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Understanding The Smart City Market [White Paper]
How to Select an Open, Future-Proof Smart City System
In recent years, the world has experienced a very strong acceleration of urbanization. Moreover, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, and this share is projected to reach 66% by 2050. As a result, cities are facing multiple challenges, from population growth to climate change. One way to address these issues is through the adoption of smart city technologies. However, the most common starting point for a smart city system is street lighting.
Smart City Technology Market
The first part of this white paper demystifies the smart city technology market, which is known to be very large and fragmented, and provides an overview of the types of vendors present in this market, including:- Hardware (Device) Vendors
- Controls and Sensors Vendors
- Software Vendors and Integrators
- Network Connectivity Vendors
- All-in-One Vertical System Vendors
Key Criteria to Consider
The second part of this white paper provides key criteria to consider when selecting a smart city system. These are divided into three categories:- Core Features
Each smart city system is different, but most offer similar basic functionality. For street lighting systems, these include remote control, energy monitoring, fixture performance monitoring, adaptive lighting and the ability to activate other sensors for smart city applications. - Interoperability and openness
Interoperability is the key to any smart city system. It ensures that a city is not dependent on a single vendor for all its critical systems and creates additional value when different systems work together. A few types of open systems will be discussed, including:- Openness in Hardware & Controls
- Openness in Network Connectivity
- Openness in Software
- Future readiness
In any large smart infrastructure project, system selection is at the top of the priority list. It is therefore essential to think about the types of technologies that the chosen system could support in the future, and which ensure its future evolution.
Finally, this white paper provides you with a summary table on openness and future scalability in smart city systems that can even be used as a checklist when selecting suppliers or preparing an RFP.
