City to Smart City: 'Smartness Proportion' with Satellite Intelligence
Part - 1 | Satellite Edge Computing – No longer futuristic
Introduction:
As of March 2024, only 142 cities out of 47,868 were recognized in the IIMD's smart city index report for 2024, indicating a significant gap in smart city development globally. This discrepancy becomes even more pressing when considering that, according to the UN, over 68% of the world's population will reside in urban environments by 2050, with a substantial portion concentrated in developing countries. The presence of blue dot clusters on the map further emphasizes the need for smart city advancements to accommodate the burgeoning urban populations in these regions.
What Drives the Attention on Developing Countries?
In the historical narrative of smart city initiatives, developed nations have typically spearheaded the movement. This momentum has been fuelled by substantial investments in Information Communication Technology (ICT) and the established robust infrastructures to align to smart city requirements. Nonetheless, these advantages may not be readily available to developing countries, given their diverse socio-economic conditions. Additionally, the industry's current focus on mature economies widens the gap in technology adoption and outcomes between developed and developing nations, a discrepancy especially noticeable in their smart city initiatives.
The Good News: The Definition of "Smartness" is evolving!
Boyd Cohen's article (2015) signals a significant shift in smart city development, emphasizing a dynamic perception of "smartness." This evolving understanding prioritizes a balanced integration of technology and city governance, emphasizing citizen engagement over excessive technology adoption. In contrast to the earlier Smart City 1.0 model, Smart City 2.0 empowers local municipalities to strategically select technologies aligned with their unique contexts. This evolution holds promise for narrowing the gap between developed and developing nations as they navigate the challenges and opportunities of smart city implementation.
Balancing Technology Adoption
While technology undoubtedly plays a pivotal role in smart city initiatives, the emphasis should not solely be on adopting technology for the sake of it. Instead, there's a growing recognition of the importance of making strategic choices in technology adoption based on specific needs and circumstances.
Consider the landscape of smart city initiatives in various developing nations: Roughly 1% of Indian cities, 30% of China's cities, 17% of Russia's cities, and 25% of Indonesia's cities are actively planning, participating in, or achieving smart city initiatives.
These statistics underscore a rising interest in smart city development. However, it's crucial to understand that many cities within these countries are still deliberating their options. They have the opportunity to prioritize solutions that go beyond simply adopting technology, focusing instead on a strategic approach to technology selection that aligns with their unique needs and resource constraints.
Verge of Overload: Rethinking the Sensor Network Paradigm
Amidst the ever-expanding landscape of smart city technologies, can cities, especially those in developing nations, effectively harness the multitude of options available?
Before delving into the specifics of technology, it's imperative to ponder the following:
The "Network of sensors" integrated with the Internet of Things (IoT) stands as a cornerstone of smart city endeavours. Traditionally, these systems heavily rely on sensor networks for real-time data collection, encompassing aspects like traffic flow, air quality, and energy consumption. While this framework presents undeniable opportunities, the implementation of extensive IoT deployments encounters substantial hurdles in developing countries. Challenges stem from the dearth of reliable infrastructure and services, spanning electricity, internet connectivity, roads, and urban structures. Furthermore, the sheer magnitude of sensor deployment poses maintenance complexities and the looming threat of "sensory overload”, a phenomenon Forbes has highlighted in its discussions on smart city challenges.
Additionally, projections from Electronic Specifier indicated that by 2020, one trillion sensors could have been deployed, magnifying the challenges associated with overreliance on sensor networks.
Redefining Smartness
Amidst challenges such as sensory overload and the unique hurdles faced by developing nations, actual “smartness” can greatly enhance daily living. Redefined smartness entails prioritizing basic infrastructure development and leveraging existing digital frameworks to connect administrations with citizens. This approach aims to bring immediate relief to people's lives by addressing fundamental needs like roads and electricity, while maximizing the efficiency and sustainability of smart city initiatives. It involves evaluating new technologies based on criteria such as capital efficiency and suitability for city economics, emphasizing minimal data collection and effective use of existing digital frameworks such as e-governance portals.
Satellite Imagery for Developing Regions
In the context of optimizing data collection and leveraging e-governance portals, remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) stand out as indispensable tools for advancing smart city initiatives in developing countries. These technologies have long played a crucial role in urban planning and management, offering valuable insights and facilitating the integration of IoT solutions.
Satellite imagery, a key product of remote sensing and geospatial analysis, serves a multitude of urban planning applications. Its wide coverage and high accuracy make it particularly influential, enabling modern analysis and insight generation. However, challenges such as cloud coverage render satellite imagery unusable at times, while purchasing complexities like minimum order requirements and unclear licensing terms hinder accessibility.
When satellite images are obtained at no cost, the challenge of data storage becomes more pronounced. At its core, as the resolution of the images increases, so does the image size, exacerbating the storage issue.
Both open-source and commercially procured satellite imagery face processing time constraints, leading to latency issues.
Limited budgets mean authorities may have to wait up to three days to gain insights from satellite images after processing, further highlighting the budget constraints!
Overcoming these challenges is essential to fully realize the benefits and allowing cities to unlock the transformative potential of satellite imagery.
Satellite Edge Computing – No longer futuristic
Satellite imagery, previously limited by inherent issues, is now undergoing a paradigm shift with satellite edge computing.
Satellite edge computing is no longer futuristic! Our ongoing missions are listed here. We have completed our first set of demonstrations processing data in space - and it's not just us, there will be more announcements coming in this field from other ventures as well!
Former NASA Administrator, Dan Goldin, recently extended his support to put more powerful computers in space to run AI in real-time. This is the start of an era in which trained AI/ML models can be uploaded to a relevant satellite, which can swiftly applying corrections to captured images and identify specific areas of interest with precision and the inference from the model would be then be downloaded for the user. The game-changing part is the speed with which these insights are delivered. Within a couple of hours, all the information needed on decision-makers' dashboards and public-facing e-government portals is refreshed and ready to be acted upon.
Our study on leveraging edge computing for property encroachment detection vividly demonstrates this workflow to solve a real-world problem, of relevance to metropolitan governance.
It is thus possible to bypass the complexities associated with regular satellite image-centric monitoring solutions. By delivering timely information to city authorities, one can empower informed decision-making and drive effective city management initiatives.
In Part-2, we will dive deeper into a few specific application areas in order to support city management and smart city initiatives in developing nations.