Cities are Overcrowded
The world tried to push people out of the cities' cores into the beltline, and beyond, however, the millennials have objected because they are not prepared to use public transportation in the way that we did. They don't want cars, they don't want to lease cars, they want to be within walking distance of everything they need. So, there is a massive influx of people into cities, burroughs, and municipalities. The burroughs and municipalities can't cope with the infrastructure, the utilities, the waste, the connectivity, and the traffic of so many people crowding into a smaller area.
Cities are interested in how they can streamline the way they interact with the stakeholders, such as the public, and they also want to work out how they can improve the living experience of their citizens. Cities around the world are developing strategies where they can improve the relationship between commerce, residents, and the city itself. Understanding the problems leads to solutions using IoT devices. I would like to know precisely how many cars are coming into the city, which routes are they taking, where are they parking, how long are they staying. Are they coming for social or commercial reasons? That is a really simple 1.1 question and Canada doesn't know the answer, they are not necessarily asking the right questions.
It's fair to say that Canadian cities are five to seven years behind the rest of the world.
Moscow Traffic & Data
Moscow employs 67 people in a blockchain department to work out the answer on a day by day basis. They capture CTV scans from cameras to work out exactly who is parking their car to jump onto a bus / tram, or did they drive all the way in on the main highway to park three abreast downtown?
Moscow's economy slowed down by about 30%, purely due to the fact that nobody felt comfortable or safe taking public transport. Businesses could only have one meeting in the morning and one meeting in the afternoon because the traffic in Moscow was so bad it took two hours to get from one side to the other. Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin decided that the problem was not acceptable and had to do something about it. They used IBM, CPRE, and myself, as the lead on the project, to figure out exactly what was going on.
Let's not jump and make decisions before we know what's going on.
We used a machine learning and artificial intelligence platform owned by IBM, called Watson, to scan in digital data and written documents, which allowed us to ask the system for options. If I put a car park here, how is that going to affect traffic? If I connect park and ride to this train station, how will it affect traffic? We spent about six months analyzing what was going on to find real solutions that worked. In the end, we built seven car parks around the city and developed a single digital card, kind of like Vancouver's Compass Card, for the bus, the tram, the train, and the car parks. You can add funds to the digital card, park your car, jump on the tram and carry on using the card all the way to your destination. Due to our efforts, the volume of traffic in Moscow dropped by 17% and the speed through the city increased by 25%, in the space of two years.
First Responder Vehicles & IoT
First Response vehicles, fire engines, police or ambulances, need to get to a destination quicker than say, me, who is going to pick up something from a local supermarket. Now, the first response vehicles are being fitted with Internet of Things devices, which race towards a set of traffic lights and say "I'm an ambulance, I'm coming down Fifth Avenue, going south, with my sirens on, and I need to go here." The traffic lights will change predictively to stop all the other traffic and let me go through. This is safer than the current Russian Roulette of the first responder thinking, is this idiot going to realize I've got my siren on? Is he going to slow down? Or is the idiot going to play chicken with me to jump the lights and get in my way? I see this behaviour on a daily basis here in Vancouver, where cars do not get out of the way.
The technology and one of the world's largest, best renown platforms is being created in Waterloo, ON, Canada, 4000 miles away from here. However, Vancouver is still struggling with how to fix the problem.
The problem with Canadian cities is, they are trying to reinvent the wheel rather than go out into the world to see what has worked or what hasn't worked for other cities. Let's treat this as a second mover advantage and try to work out why the city of Amsterdam, Netherlands, is on its fourth strategy. Since one, two and three didn't work, don't go and emulate their first strategy, politely sit down with them and learn about their latest strategy.
Nicholas Jeffery, a Vancouver based Smart City Expert, contributes regularly to IoT Economist. Nicholas pivoted in the new millennia to bring his business acumen and strategic thinking to bear in the technology, media and telecommunications markets, helping companies flesh out their growth strategies, business development and sales operations.