The number of Smart City projects worldwide has risen substantially in recent years, in both rich and developing countries. Meanwhile China has made it a national priority to develop the city of the future and now has the world’s largest collection of Smart Cities.
Worldwide spending on Smart City projects is expected to reach $80 billion in 2018 and analysts at the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast in their Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide that this sum will rise to $135 billion by 2021, as the world’s cities move from ad hoc projects to the rollout of huge plans in pursuit of the digital transformation process. Among the priorities IDC has identified are first and foremost: smart transportation; data-driven public safety; and resilient energy and infrastructure. All the largest cities are now running traffic management projects and smart video surveillance systems and/or rolling out smart urban lighting systems and sensors to capture information on the environment, but some countries are giving priority to specific Smart City applications. Vehicle traffic management is a priority in the United States, Japan and Western Europe, while Japan is also a huge consumer of environment monitoring systems and in China is seeing a vast deployment of video surveillance systems…Read more