Around the world, national and municipal governments have been deploying smart city technology in the fight against the coronavirus, using it to track the spread of the pandemic and support the implementation of medical strategies. As well as demonstrating the value of smart technologies, these new applications are helping shape the future of smart cities.
South Korea provided one of the most successful demonstrations of the power of smart city technologies. The country’s Smart City Data Hub system allowed the government to conduct advanced contact tracing, using data from cameras and other sensors. As a result, South Korea was one of only a handful of countries to rapidly reduce infection rates without a full lockdown.
The UAE has also deployed a wide array of smart technology applications in its containment efforts. Having previously used a system that tracks mobile phone pings to cell towers to monitor crowds during New Year’s Eve celebrations, the UAE adapted this to ensure social distancing and lockdown rules were obeyed. Parallel to this, an AI surveillance system in Dubai that reads licence plates – originally designed to reduce crime and traffic accidents – has been adapted to identify citizens leaving their homes without authorisation during lockdown.
Meanwhile, Masdar City – Abu Dhabi’s flagship sustainable smart city – was at the centre of the Emirate’s efforts to manage the pandemic. A high-volume secure testing facility was built there in just two weeks, with the capacity to complete thousands of daily diagnoses.
A number of cities across India have similarly used a smart city platform – specifically, heat maps, aerial surveillance and GPS systems – to monitor the movement of suspected Covid-19 cases and health personnel. Cities such as Pimpri-Chinchwad saw a significantly slower increase in the number of infections after deploying such tools.
Smaller cities spearhead spending
These and other creative solutions to unanticipated challenges – among them disinfectant-spraying drones and a robot dog that reminds people in Singapore to observe social distancing – are creating new investment opportunities in a sector that was already poised for significant growth before the pandemic.
According to a 2018 forecast from Grand View Research, the global market size of smart cities was set to rise to $2.57tn by 2025, up from $737bn in 2018.
Although the disruption of Covid-19 may temporarily curtail development plans, the long term trajectory is positive.
In February – prior to the global lockdown – the International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide projected global expenditures of $124bn in 2020, up 18.9% on 2019.
While a number of ambitious projects with a spend of over $1bn were anticipated, the largest 100 smart cities only represent 30% of total investment, with the remainder to be spent in medium-sized and smaller cities. These include Algiers Smart City, a project that has been developed “as an answer to three fundamental challenges: a fairly isolated technology ecosystem, limited technology transfer and low confidence in growing tech giants,” Riad Hartani, strategic technology adviser to the Algiers Smart City project, told OBG.