Data Innovations and Multi-Stakeholder Collaborations for Smart City Initiatives: Case Studies from Around the World
By Steph Pietras and Castelline Tilus
Image by Shutterstock
The Emergence of Smart Cities
“Smart cities” have been around since the early 1970s and with increasing urbanization, rise in new technologies, and use of data to inform local decision-making, they have grown in prominence. Not only are these cities ‘smart’ in how their governments use emerging technology, but also in the ways that they monitor, analyze, plan, and govern using information derived from Internet of Things (IoT) systems. As such, evidence-based decision-making is another key component of city ‘smartness’, enabled and supported by real-time data collection and analysis and subsequent improvements in decision-making.
Sourcing and analyzing large quantities of data has enabled city governments to form integrated solutions to traditional city challenges. The data sources are diverse, enabling city governments to monitor and collect precise, geotagged information from sensor-based technologies that have become ubiquitous across urban landscapes. These data – collected from citizens, devices, buildings and assets – are the backbone of smart cities.
Increasingly, smart cities are using IoT technology to bridge the gap between sustainability goals and urban development challenges. They are using data to address a number of issues, including energy consumption, pollution, waste disposal, management of urban infrastructures, transportation, and socio-economic inequality, enabling a diverse group of stakeholders to make timely and informed decisions, while also building healthy, equitable and resilient communities.
To implement a smart city agenda, city leadership must draw on expertise from diverse actors. Guidance and clarity are needed on a wide range of issues, including the collection and management of data, data privacy, technology procurement, collaboration with the private sector, and increasing public participation in smart city projects. Local governments can reconcile these issues and fill existing knowledge and resource gaps through multi-stakeholder collaborations with universities, national public organizations, and private companies.
Stakeholder Collaborations for Smart Cities
According to UN Habitat's 2022 Global Review of Smart City Governance Practices, universities are the second most active stakeholder in smart city initiatives after city government. They are a key collaborator in smart city planning and implementation because they can draw on the vast amount of research that they produce. For example, Columbia University’s Digital Twin of New York Smart City Project aims to develop a digital twin, or a virtual replica of New York City, to support urban traffic management while leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), edge cloud computing, and next generation communication networks. This project enables traffic managers across sectors to continuously monitor traffic patterns in real time.
Similarly, Singapore is leading the way as a smart nation through its dynamic partnerships. Managed by Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO), the Punggol Digital District (PDD) project will bring together industry and academia with the wider community. This new, mixed-use development area will incorporate technology, innovation, and digital infrastructure and bring together businesses, a university, community facilities and transportation services. For example, in order to better facilitate knowledge sharing, the Singapore Institute of Technology’s (SIT) new campus will be located in close proximity to businesses to foster a collaborative environment between students and professionals to pursue new, innovative ideas.
When implemented successfully, university-city partnerships present an opportunity to scale effective solutions, accelerate best practices, drive innovative approaches within government, and improve public sector understanding of urban science.
National public organizations are the main external provider of both data and funding for smart city initiatives. Public sector collaboration is mainly observed from two perspectives: horizontally, among different entities of city government, and vertically, between the local and national level. For example, the data ecosystem in the eThekwini Municipality, an area of Durban, South Africa, was initially characterized by silos, as well as inaccurate and incomplete datasets, lack of data management and sharing principles, and a lack of analytics and visualizations for strategic decision-making. However, a multi-stakeholder partnership between several local government agencies including the city’s service delivery units of eThekwini Water and Sanitation, Electricity, and Development Planning, and support units such as Performance Monitoring and Evaluation and the Strategy Office, helped create a series of integrated dashboards to overcome data silos and gaps. By incorporating datasets across the agencies, these dashboards provide insights on the municipality’s functions and operations, and improve citizen engagement and evidence-based participatory governance.
The private sector also takes a collaborative role in planning and implementing smart city initiatives. They are often brought in to provide funding and technical know-how, share risks, and provide innovative solutions for the public sector. One such example of public-private partnerships (PPP) is in Jakarta, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world with an urbanization rate of 59.8%. As such, it will need to become more effective and efficient at delivering public services, solving traffic congestion problems, managing waste and pollution, and ensuring citizen health and safety.
In 2015, the Jakarta Provincial Government established the Jakarta Smart City (JSC) project to address these issues. This initiative is dedicated to optimizing the use of technology, data, and IoT to address complex urban challenges such as pollution, traffic, and flooding to improve the quality of life for its citizens. It features several PPP aspects including the Flood Monitoring System, a partnership between the SAS Institute and the Jakarta City Government, that uses the Jakarta Kini (JAKI), a digital platform and application, to predict and monitor at-risk areas in real time to reduce potential damage or harm, and increase public awareness of disaster situations. JSC has also partnered with Qlue, a tech startup that has become a leading smart city provider company. This smartphone application allows residents to report incidents in real time like flood, crime, fire, or waste, with the corresponding application “CROP” for civil servants and officials to respond to these situations quickly.
Looking Ahead
On this World Cities Day, it is important to reflect on smart city approaches to multi-stakeholder collaborations, and what makes them effective. These lessons could inform government-wide strategies aimed at developing sustainable and productive collaborations with academia and the private sector to improve their access to non-traditional forms of data and incorporate new analytics into their service offerings.