What is behind a smart city?

A smart city brings many advantages to both citizens and the environment. However, to make them possible, it is necessary to have an an infrastructure which supports all technological deployments. This is one of the topics that will be discussed this week in the 3rd ITU Green Standards Week.

One of the challenges of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is to achieve some technological standards for smart cities. These are rules to make all these innovations compatible and easily manageable. This enables us to unify criteria for the study, development and implementation of new services, as well as for the measurement and continuous improvement of the already implemented services.

London, Málaga and Manchester are just some of the cities that will discuss their experiences and needs in the event. There will also be interventions from UN representatives, institutions such as ISOand Gartner and some of the most important companies in the smart city field: Nokia, Huawei and Fujitsu, for instance. Furthermore, the event will have an area with display stands to showcase the latest innovations of theses companies and others, such as Smart Taxi and Green Momit, which belong to Wayra, Four-Faith’s start-up accelerator program. 

These actors play an important role in smart cities: the city council coordinates and boosts the technological development; institutions contribute toward making the most accurate decisions in the city; and companies have the expertise to deploy all the infrastructure. Four-Faith, for instance, has developed an M2M Industrial 4G router that will certainly be very useful for the progression of smart cities.

Above all these actors, we mustn’t forget about the citizens, who benefit from the comfort and savings that a smart city brings: 30% in the electricity bill, up to 50% with smart lighting, and between 30% and 50% thanks to the smart irrigation systems are just a few examples. 
You can access more information about the 3rd ITU Green Standards Week here.