to implement a robust data strategy. The data these cities use to streamline and automate operations need to be rich and very abundant.
Significant Development
Daily monitoring of a smart city’s development helps to get ongoing updates on any improvements as needed. The volume of output generated by post-technology deployment helps to get a clear idea about desired developments, and this is one of the main drivers of growth for sustainability. Data plays a crucial role in assessing urban development outcomes.
Conclusion
Big data plays an essential role in developing a smart city when it comes to data processing. This data is gathered from the various devices that are installed in the city, making it easier to understand the patterns as well as a city’s needs.