Digital (R)evolution

Chapter 11Use Case: The Smart City

Executive Summary: The impact of digital transformation extends far beyond the boundaries of corporations and business entities. Towns, cities, regions, and nations are also transforming themselves in the hope of providing better public services with greater efficiency, lower costs, less waste, and reduced carbon emissions.

Digital transformation is a truly global trend. Every region and demographic group is affected by the digitization of products and services. Within a brief span of time, we have become a digital world, driven by data and moving at the speed of information.

Today, our homes and communities are nodes in a worldwide digital network. The poet John Donne famously wrote that “no man is an island.” Those words, published in 1624, seem eerily descriptive of our modern culture, in which we're never more than a tap away from connecting with friends on social media or reaching out to colleagues on a collaboration platform.

The impact of digital transformation extends far beyond the boundaries of corporations and business entities. One of the most compelling use cases for digital transformation is the smart city.

You've probably read about smart cities and wondered if they're real or just hype. I would say that smart cities are an emergent phenomenon, which makes them hard to describe. From my perspective, a smart city is a place where the continual collection and analysis of data enables the optimization of a broad portfolio of municipal ...