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Spotlight: SMART CITIES
Towards Common Data Standards for Smart
Cities and Their Buildings
Michael Jansen platform tools for using that data, for consolidating, visualizing, analyzing,
Cityzenith optimizing, and ultimately sharing city data.
T he global financial crisis of 2008 had a significant impact on The resulting fragmentation in the market—and the players who
cities around the world in the years immediately following the both serve and guide it—has led to an onslaught of custom solutions,
meltdown, as municipalities witnessed support from federal isolated oases of innovation, and uneven growth and reporting,
governments either wane or disappear. Left to resolve their own making the development and distribution of productized, scalable
issues without federal resources, as the dust settled cities responded Smart City solutions and policies a challenge for stakeholders who
by developing strategies to empower themselves, enacting policy require standardization and predictability. Recent developments in the
improvements and deploying technology solutions to make their cities market emphasize delivering solutions that optimize parking, energy
more efficient, sustainable, and economically independent. As a direct management, and engagement with citizens. However, without a
consequence, over the last few years Smart City projects have kicked comprehensive, scalable, extensible data management platform that
off globally, providing vital innovations to cities in the areas of energy is accessible to all, intuitive, and easy to use, city stakeholders have
management, public safety, infrastructure, transportation, education, sought manual workarounds or built place-specific apps to deal with the
healthcare, entertainment, citizen engagement, et al. Today, the Smart patchwork of legacy software and systems that have made information
City market presses forward, growing at 30% annually on its way to monitoring, management, and sharing within and between cities and
surpassing $1.5 trillion by 2020 (source: Frost & Sullivan). their stakeholders nearly impossible. The smart city market, therefore,
cannot meaningfully evolve without a comprehensive, holistic Big Data
Cities around the world are in various stages of deployment of hundreds platform that provides a framework for urban innovation, leveraging
of ICT-focused smart city projects. While many of these projects are pilots, common standards to deliver value at a large scale.
they have led to a comprehensive, broader discussion about the future of
smart cities and their buildings, focusing on the use of Big Data in cities, In order to facilitate and catalyze the development and adoption of
and the tools and systems that tie people, buildings, and things together common platforms, the Smart City industry must first encourage the
in an emerging Internet of Urban Things. In turn, the expansion of smart development and adoption of common standards. Indeed, recognizing
city services and solutions in recent months has given rise to an explosion this fundamental void in the industry, in response many organizations
of data in cities; data from sensors, web portals, M2M devices, mobile have begun to emerge, dedicated to creating and disseminating
devices, etc., 90% of which is unstructured and hence virtually unused standards. Today, prominent standards networks include the City
or underused. As a benchmark, cities now generate 4.1 terabytes of data Protocol Society, the C40 Cities Climate Action Group, and the Global
per day per square kilometer of urbanized land area, and will increase City Indicators Facility. Each network’s focus varies from the specific to
output by 40% per year through 2020. Yet despite the quantum growth
of smart projects globally, the market still lacks common, standards-based the general, and membership of each varies from dozens to
hundreds of cities. C40 Cities (www.c40.org) for example, is
5D SMART Green Building™ : smart app for the City of San Francisco a world-wide network of (currently) 63 of the largest cities in
24 Realcomm the world, and was established to address the challenge of
climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in cities. The
City Protocol Society (www.cityprotocol.org) is a delivery-
focused global organization of about 40 cities, commercial
organizations, universities and research institutions, and
non-profit organizations, with a focus on bringing together
the expertise of the public, private, and academic sectors in
an effort to develop common standards, which CPS describes
as the “City Anatomy.”With membership now exceeding 250
cities, the Global City Indicators Facility (www.cityindicators.
org) provides an established set of ISO-style city indicators
with a globally standardized methodology, allowing for
global comparability of city performance.
