Cities are rushing to install sensors that collect all types of data with a goal of improving the quality of life for their citizens. A new term has been created to define these cities and that term is “Smart Cities”. There is no single definition for a Smart City yet, but Wikipedia defines a Smart City as “A Smart City is an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) technology in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets”.
Techreplublic.com’s writer Teena Maddox cites that there are five essential technologies for a Smart City. These technologies are: smart energy, smart transportation, smart data, smart mobility and smart Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
The types of information gathered by the sensors include: traffic patterns & traffic signal control, public transportation, better power distribution and creating more efficient ways to use power, infrastructure to increase internet access, improved water supply monitoring and much more. Some of the promises of a Smart City are no more traffic, renewable energy, renewable food sources, less fires, less disease, less pollution and more.
There are several major challenges with creating effective Smart Cities. The first challenge will be getting the sensors deployed. Lux Research believes there will be 1 trillion sensors deployed by 2020. The second challenge is being able to analyze and use the collected data in a meaningful way that will improve the lifestyle of the community. The third challenge is security. Making sure that the implementation of these devices doesn’t introduce vulnerabilities into our infrastructure. Remember, it was the IoT’s that took down the Internet a few months ago. IoT devices were hacked and used to launch a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack against DynDNS. DynDNS is used by many large organizations such as Amazon, Facebook, etc.
Related: Train Your Employees How to Recognize a Threat
Stay up to date by subscribing to our emails and following us on Facebook and Twitter. If you would like more information contact us here or call 937.885.7272.
