Some 3.5 billion of the world's people now live in cities. And that figure, according to the United Nations, is going to double – i.e., reach 7 billion – by the year 2050. What challenges will this present for municipalities? Will city administrations be prepared? Will urban services such as infrastructure, public transport and trash collection be able to keep pace with such growth? What ecological and economic aspects will have to be taken into account?
Even if we lack precise answers to these questions, it is clear that these challenges can be met only via profound modernization supported by digital applications. Deutsche Telekom has recognized this and has long been partnering with cities and other technology companies in relevant pilot projects.
Pilot projects in Europe
In Dubrovnik, the Croatian coastal city, and in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, Deutsche Telekom is now testing exciting solutions in the area of digitized city centers. The areas concerned include street lighting, safety and parking. In the Smart Parking Solution project, parking spaces are being fitted with sensors in a system that tells drivers what spaces are available before they head for a parking zone. The results are already impressive: less traffic, and lower CO2 and particulate emissions, since the system guides drivers straight to available spaces. In addition, drivers save valuable time that they would otherwise spend in looking for parking. Deutsche Telekom is also testing intelligent parking systems in the Tuscan city of Pisa, which has a resident population of 90,000 and an added population of 30,000 daily commuters – most of whom drive into the city.
Artificial intelligence can filter oceans of data
From a purely technological point of view, the aforementioned examples all have something in common. Each project collects data that are currently analyzed vertically – i.e., on a project-oriented basis. In other words, each project's data form an isolated pool that might be visualized as a landlocked "lake." And this of course can only be a first step. This is because in the future every city will have many different kinds of digital applications, each of which will produce data. It will then be useful to horizontally collect all of the data being produced, within one body that can be visualized as a data "ocean." Such data will then be centrally analyzed, and the resulting information will be forwarded to the relevant smart city applications.
The content of such data oceans will be so large, and the relevant analysis so complex, that only artificial intelligence will be able to carry out the relevant data processing and forwarding with the necessary accuracy and speed.
Cooperation for a high quality of life
From Deutsche Telekom’s perspective , the path to the "urban technology" vision outlined here is a long one – and yet time is of the essence. Much is at stake. On the one hand, we want cities to remain attractive places to live in – even when, in 30 years, twice as many people live in them as they do today. On the other hand, this is also about important new business areas. The task is so large that it can be handled only through cooperation. For this reason, Deutsche Telekom is cooperating intensively on it with municipalities and technology partners. In light of urban technology's great relevance for human coexistence, Deutsche Telekom also sees a social mission in this area, one that it is continuing to focus on.
Some background:
Cities around the world are going to experience enormous – and perhaps even fundamental – changes in the course of digitization. The dictum "geography is destiny," which is often attributed to Napoleon, has lost its validity and should be replaced by "connectivity is destiny" – at least in the view of the political scientist and future researcher Parag Khanna.