Page 61 - Digital solutions for integrated city management and use cases: A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

• Water monitoring and groundwater inward seepage detection solutions that identify the
volume of groundwater infiltration into the city’s sanitary sewer system, thereby reducing the
unnecessary treatment of groundwater.

The City of Orillia will also be implementing the telecommunications provider’s smart city
platform to aggregate data and provide a comprehensive view of the connected solutions. The
telecommunications provider will, in turn, invest in fibre connectivity for residences and businesses
in Orillia. The mutual partnership will give Orillia the opportunity to run a pilot to explore other
IoT applications from the telecommunications provider in “a cost-effective manner in the areas of
application development, data collection and data analysis” .
84

5 Key takeaways and conclusions

The experiences derived from the smart cities covered in this report provide some interesting
insights into where the “smart city platform market” is at present, some of the barriers that cities
face which lead to non-deployment (or limited deployment) and how they can be overcome or
mitigated, and what some of the key success criteria and factors for successful implementation
and utilization are.

5.1 Geographic distribution

In terms of geographical proliferation, North America currently leads the overall smart city platform
implementation market. As seen in the cases of multiple smart to medium-sized Canadian cities,
these cities do not experience some of the common barriers to investing in city platforms that even
cities of comparable characteristics in Europe face. Part of the reason is that there appears to be
greater support at the national level for smart city programmes in North America and, hence, more
funds are available to cities for investing in smart solutions.

The Smart Cities Marketplace, promoted by the European Union, is a major market-changing
undertaking supported by the European Commission, bringing together cities, industries, SMEs,
investors, researchers and other smart city actors .
85
Fostering and supporting local innovation at the national or regional level has also led to successful
outcomes in certain cities in Europe. Spain is seeing multiple cities adopt comprehensive city-wide
smart platforms that synergistically build off similar experiences.

Similar outcomes can be observed in the UAE and Australia. The sharing of resources, expertise,
use cases and lessons learned within a country or region can benefit other cities in the vicinity
tremendously. It leads to tried-and-tested roadmaps and blueprints for replication and adaptation
in other cities.

U4SSC: Digital solutions for integrated city management & use cases 49