Solutions For Smarter Cities
Cities around the globe are expected to add 2.5 billion new residents by 2050 and are already home to half the world’s population. Such a population boom places growing pressures on infrastructure and the environment, increasing demand for smarter solutions.
City infrastructure is growing much more complex, driving a need for a more comprehensive and integrated approach for operations and management.
A recent study from the McKinsey consulting firm argues that, to avoid the risk of urban growth outpacing infrastructure capacity, a new collaboration is needed that will drive digital transformation for cities, providing end-to-end delivery and management of a unified data platform across a city’s departments. Smart cities are the future of urban living, harnessing the power of three Ds;
- Digital technologies,
- Data,
- Design thinking
to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of city services.
This new wave of digital transformation also brings cyber security risks that could fundamentally impact the existence of smart cities. Cyber threats have been on the rise for years, but the last few years have seen an explosion in cyber attacks on cities and municipalities that target both data and physical assets.
‘As connected devices proliferate at a breakneck speed, the number of IoT devices is expected to rise from 8.4 billion today to almost 20 billion by the end of 2020 cyber-attacks and vulnerabilities in one area can have a cascading effect on numerous other areas’. Reported the Deloitte Center for Government Insights.
The core is the technology platform (cloud platform, IoT data platform) that processes data and generates business logic to make sense of the data flowing from the edge.
Insight Enterprises, an integrator in the cloud and data management field, has partnered with Genetec, a public safety technology provider, will collaborate in the development of a common operating system that will proactively protect the population, receive alerts in real-time and quickly make informed decisions when time is of the essence.
By harnessing the power of cloud technology, the platform will help public safety agencies accelerate their digital transformation to provide effective and meaningful interagency and community collaboration, a unified view of operations and access to live data that is critical to maintain public safety.
The platform aims simplify how police officers, firefighters, transportation and other emergency management services operate in complex urban settings.
Insight will provide a secure, scalable platform to unify how organisations use IoT, creating faster deployment of Genetec’s decision support system that unifies public safety operations across city departments, offering also a digital evidence management system that facilitates collaboration between agencies.
Cities can establish a network among other cities, state agencies, academia, and corporations to share threat information, capabilities, and contracts to strengthen cyber defenses.
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