Leaders are grappling with balancing the benefits of this constant data monitoring with the concomitant safety and privacy risks to citizens.
The term “smart cities” has become popular parlance for municipalities’ attempts to enhance delivery of urban services and infrastructure through information and communications technology. While they may conjure images of neon-lit high rises or streetscapes populated by sleek, hovering vehicles, a bit like the 1960s-era The Jetsons cartoon envisioned our high-tech future, the reality of smart cities has begun to emerge in more subtle, less glamourous forms. Cities tend to focus on wastewater monitoring, traffic control and energy distribution technologies in their efforts to become incrementally “smarter.”
Smart cities lean heavily on automation, internet connectivity and the Internet of Things (IoT)—including smartphones, connected cars and a host of web-based appliances and utilities—to boost the delivery and quality of essential urban services and infrastructure like transit, sanitation, water, energy, emergency response and more. Successful smart cities need infrastructure that supports such connectivity, and they pull data from hundreds, or even thousands, of sensors that can be used to analyze and shepherd the direction of resources.
Reprinted courtesy of James P. Bobotek, Pillsbury and Brian E. Finch, Pillsbury
Mr. Bobotek may be contacted at james.bobotek@pillsburylaw.com
Mr. Finch may be contacted at brian.finch@pillsburylaw.com