Smart Cities Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Smart Cities Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The smart cities market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 22.1% during the forecast period 2022-2027.

• A smart city goes beyond information and communication technologies (ICT) for better resource use and fewer emissions. It means striving for sustainability through more innovative urban transport networks, upgraded water supply, waste disposal facilities, and more efficient light and heat buildings. It also means a more interactive and responsive city administration, safer public spaces, and meeting the needs of an aging population. The accelerated development of new technologies, including 5G, AI, cloud, and edge computing, is helping to drive the evolution of Smart Cities.
• In March 2021, SaskPower launched its pilot program for smart residential meters. The Crown Corporation said the decision to launch the pilot project comes after the successful installation and testing of 35,000 commercial and industrial smart meters. The smarts meters will start rolling out in May 2021 to residential customers in communities experiencing higher-than-normal power outages. SaskPower said this would allow it to identify outages with more accuracy and promptly.
• Additionally, in March 2021, Toyota began building “the city of the future” powered by robots and artificial intelligence (AI) on a 175-acre site in Japan. The “Woven City,” which will be built at a site at the base of Mount Fuji, will house up to 2,000 staff and families from the company alongside robots. According to the company’s plans, residents of ‘Woven City’ will live in smart homes with a range of integrated robotics systems, including sensor-based artificial intelligence to monitor health. Toyota has also said that it expects its self-driving vehicle, the e-Palette, to make up the bulk of Woven City’s transport infrastructure.
• COVID-19 has further accelerated the pace of smart city development. Smart city infrastructure has kept the government agencies ahead in curbing the spread of the deadly COVID-19 virus. For instance, in April 2020, Karnataka in India, came up with a dedicated call center for monitoring and advising the citizens under self-quarantine as a telemedicine facility. The project was initiated under Mangalore Smart City.
• Further, Security concerns over deployment of smart devices in cities is one of the primary factors restraining the growth of the smart cities market. Like any other connected technologies, smart city systems also depend on networks for data transmissions, and are thus, vulnerable for breaching.

• Smart education is one of the critical ingredients in innovative city development. Smart education is a model of learning adapted to new generations of digital natives. In comparison to traditional classroom teaching models, smart education is an interactive, collaborative and visual model designed to increase student engagement and enable teachers to adapt to students' skills, interests, and learning preferences.
• The new-age schools and education system in Smart Cities would possess software-mediated, highly coded, and data-driven infrastructure, where students would learn through digital media. Digitized education will also help students contribute towards enhancing society and encourage them to help the environment.
• Further, to create effective educational software, ed-tech companies seek to bridge the gap between their products and the millions of students who stand to benefit from them. The Office of Innovation initiated one such attempt to close this gap at the New York City Department of Education, which created an educational innovation zone, or iZone. At least six states and 300 schools became a part of this program.
• In March 2021, Iota Communications, Inc. announced a marketing alliance with The Stone House Group, LLC, a Bethlehem, PA-based facility consulting firm, to collectively bring high-value, smart building services to K-12, college, and university markets throughout the US. IotaComm's BrightAI wireless connectivity and data analytics platform brings indoor air quality and energy management data monitoring and analysis to Stone House's customer base, including hundreds of private and public schools and universities.
• Moreover, AI software promises to improve analytics, teaching, customer service, and student success. AI improves the IT processes and unleashes new efficiencies. Schools can determine the appropriate methods in preventing students from getting lost in crowds when they run in corridors. AI can also be used to model complex data to enable the operations department to create data-driven forecasts. It also allows proper planning for the future, for example assigning seats during school functions or ordering food from local cafeterias. Such a factor leads to the high adoption of AI in the smart education field.

• Asia-Pacific is one of the fastest-growing regions for innovative city technologies, with China playing a significant role in the market growth. The country has been a leader in developing and exporting its smart cities technologies like networked cameras, sensors, and location services—and the rest of the Internet of Things—to collect a wide variety of data to control things like traffic, energy usage, and crime, and to augment state power.
• Additionally, Terminus, a Chinese tech company, has been working closely on a project (one of 500 smart cities built around China) with BIG, a Danish architecture firm, to develop a smart city run entirely by AI. The technology is being planned to gather information on the eating habits, weather, and other data points required to meet the needs of residents and address problems like traffic jams and crime.
• Further, the government of Japan has agreed to an initiative that seeks to drive investment in the development of smart cities. According to an announcement by the Ministry of Land Management, the government has earlier agreed to 'smart city principles,' which deal mainly with the use of IT to develop modern urban spaces and urban management, thus effectively joining the Public-Private Platform for Urban Development between Cambodia and Japan.
• As part of the Digital India initiative, the Indian government has planned to give IoT a push. The government has allocated an INR 7,000-crore fund allocation to develop 100 smart cities powered by IoT devices to control traffic, efficiently use water and power, and collect data using IoT sensors for healthcare and other services. The funding was also ambitious, with the national government allocating USD 7.5 billion to the initiative and requiring matching funding from participating cities. Such trends are further expected to drive significant investments in the smart city market.
• Further, the Korea Water Resources Corp. (K-Water), run by the state, has developed and deployed a wide variety of smart water management technologies that control Korea's advanced ICT infrastructure to optimize performance and minimize loss across the entire water cycle. K-Water is now effectively exporting these solutions to other countries. In South Korea, freshwater makes up 3% of the South Korean territory, just under 100,000 square kilometers. Access to improved water sources, as well as improved sanitation, is universal in South Korea.

The Smart Cities market is fragmented and highly competitive, as it comprises several global players. The major companies include ABB Ltd, Cisco Systems Inc., Emerson Electric Co., IBM Corporation, Ericsson Inc., Schneider Electric SE, and General Electric Co. The market is highly competitive since the market giants have cut-throat competition among themselves. They are all investing a buttload of amounts in R&D for developing better, reliable smart products. Therefore, the market concentration will be low.

• September 2021 - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was selected by Transport for London (TfL) to design, implement and operate a new smart mobility system. Over the course of the 10 year contract, the company is expected to digitally transform taxi and private hire licensing and administration in the region, besides implementing continuous improvements and innovation, responding to evolving industry trends and customer demands.
• February 2021 - Sri Lankan Telecom has launched SD-WAN services for its enterprise and government customers in partnership with Cisco and Millenium ITESP to accelerate digitization across the country. SLT said it would offer Cisco’s full SD-WAN capabilities, including dynamic routing, cloud connectivity, and insights into applications and performance to its enterprise customers. Cisco provided its intent-based networking solutions in the partnership, SLT provided its connectivity solutions, while Millennium IT ESP worked as the systems integrator.

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