Interview: Transforming cities into smart cities

Instead of "City - Country - River", it will soon be "City - Data in Flow". On this upcoming transformation of cities to the smart city, Dr. Mara Cole of Bayern Innovativ and Johannes Barckmann of EDAG discuss which scenarios to consider in smart city planning. Beneficiaries would then be innovative mobility.

As more and more people flock to cities, major cities must be made more efficient, technologically advanced and environmentally friendly without socially excluding groups of people. What will the processes look like in the future when predictions have to be made about traffic on certain roads in winter? Can traffic light sequences be switched in such a way that car queues and the environmental pollution there can be reduced?

It is precisely because the questions are so broad that Dr. Mara Cole of Bayern Innovativ, in her role as "head of the thematic platform Networked Mobility of the Center for Digitalization," and Johannes Barckmann of EDAG, as Global Design Manager and Product Owner of the CityBot, have given some thought to the matter.

A basic prerequisite for smart city structures is...

Cole: "...data, data and more data. Openly processed and accessible, but elementary, in my view, is that this data is not only an economic good, but also a common good. For data-based urban and community development, different data sets must also be structured and bundled, i.e., data platforms and cloud solutions must be networked to form a marketplace for consumers and providers."

Barckmann: "I would start even further ahead, because such structural transformations absolutely need a detachment from old, historically grown silo administrations beforehand. However, everything that could be automated tomorrow in a smart city needs one thing: the availability of a 5G network to make everything that is to be smart possible- i.e., backends such as smart government, smart economy, smart people, smart environment, smart living and, of course, smart mobility."

What points are crucial for the strategy development of a smart city?

Cole: "There is no patent remedy. Rather, it is small, painstaking steps in each case for complex issues such as increasing the efficiency of administrations, achieving specific climate goals or the demands of integrated, demand-driven mobility. Each piece of the puzzle helps move closer to goals and integrate stakeholders. If anything is critical, it's engaging the intelligence of all, truly all, residents in a smart city."

Barckmann: "Every citizen must have an "easy entry" payment system that works in real time, with no fees and securely documented payment transactions. In the CityBot ecosystem, we are therefore cooperating with IOTA, which brings these requirements and is also a foundation and open source technology. The payment of automated services in the CityBot ecosystem that are triggered via infrastructure sensors (M2M) can also be mapped here (editor's note: wastebasket emptying or plant watering detected via sensors)."

Cole: "Which brings us back to open data formats and platforms. There are already cities, counties and municipalities in Germany that are confronting the demands, hurdles and costs of a smart city data platform. Even if isolated solutions of individual municipalities emerge - they may not be sustainable, but they contribute to gathering empirical values and resolving legal as well as technical-regulatory uncertainties."

Barckmann: "For me, the sovereignty of the data is what counts. Basically, in the CityBot ecosystem, we are following the approach of GAIA-X, a project to build a high-performance, competitive, secure and trustworthy data infrastructure for Europe. For the city, this would mean: there is a local urban Internet on the Internet, with data that only stakeholders can access and work with."

Cue networked mobility: What learning curves and to-dos are there for the society of smart cities?

Barckmann: "In that case, I recommend taking a look at the "Campus FreeCity" funding project in Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, where the EDAG CityBot mobility system is being tested in real life with the support of consortium partners and the mobility backend is being mapped on a small scale. Embedded in the infrastructure of the arena site, our small smart city is being created, so to speak, which will outgrow laboratory operation and be exposed to the real, critical infrastructure."

Cole: "On the basis of such a test operation, it is also ideal to set up a basic infrastructure and define legal requirements as to which data is to be shared where and how, and in what format. On top of that, other proprietary formats and systems come into play when, for example, each mobility provider drives its own business model. Such models promote basic understanding among operators and in society, which in turn can lead to standardization."

In conclusion, please complete the following sentence: I live in a smart city when...

Cole: "...the digital backbone is once in place and both city and citizens can respond much more quickly to changing conditions, whether it's traffic, traffic light changes, or quickly switching to transportation modes that present themselves."

Barckmann: "...the city is its own organism, supplies itself with energy, intelligent and automated processes minimize my administrative procedures, there is no congestion and overcrowding by vehicles, and "mobility on demand" is available without emissions."