Modern technology and Big Data have enhanced living standards and decreased the use of energy. With sensors and intelligent devices that allow collect and processes data, the public sector can overcome climate change by improving efficiency, planning, and more content citizens.
What makes a city?
The house you live in. The place you work. The park you go to during lunch or take your dog for a walk. The quality of air. The possibilities of riding your bike, driving your car, walking on the sidewalk, or use of public transportation. The shape and configuration of the buildings, the possibility of sunlight or lack thereof.
The question ‘what makes a city’ might be easy to answer. However, when it comes to posing the question ‘what makes a more sustainable city’, the answer becomes more difficult.
Come to Cascais
One place to find the answer is in the city of Cascais in Portugal. Cascais has been renowned for its success in cutting traffic congestion. The success stems partly from the town implementing an extensive portfolio of technology-based services such as intelligent parking solutions and low-energy buildings.
However, the many diverse suppliers and initiatives made it difficult to understand what was happening. The continuous development in data, sensors, gadgets, and platforms, IoT was generating massive amounts of data. The city needed help to consolidate the rapidly rising amount of data.
With the help of our colleagues in Portugal, the city implemented CitySynergy to consolidate 15 Internet of Things-based (IoT) solutions and make predictive analytics through increased data transparency and tracking of events. The project led to a reduction in 20-30% use of energy, a 30% reduction in water use, and more content citizens.
Converting complex data into insights
The public sector has unprecedented access to innovative technology and data that can help understand and overcome the risks posed by climate change. With recent technology, we can quickly and efficiently convert complex data into insights that drive greater efficiency, qualified decision-making, and meaningful actions in the green transition.
Today, various technologies help collect data and create efficient and targeted data processing, so we can use data to act on it, whether it is to make changes in regulations, plan urban infrastructure, green areas, transport, or something else. We can, for example, easier show the variations in air quality and mobility patterns during the day or better report on wastewater through data.
Imagine how more use of IoT and the application of Big Data could be used more to create smarter and greener cities. Wouldn’t it be nice, if we for example only used the energy, heating and lighting we needed as consumers? In some areas this is already possible. However, with better use of IoT devices such as cameras and sensors, we can use Big Data to optimize our consumption of energy in buildings.
Or imagine how citizens could be guided to more sustainable means of transportation such as e-scooters, e-bikes, or e-cars because cityplanners create more routes based on mobility data picked up from various platforms.
Chose a fact-based approach
A fact-based socio-economic approach to prioritizing climate initiatives will help municipalities prioritize the climate initiatives they have identified as part of their climate plans. Striving toward a greener future, IoT and Big Data play a significant role in the development of greener and more sustainable cities.
Forfatter spotlight
Jesper Kamstrup-Holm
Jesper Kamstrup-Holm is a Denmark-based partner and has spent 13 years at Deloitte advising IT managers and CIOs. During this time, Kamstrup-Holm has specialized in working with large public institutions on everything from digital transformation and IT sourcing strategies to IT effectiveness analysis and business cases. For over five years Jesper has been advising the Danish Ministry of Taxation in tackling challenges, such as data and socioeconomic consequences of Denmark’s new customs authority and cloud migration to Amazon Web Services for a new Property Tax Valuation System. Additionally, Kamstrup-Holm has led work to develop a digital transformation strategy for the Danish Tax Authority (DTA).
