The 21st century is fraught with challenges for local authorities—from battling the impact of climate change to using resources more efficiently to name but two. Enter the Smart City, exploiting new technologies that leverage digital data and the networking of various stakeholders and systems to
- either make routine activities more efficient and faster,
- or open up new doors to completely new opportunities
to achieve overarching ecological, social and economic objectives or track their progress.
Silo structures – Putting the brakes on transformation.
Cities are socio-technical ecosystems. Critical to making them sustainable, resilient, inclusive, competitive, liveable and committed to the common good, or in other words, smart, is the interaction of a host of stakeholders—from administration and local companies to the economy, science and every single citizen. However, silo structures are often an obstacle to collaboration as they:
- Complicate cooperation with core administrative authorities and other municipal stakeholders
- Impede the flow of information
- Limit access to data and prevent them being used in a timely manner
- Lead to data inconsistencies and lower quality making them of little benefit for analyses and decision-making processes
- Make coordinating measures, processes and projects more difficult and reduce the likelihood of success
- Curb innovations
- Prevent a holistic overview of measures taken as well as their efficiency and effectiveness.
Networked = Smart City – Cross-party climate protection management.
Smart Cities require big-picture thinking and the inclusion of all relevant stakeholders in order to ensure the municipalities get any real benefit out of it. Climate protection and mitigating the impact of climate change are two examples that clearly illustrate this. To overcome challenges presented by extreme weather events, floods and heat islands, public utilities, public transportation companies and public administration need to cooperate.
At a technical level, this means identifying and understanding potential savings by collecting and analysing relevant data from a range of areas, such as transport carbon emissions. This then forms the basis for developing, implementing, reviewing and adapting evidence-based measures to combat climate change. The problem with that is, because the data are collected and analysed by different stakeholders, they are broken down into silos making them completely impenetrable for decision makers.
How can a Smart City overcome these complex challenges? By creating a clear and usable data basis. The possible solution is a digital twin of the municipal energy system for which all relevant parties provide data. This would include:
- Public utilities and private energy providers’ data on energy generation and consumption, which they gather from smart metering sensors
- Public transportation companies and shared mobility providers’ data collected on utilisation and development of public transportation as well as the use of shared mobility
- Public administration’s data on bike and car traffic
- The office for statistics’ data on the prevailing energy sources in the individual neighbourhoods and on the type of fuels used by vehicles.
This data can serve as a foundation to analyse a city’s greenhouse gas emissions and then, using a scenario tool, specific measures can be defined and their impact on climate performance measured. This makes climate protection both plannable and open to public discussion thanks to the fact that information is presented on, for example, dashboards.
Complex coordination – Playing as a team.
In Smart Cities, the work of the municipalities, public utilities and regional data centres is very closely intertwined:
- Municipalities handle political management and strategy development using the results gathered from the data collected as a basis. They are responsible for sustainable infrastructure planning and raising awareness/educating the citizens.
- The public utilities are in charge of collecting field data on parameters such as energy consumption and traffic patterns and transforming it into a usable form. These data records are of critical importance for the data-driven analysis of climate-friendly measures. Public utility companies also implement energy efficiency projects such as the modernisation of buildings and integrate renewable energy sources and electric vehicles by expanding the Smart Grid. They monitor, manage and optimise energy consumption to guarantee a sustainable and reliable supply of energy.
- Regional data centres collect, analyse and deliver data on energy consumption, traffic patterns and environmental impact to allow well-founded decisions to be made at a national level. They ensure data security and protection in Smart City systems and serve as platforms for climate protection innovations and research.
The big picture – Smart City@Bechtle.
Smart City projects are ambitious and harbour a host of challenges, which is why it’s important to take a structured approach for each stakeholder to get to grips with their roles. This prevents silos from being established from the get-go and creates a holistic roadmap and strategy for all phases of the Smart City transformation.
Bechtle is the first company in Germany to provide such a comprehensive process for the Smart City transformation in the form of Smart City@Bechtle. From a first orientation meeting to strategy development and use case prioritisation and selection to Smart City architecture planning and implementation, Smart City@Bechtle supports local authorities, public utilities and data centres together with service and solution partners throughout the entire transformation process.
The Smart City@Bechtle portfolio covers all the bases, offering municipalities a range of solutions from various vendor partners in a total of ten standardised areas of action. This ranges from data platforms and LoRaWAN applications to specialist process software and IoT sensors to monitoring parking, energy management and much more.
A holistic approach such as that provided by Smart City@Bechtle offers municipalities many benefits:
- The project picks up from wherever they find themselves on their path to their transformation
- They receive suitable solutions for their specific needs without having to search the entire market
- Smart City@Bechtle integrates all stakeholders to facilitate a holistic transformation
- Organisational and technical silo structures are broken down thanks to comprehensive change and IT architecture planning
- As a general contractor, Bechtle handles documentation and communication across all stakeholders to facilitate the flow of information every step of the way.
- To realise the Smart City transformation, an extensive network of services and solutions partners are on hand.
Conclusion – Working together to Smart City success.
It will only be possible for cities to overcome today’s ecological, social and economic challenges by leveraging smart technologies and solutions. While there are a wealth of Smart City services and product providers on the market, these only provide partial solutions. The result? Silos. A sustainable and targeted Smart City transformation can only be achieved when looking at the big picture and Smart City@Bechtle is Germany’s only offering that considers the transformation as a whole and adapts to the needs and readiness of each municipality. With more than 85 system houses throughout Germany, Bechtle’s network can offer extensive support for the Smart City transformation.
Get in touch with us and discover more about Smart City@Bechtle: claudius.schaufler@bechtle.com
