Right Place, Right Time, Right Data
Photo by Rikki Chan on Unsplash
By Mike Beevor, Digi.CIty Expert in Residence - IOT
It’s been an odd few weeks for me having been a direct victim of COVID-19’s impact on the technology sector, losing my job at Pivot3 after nearly five years. Fortunately, I have an incredible network of people around to support me, like the wonderful Chelsea Collier who invited me to become the Expert in Residence for IoT at Digi.City. I have also begun to have conversations about my next role, and those conversations sparked the idea for this blog post. One of the most common questions I have received is:
“Mike – How do we do IoT? It feels like everything is IoT”
As with many technical responses, the answer isn’t easy, is convoluted and tends to contain a large number of buzzwords and jargon. Since I have a distinct displeasure for and an almost positive hatred of jargon, I thought that I would attempt to lay out how I advise customers in identifying IoT projects that will deliver strong results. The key success criteria to this process is to be able to answer the questions at the end succinctly and confidently.
What Problem Do I Solve First or What Do I IoT First?
As I have mentioned in other posts the problem that you are trying to solve should be easily defined in a single sentence. For example;
“As a city, we are trying to reduce the volume of traffic on our major trunk roads into the city during the main commuting hours”
A simple statement to an incredibly complex problem (experienced in virtually every city I have ever lived in!), but one that we can create a simple metric to measure success for, or one where we can use multiple metrics to measure success. In our example success could be measured by:
A video-based count of traffic on the identified trunk roads (using in-place video cameras)
A sensor-based count of traffic on the identified trunk roads (deploying pneumatic tube sensors or piezoelectric sensors)
Air quality sensors that measure the reduction in NO2 levels on the identified trunk roads
Finally, we need to run the problem past the committee that we have engaged to drive our smart city (assuming there is one) and ensure that it passes the criteria they put in place around feasibility and alignment with public sentiment.
What Are The Material Outcomes Of This Project?
Ah. The big “SO WHAT!” I purposely left this out of the problem statement as I feel that it deserves a category all of its own. It is the fundamental WHY of the problem that you are trying to solve and the most important answer that you need to have.
Don’t be afraid of there being multiple answers to the why question here – in fact, the more “whys” you can generate, the more likely it is that you have chosen the correct problem to solve. There are a few words of caution here, however.
Don’t over estimate the outcomes. Statements like “This will 100% solve our problem” are unlikely to be correct. I was once taught by a very smart manager to “Under Promise and Over Deliver”
Always have an obvious benefit statement with each point
Ensure that your answers are still succinct and ideally, simple bullet points or sentences
A small number of obvious benefits occur in our traffic example.
Reducing traffic on our trunk roads may improve resident happiness during their commute
This may reduce incidents of road rage
That would reduce the burden on our Emergency Services
This may reduce road traffic accidents (RTAs)
That would reduce the burden on our Emergency Services
We may increase revenue for our Mass Transit Organisations through increased passenger numbers
This increased revenue could allow for modernisation and service improvement
This may drive down pollution r and aid our city in achieving our environmental targets.
Reducing traffic on our trunk roads may improve air quality in the city as a whole
This may reduce the incidents of respiratory issues in our healthcare system
That would ease the burden on our hospitals
That may make our residents healthier
This may improve our economy by making our downtown district a more pleasant place to be
Improving our economy would provide more funds for public services and our city would be more attractive to potential new residents
These are a small sample of measures and have been simplified greatly. It is possible to go down long and winding paths with the beneficial effects of each of them.
It is as important to define a list of consequences to the problem that you are trying to solve as well. When it comes to making changes to a transit infrastructure, there is normally a strong reaction from the public. It is always good to have a series of questions here that should be examined in the same way as the benefits.
Closing/Digging up the roads will cause a temporary increase in traffic density
This is directly opposite to the aim of the project
Are we able to tolerate the disruption?
Is the disruption going to cause more damage than the benefit we are delivering?
A portion of the residents are going to be frustrated/angry/annoyed at whatever disruptions directly affect them (people seem to be looking for reasons to be angry nowadays!)
Do we have the materials in place to provide succinct answers to the public’s objections?
Do we have solutions to assuage the anger in the short-term based on the disruption the project will cause?
Can our mass transit system cope with the increased number of passengers?
Are our mass transit vehicles more polluting than private vehicles?
Do we need to increase the mass transit infrastructure?
If you have followed the “Consult” method in my previous article, then the impacts to the public should be understood, but the information to allay the concerns should also have been disseminated as part of that consult process and the sentiment that the project will benefit the city in the end should be high.
The final part of this phase is understanding the human impact.
Which groups of people am I helping by solving this problem?
It may be tempting to say “everyone”, but it is unlikely to be true, or at least, some of the links will be tenuous indeed! Identifying the groups that you hope to help will give you a better understanding of the problem as a whole, the percentage of residents/visitors it may help, and it will allow you to make more informed decisions on the scope of the project.
In our traffic example, I would identify the following groups of people in order of greatest to least positive impact.
Private Vehicle Commuters to Downtown
Public Vehicle/Mass Transit Operators
Downtown Residents
The Emergency Services
I’ll end this section with a repeated word of caution – don’t try and work on too large a scale up front. It is tempting to try and solve every instance of a problem immediately, but it simply isn’t feasible. Break a city-wide problem down into small sections; you’ll minimise disruption that way, and it gives you plenty of milestones to reassess the impacts and generate meaningful data for future analysis and process improvement.
Join me in the second part of this blog post where we take a tour through the technology questions that you should be asking yourself when undertaking an IoT project!
If anyone is interested in speaking to me about IoT/Smart City consulting, opportunities or roles, you can find me on LinkedIN here!