By Alexander Landa
In a recent report by Black and Veatch, they outlined the current progress of smart cities in their 2017 Strategic Directions: Smart City/Smart Utility Report, which details the progress made by communities around the world to make a more advanced future.
The report discusses how many groups around the world are embracing what data and analytics can do for their city, and how it can lead to a realistic roadmap to create a smart city. The reports that come from data can help plan and prioritize efforts, and decide what factors need financing and resources the most. This report is quite comprehensive in that they also discuss what obstacles may prevent further expansion on these ideas, such as planning, funding, data management, and technological affordances (or lack thereof).
It's exciting to see what initiatives are already taking place to help major metropolitan areas become smart cities. Grid modernization is useful in that with many different sources of energy, it's difficult to manage it properly – but we're finally figuring out distribution automation to help streamline the process.
The full report is really comprehensive, interesting, and innovative. We strongly recommend that if you're interested in smart cities that you read through the rest of the content! Read the full report here.
To learn more about smart cities, the internet of things, grid modernization, and more, come out to Fraunhofer on February 16th and join us for our upcoming Building Tech Forum!