Despite the worldwide adoption of the smart city concept, IoT application in the public sector is likely to severely lag as compared to the private sector.
There are lots of factors supporting this view. Some of them are the inability of legacy infrastructure to support new digital initiatives, complicated and out of date permitting processes and legal frameworks, security challenges, and government inability to justify deployments due to muddled RoI guarantees.
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While the private sector can take risks and invest, the public sector has to move incrementally while maintaining services under stress.
Research firm TBR says that the public sector will not invest in smart city solutions without a clear understanding of how to achieve RoI.
Budgetary and oversight limitations restrict developed government entities to pursing predominantly small and innovative projects. TBR believes these governments will begin to undertake larger projects when proven turnkey solutions emerge.
Market realities
Rapidly growing cities in emerging markets are including IoT solutions as they expand services.
While most of these governments continue to be budget constrained, the cost of adding sensors and a network is relatively small in a large project like laying pipe or upgrading connectivity infrastructure, especially considering the potentially large savings.
As the US is a mature market, there will not be a lot of net-new buildout in the region, thus delaying IoT adoption in the public sector. Technology vendors struggle to gain revenue traction inside the smart city space.
Currently, TBR believes Fortune 500 IoT vendors aren’t finding widespread success in smart city deployments. Vendors generally seek large, transformative projects; however, most of the current activity between large vendors and cities is centered on non-monetized, small-deployment proofs of concept.
A recent pilot project between Verizon and Boston to use analytics to derive insight from a combination of traffic data, cameras (machine vision) and outside data (local events in the area) is an example.
These trials are allowing vendors to refine their analytics and vet their solutions with actual success, but TBR believes they are still struggling to generate traction with revenue-driving engagements.
Research agency IHS Markit says companies use IoT to transform how products are made, how supply chains are managed and how customers can influence design.
Automation/operator tech firms may release their own Platforms-as-a Service (PaaS) offering in the cloud as they compete to offer and own IoT projects for the industrial market.
Low-power, wide-area networks (LPWAN) will go live around the world in 2017 as an alternative to short-range wireless standards such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. LPWAN technologies will connect hard-to-reach, IoT devices more efficiently and at a lower cost, dealing with challenges stemming from range limitation to poor signal strength.
ALSO READ: IHS Markit’s top seven technology predictions for 2017
According to Trend Micro’s 2016 threat predictions, Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) will play a larger role in targeted attacks in 2017. These attacks will capitalize upon the growing acceptance of connected devices by exploiting vulnerabilities and unsecured systems to disrupt business processes, as we saw with Mirai.
ALSO READ: Trend Micro’s 2016 threat predictions
AI and machine learning
AI and machine learning, programmed around common city challenges, will provide cities a lower-cost, off-the-shelf option to turn data into insight.
Also, as city leaders request, it will allow cities to focus their budgets on social scientists — experts who can figure out how to implement IoT to best meet city challenges and improve city life — instead of technologists and data scientists.
TBR believes another solution is to pool data. Vendors can offer discounts for anonymized data and improve their products and services with the data. Because a lot of problems are shared, common analyses, or universal use cases, can pay off.
Smart city outlook
According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, the smart cities market size is estimated to grow from $312.03 billion in 2015 to $757.74 billion by 2020.
Technological advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and growing demographics and hyper-urbanization are the major driving factors for the market.
Arya MM
editor@infotechlead.com
