smart cities

The U.S. Census Bureau in February released a new experimental data product designed to better measure the business dynamics of innovative firms (BDS-IF). The new Business Dynamics Statistics of U.S. High Tech Industries provides measures of business dynamics for what the Census classifies as high-tech and non-high-tech industries, defined by science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) occupation intensity. A Census analysis on the data reveals that high-tech industries are concentrated in five coastal metro areas.

ESI ThoughtLab, a branch of economic consulting firm Econsult Solutions, has announced a new effort to study the return on investment of smart city programs across the world. Sponsored by groups like Accenture, General Motors, CBRE, and Oracle, the group is focusing on how the cities of the future can use sensors, data, and analysis to help fully realize the beenfits of working and living in a city. The new effort will be a follow-up to research released late last year by the group on building sustainable business and financing plans for smart cities. In Smarter Cities 2025, ESI ThoughtLab surveyed government leaders in 136 global cities, as well as 750 businesses and 2,000 citizens in 11 cities deemed representative of smart cities at large. They find that smart city investments have the potential to catalyze economic growth, although social and political challenges remain.

During the past decade, there has been rapid growth of the smart cities movement – improving critical public service delivery, while reducing cost over the long run, through the Internet of Things, real time data gathering, better sensors and integrated systems management. The pace of growth is resulting in a wide variety of do-it-yourself models for smart communities to address their IoT data management and analysis needs. If there are advantages in connecting all of the various components of the complex business of a local government, it follows that there have to be economy of scale opportunities for even greater efficiencies and innovations by connecting Smart Cities’ data systems to each other. US Ignite and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) recently announced a strategic alliance to provide the platform to help municipalities of all sizes to work together to develop a blueprint for a “secure and interoperable exchange of data beyond city operational boundaries.”