Smart city tech standards essential for cities to realize the tools’ potential: report
Source: Smart Cities Dive by Cailin Crowe
Dive Brief:
Smart city technology standards are essential for cities to realize the full potential of the technologies now available, according to a recent report by technology intelligence firm ABI Research.
Since the technologies’ inception, smart cities have struggled to achieve the promise of interoperability and connected sensors, in part because devices are not compatible across vendors, said Lindsey Vest, a research analyst at ABI Research. That leads to incompatible devices and vendor lock-in, when a city has to keep buying multiple technologies from the same supplier.
A range of alliances, consortia and standards development organizations can facilitate the smart cities network with the right cooperation. However, the diverse range of standards organizations can also create confusion and inefficiencies, the report notes.
Dive Insight:
Standardization across smart city technologies is becoming increasingly important as more players emerge in the space, Vest said.
“Data is the key asset in smart cities, and it is important to enable data sharing between multiple systems,” wrote Srikanth Chandrasekaran, senior director and foundational technologies practice lead at the IEEE Standards Association. “Frictionless movement of data between multiple physical, digital, and human systems is the holy grail as it generates value.”
One group focusing on the issue is the Joint Smart Cities Task Force, an international group formed by the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Telecommunication Union. Other groups include Open & Agile Smart Cities, which advocates for minimal interoperability mechanisms, “based on open technical specifications that allow cities and communities to replicate and scale solutions globally.”