Moving towards cognitive regional cities

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Ana Veir, EU funds solution sales representative, IBM Croatia

Cities and their leaders will soon be able to understand and process all new information provided by citizens, for free. This way they will know what someone needs, as well as where and when. City processes will be dynamically optimized according to citizens’ needs. Leveraging the Internet of Things, a myriad of devices will communicate with each other to deliver benefits to the society.

A “Smart city” concept is something IBM has been working on for more than a decade in cities across the globe. What we are talking about here is application of brand new technologies in enhancing management of core city functions and answering various challenges of everyday city life. Smart mobile devices, sensors, communication via social networks, big data analysis software, cognitive solutions and many other technologies are either already being used or will soon be used in achieving better communication with city administration, management of city traffic, waste management, reduction of losses in water supply system, etc. Such tools will soon be present in every city in the world. They will help in identifying problems and emergency situations, encouraging people who manage the cities to act timely and accordingly where they can do the most good. However, we need to ask ourselves – how far have our cities in the region come in terms of their intelligence?

The three cities
IBM tasked the agency Grayling to conduct surveys in three major cities in our region – in Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade. The survey encompassed a wide demographic. In each of the towns listed there were 250 respondees, both young and old (63% were in the age group between 25 and 44), of different professional competence, female and male, students, unemployed, but also quite a lot of people working at managerial positions. The survey was conducted among citizens, not people working in city administration.

Better infrastructure, better services
More than half of citizens in the region (50.40%) thinks that living conditions at their place of residence are quite satisfactory. However, they did indicate that there is an actual need to improve the quality of life.
There are two key segments they identified as having plenty of room for improvement increasing efficiency of city departments and services (32.67%) and informing citizens about decisions that directly affect citizens (25.47%).
Almost 23 percent of respondees indicated that their cities have underdeveloped IT infrastructures and that their city departments and services need to be better interconnected. When looking at this segment the majority (35.33%) is of opinion that the City Office for the strategic planning and development of the cities is in the highest need to be better organized.

”MyZagreb, as a public component of the system, enables citizens to perform community monitoring themselves and report detected irregularities using the service. This way citizens actively participate in execution and control of city management operations.”, says Igor Plavčić, director of Information and communication system of the City of Zagreb.

In regards to public and community services 34.67% of citizens indicated that their execution needs to be faster and more efficient, while 22.27% of them is of opinion that they need to be better aligned with actual citizens’ needs. They also indicated that quicker access to information is also needed (19%).

“The implementation of electronic services is at the core of contemporary and efficient administration that is freed from bureaucracy and that is in service of citizens and the economy. We can see this principle in action in the county of Inđija. They were the first to take this path by implementing System 48. What is important about these systems is that they ensure two-way communication and easy access to services without the need to stand in queues in front of counters. Data is automatically entered into electronic databases which also serve as a resource for further analyses and advancement”, says Violeta Jovanović, executive director of Serbian National alliance for local economic development – NALED.

People demand new technologies
The majority of respondees, almost 86 percent, is of opinion that introduction of new information technologies will add to the quality of life in cities. For example, more than a quarter of them is satisfied with their Internet access options, while slightly more than a third of them is partially satisfied and thinks that there should be further improvement. In addition, the majority of citizens expresses a desire for better access to their personal information which, they think, needs to be better secured. The majority of citizens rely on media to obtain information on status of city management services (almost 40%), while 35% of them are doing so over the Internet, via services’ web portals.

“Smart cities invite their citizens, visitors, enterprises and the civil society to participate in development of cities. Smart city technologies are just assets or tools that are used in achieving set goals. In such cities fewer resources are used to a greater effect with the help of information technology. In my opinion people enjoy living and working in a smart city – and they always like visiting it”, says Blaž Golob, Chairman of the Ljubljana Forum on Future of Cities from Slovenia.

All in all, we can conclude that capital cities in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia already have a sizable IT infrastructure in place. However, these infrastructures need to be constantly upgraded. There is still room for improvement in regards to ease of access to data, as well as core data processing. Services have to be made even more accessible. The concept of the “Smart city” as IBM sees it, paired with application of latest technologies, are the solution that decidedly has to be taken into consideration.

Additional info:

Smarter Cities Challenge
Smarter Cities Challenge is a competition sponsored by IBM. Cities across the world participate in it by enlisting help from IBM top experts who, during the three-week period, cooperate with and provide consulting to city representatives. They provide recommendations on how to make a given city “smarter” – i.e. be more efficient. They consider everything – from intelligent transport systems, resource optimization, analytics data, mobility and predictive maintenance to public-private partnerships and public lighting systems, just to name a few. IBM Smarter Cities is IBM’s largest charity initiative which so far gathered over 50 million dollars. Since 2010 IBM engaged more than 700 top experts in the initiative who helped in development of 116 cities across the world, and are continuing to do so through additional projects that will be implemented by 2016. All the systems in each city first need to be integrated into a single unit, thus eliminating operative silos and choosing those which are crucial for processes coordination.

Case studies of smarter cities technologies in Europe