A US group comprising representatives from vendors and municipal organisation has produced a blueprint for smart city networking.
The stated aim of the Municipal IoT Blueprint is “to provide state and local government leaders, technology practitioners and researchers, and industry partners with a practical overview of the Internet of Things and how it will affect government agencies in the future.”
It limits its focus to “the physical and logical layers, not necessarily the software applications and data generated therefrom.”
- It contains sections on:
- Impacts of IoT to municipal government
- Considerations for deploying municipal IoT networks
- The Current State of Municipal IoT
- Case studies of local government IoT deployments
- Deploying municipal IoT networks
- IoT cybersecurity and privacy
- Case study reports of municipal IoT networks.
From the case studies the report concludes: “IoT technologies are still emerging and extremely new ground for local governments.”
Two paths to the smart city
It says the case studies reveal two distinct paths for municipalities that decide to forge ahead and build their own networks: low cost pilot networks that evaluate applications in partnership with private sector firms; and production networks with a single focus such as street lights that can be bundled into larger construction projects that have organisational and political momentum and backing.
“For pilot networks, it is important to start small, build the right partnerships (both internally and externally), set the right expectations among stakeholders and learn from each trial,” it says.
“Meanwhile, for production networks, there are huge economies of scale in bundling IoT with other construction projects. However, it is critical to have the right teams involved and develop a ‘big picture’ strategy for how the IoT network can be leveraged for use-cases in the future.
“Within each path, it is important to engage the public and address their concerns as part of the deployment and policy process.”
Meeting the global smart city challenge
The blueprint has been produced by the Wireless SuperCluster of the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC). The GCTC is an initiative of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) “to encourage collaboration and the development of standards” with long term goal being “to establish and demonstrate replicable, scalable, and sustainable models for incubation and deployment of interoperable, standard-based solutions using advanced technologies such as IoT and CPS, and demonstrate their measurable benefits in communities and cities.”
It comprises several ‘superclusters’ each being “a multi-city, multi-stakeholder collaboration organised around common project objectives and shared solutions,” where cities/communities and partners “jointly tackle shared issues – develop and deploy shares solutions to create economies of scale.”
Other superclusters focus on: transportation; data; public safety; energy/water/waste management; agriculture and rural; education; smart buildings. Each has produced or is planning to produce a similar blueprint. There is also a cybersecurity and privacy committee, which has produced a guidebook: A Risk Management Approach to Smart City Cybersecurity and Privacy.
