Doing it because it sounds cool
Building a smart city has become a trend. People in elected positions, and little knowledge of actual mass scale IoT implementations, are launching some of the most complex technological implementations ever attempted. Sometimes they seem to work out well. Barcelona is definitely going in the right direction. In 2014 Barcelona already reported massive savings after two years of adding smart city technologies to their infrastructure.
"We've been working on the concept for a while because we're obsessed with the quality of life of our people. Went through several issues. Smart water -- we're saving $58 million a year on that," said Barcelona Vice Mayor Vives as reported by Forbes.
Though some gains can be seen, smart cities face criticism for developing solutions in siloed mini-projects that have little chance of creating a complete, coherent smart city solution.
"Imagine the entanglements that existing public and private industries must go through to implement a single smart city project, let alone numerous projects such as smart lighting, smart transportation, smart buildings and the like to actually make a more complete smart city," said Kendra L. Smith in her article titled The Inconvenient Truth about Smart Cities
Why is this a problem? When different projects are unable to share their data, cities lose out on opportunities to make additional systems smarter based on the data they are already collecting
Take a look at the TV show Chuck. The basis of the show is that terrible things happened when two different "spy" agencies were unable to collaborate. So they build a supercomputer that used and analyzed all of the data these agencies collected, enabling it to provide unique insights. This was called the intersect, and this is what smart cities need.
Berlin Non-Profit Provides the "Intersect" for smart cities
The Berlin based non-profit MXC Foundation provides an IoT Smart City Standard, making it easier for politicians and city planners to move their city in the "smart" direction. They use their blockchain protocol MXProtocol to coordinate wireless data transmissions and provide easy access to the collected data with their inter-chain data market. What's great is that they're already getting started.
Last month MXC announced a partnership with Citiesense, a data analysis company working on smart city solutions in New York City.
"Data has the potential to massively improve efficiency and reduce our environmental impact around the globe," said Starling Childs, CEO of Citiesense. "By incorporating the LPWAN standard, we're ensuring that data is transmitted both reliably and efficiently."
Yesterday MXC released that their smart city standard will also be used by Enlink a South Korean based hardware manufacturer.
“This is a huge opportunity for South Koreans to participate in environmental monitoring and disaster management,” said MXC CEO and co-founder Sheen Xin Hu. “By integrating MXProtocol in these solutions, companies, and individuals can deploy it knowing that they are helping their communities while collecting valuable data that can be shared and traded through the MXC inter-chain data market.”
What does this mean for smart cities?
MXC is standardizing the collection and sharing of data used Smart Cities. This makes it possible for this data to intersect, and be used to optimize additional city systems. What will the final product look like? I don't know. We have yet to see a Smart City reach that level of optimization.
I see these notices a lot, so I thought I’d write one for myself in my crypto related posts.
“I’m not a financial advisor, I’m an opinated person who likes to share opinions on everything, just ask my teenage daughter. She hates it too. So do your own research, make your own decisions, and take responsibility for them. In other words, don’t be an entitled d*** that blames everyone else for your problems.”