Smart Technologies Are Influencing The Smart Cities

The smart city idea can be interpreted as a structure for bringing into motion a vision of advanced and modern urbanization. Smart cities make use of technology to create an atmosphere that is conducive to business investment while also helping governments to optimize resource use and accountability.

They can be thought of as an organic fusion of technology-based physical infrastructure structures. These systems work together to provide decision-makers with intelligent and actionable knowledge.

The Internet of Things network is critical for receiving and transmitting data, executing commands, and enabling remote monitoring with dynamic, adaptive control functions in smart cities.

Smart lighting is a common example of a smart city ecosystem, with remote access, we can turn and dim lights exactly where and when needed, minimizing energy usage, maximizing prices, enhancing service quality, and increasing citizen satisfaction.

Smart City and Its Impact on the Environment

Smart-city technologies including air quality control, energy usage management, and power, water, and waste tracking will lead to reductions in GHG pollution of 10-15%, 30-130 kilograms of solid waste per person per year, and 25-80 liters of water saved per person per day.

1. Health – Blockchain technology has the potential to endanger public health by building a stable and scalable ecosystem for exchanging electronic health records (EHRs). 

2. Education – By allowing trustworthy provenance and traceability from farmer to customer, blockchain technology can be used to improve transparency, reduce uncertainty, and lower costs in food-based supply chains. Agriculture insurance and the use of blockchain technologies to document and maintain agricultural land records are two other potential uses.

3. Land- Blockchain technology can be used to increase transparency, reduce complexity and cost in food-based value chains by enabling trustworthy provenance and traceability from farmer to consumer

4. Intelligent government services – Blockchain technology can be used to crack the silos, check government corruption, improve productivity and accountability. Using a blockchain to link file and data transfer between agencies will enhance accountability and ensure that the data/file goes forward in real time.

5. Energy and waste management- A database of generated and used energy for each grid user can be stored on a blockchain using smart meters, with credits/currency assigned to the user for surplus power supply and credits repaid for power usage. This ultimately results in a demand for electricity that is transparent, hassle-free, and efficient.

6. Public safety – By addressing the issue of interagency communication by creating a unified basis of reality that each agency individually interfaces with depending on predefined requirements, blockchain could allow public safety distribution more effectively.

7. Citizen participation-  Blockchain will help make citizen documents more tamper-proof, resilient, safe, and private, helping a wide range of stakeholders.

Uses of Smart Cities

Since blockchain-based smart cities are only in their early stages of growth, blockchain analysts and regular people around the world speculate about their future usage cases, which have a fair chance of being a reality eventually.

Dubai stands out among cities with urban blockchain-based ventures, with a $300 million investment aiming to make it the world’s first city to implement blockchain into all of its facilities by 2020. 

Here are few examples of how this technology is being used in Smart city planning:

1. Security- Blockchain enhances the security of physical and personal information collected through the Internet. Some examples include smart locks and digital security systems.

2. Energy-  Smart blockchain-based contracts, solar-powered households can now seamlessly share surplus electricity with other grid participants.

3. Mobility- The e-vehicle and e-mobility sectors would broaden, allowing consumers to access more accessible and environmentally friendly mobility alternatives.

4. Waste- Blockchain will offer real-time container information to the general public and waste disposal systems.

5. Participation- Blockchain technology is used in campaigns, polls, and referendums to ensure that public consultations are stable, accountable, open, and confidential.

Advantages Brought Up By Smart Cities

Smart cities are characterized as cities that can use information technology to enhance efficiencies, sustainability, and the quality of life of their inhabitants. The most important benefits of blockchain for the city administration, according to Blockchain for Cities experts, are:

• Increased transparency and connectivity– Cities will use blockchain vertical utilities like accessibility, power, and security to connect with their people in real time through a single open, accessible, transversal process.

• Direct communication- Blockchain helps government agencies and the general public to communicate digitally. For example, bureaucratic processes at registries, town halls, and other government departments will be sped up. 

• Integrity over information- With this Blockchain, it is possible to absolutely or partially encrypt a file in order to share only the parts of it that are of interest, privately, anonymously, and without the risk of a third party manipulating it.

• Efficient management-  Thanks to blockchain, the public and community officials will be able to see where each resource comes from and where it is actually going. In addition, without jeopardizing people’s anonymity, they would be able to see how public services are used.

• Infrastructure improvement:– Cities will use smart technologies to produce predictive analytical reports that identify problems that need to be resolved before an infrastructure breakdown happens.

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