Page 48 - A U4SSC deliverable - Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies

Conclusion

The concept of smart cities is aimed at effectively guiding relevant city stakeholders to drive sustainable
urbanisation and improve the socio-economic and living standards of their citizens. ICTs can play a
vital role in decision implementation, as well as in leveraging frontier technologies including artificial
intelligence, IoT, the concept of digital twin, drones, wearable technologies, virtual reality / augmented
reality, among others, to facilitate the evolution of smart cities. The effective implementation and
coupling of these frontier technologies support the design of optimal policies and resolve various
complex smart city-oriented problems. Furthermore, the utilisation of frontier technologies forms an
integral part of the current technological interventions to improve urban processes and transcends
domains including: governance, health care, transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and education.

At the core of recent smart city transitions lie sensors and actuators embedded in the smart devices that
leverage the potential of IoT, AI and other frontier technologies to sense the environment and facilitate
effective, as well as automated, decision-making based on the data received from the sensors. With
the incorporation of frontier technologies in cities, they will hold the capacity to transform into cyber-
physical systems (which are capable of connecting the physical world to computational facilities for
supporting urban operations) and transition into “cities of the future”. As indicated in this deliverable,
several cities have already undertaken measures for the adoption of frontier technologies. The main
examples illustrated in this deliverable allow for the highlighting of the following in the context of
frontier technology adoption in cities:

(1) Data traffic within smart cities remains the main “fuel” for the effective application of frontier
technologies like AI and IoT.

(2) The application of AI could have a positive impact on the SDG timeline. The intertwining of AI
and IoT, supplemented by Big data analytics can hasten and improve decision-making along with
the automation of key services across verticals with limited human intervention. However, many
challenges, such as security and privacy, data bias, centralisation, scalability, etc., continue to persist.

(3) Planning is one of the major challenges associated with smart city transitions. Many cities, as
they embark upon their smart city journey, turn to the indiscriminate use of frontier technologies
without charting out an effective plan. The concept of “digital twin”, supported by virtual reality
/ augmented reality, IoT and AI, is able to create a digital simulation of the envisioned “city of
the future”. Cities across the globe, including some in developing countries, have also leveraged
this before commencing the assimilation of other frontier technologies into their existing urban
infrastructure.
(4) To overcome the problems associated with data bias, privacy and security within “cities of the
future”, international standards can be implemented. The core standardisation work relating
to frontier technologies in the urban context is carried within ITU-T Study Group 20 on IoT and
Smart Cities and Communities, which focusses on key work relating to high-level requirements,
interoperability, digital twin, as well as the use of AI to achieve SDGs.

38 Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies | A U4SSC deliverable