Day: October 2, 2020

The primary objective for smart city initiatives is to intelligently use data and technology to make everyday life easier and better for the people who live in, work in and visit the city – while making innovative and efficient use of resources. Public safety plays an important role. This is why most smart city initiatives include video surveillance for key public areas, to achieve quicker alerting and better data to inform first responders regarding accidents, crimes and public safety situations. However, if smart city initiatives take traditional approaches for physical security technology, they will undermine their primary smart city objective. Over a decade of smart city initiatives has revealed what it takes for smart city technology deployments to achieve the sustainable quality of life transformations they intend, in the face of the challenges that smart city tech projects face. Recent successes have shown that cloud-based solutions are indispensable elements of smart city infrastructure, which includes both public and private infrastructure elements. Cloud-based deployments are essential for cost-effectiveness, scalability, and short deployment time frames. Furthermore, smart city security technology projects have new technical requirements – some of which can only be met using cloud technology. This paper examines those requirements and points to two very recent projects that exemplify the kinds of success that can be achieved. Smart Cities In June 2018, the McKinsey Global Institute released an in-depth independent research and analysis report titled, ‘Smart cities: Digital solutions for a more livable future.’ McKinsey’s research identified 60 data-driven smart city applications spanning the eight domains listed below. Eleven of these applications are physical security applications. Smart Applications Successful smart city security initiatives require more than just getting city planners and stakeholders, and their security integrators and consultants, on the ‘same page.’ They must all get on a ‘new page’ that includes: Expanded system design thinking. Up to date set of technology capabilities. Active stakeholder and citizen involvement. All are required for smart city deployment success. The Smart City Context The requirements for security technology deployments derive from the ways that smart city deployments differ from traditional security system deployments. The intelligence and operational capabilities of smart cities technology infrastructure resides in three layers identified by McKinsey analysis – technology base, applications interaction, and user base. This is the context for smart city security tech deployments. Technology Base Smart city security devices and systems are part of a larger city technology base connected by reliable high-speed communications networks. Achieving reliable high-speed internet access is always the first step in smart city development – unless it already exists. Applications Interact Applications are the tools by which a smart city turns raw data into alerts, insights and action – automating as much of the job as possible. Smart city security application design must consider that application data should not just facilitate public safety operations but must also contribute to the city’s greater understanding of itself. This is plain to see in Mexico City’s recent smart city security initiative. Public Usage The size of a smart city’s user base is the most significant difference from traditional security systems, which typically range from a few dozen to a few hundred users. Smart city citizen apps include personal security and safety features and have many thousands to millions of users. These mobile apps are the way smart cities enable citizens and visitors to interact with city services, including real-time services such as parking, public transportation, security and emergency services. This is an area where security technology and service providers can be innovative in providing value for citizen end-users as well as for city operations. Key Technology Requirements Smart city technology initiatives include 11 key requirements that have been traditional weak areas for physical security technology deployments: Intelligent connectivity. Simple scalability. Device and system interoperability. Open systems architecture. Systems integration interfaces. Privacy. Cybersecurity Data governance. Actionable data and analytics. Fault-tolerance. Future-readiness. The security industry has begun improving in some of these areas. However, physical security technology has typically lagged five to 10 years behind the state of information technology and related IT practices, and exponential technology advancement has made catching up an even greater challenge. Modern Technology is Required For large-scale smart city projects it’s not possible, for both technical and cost reasons, to adequately address most or all these 11 requirements with traditional on-premises devices and systems. However, well-engineered cloudbased systems with cloud-managed field devices make it both technically possible and financially feasible to fulfill smart city key requirements. These key requirements are well understood in the IT industry, but only recently has physical security technology advanced to the point where meeting all of them is feasible in smartcity security deployments. Intelligent Connectivity Smart city networks are, for the most part, very large shared networks – both wired and wireless. That means devices and applications that use significant bandwidth – such as security video – must not only use data stream reduction techniques such as compression and recording on motion and alarm, they must also be aware of LAN and internet bandwidth availability, and intelligently buffer transmissions as needed to throttle back their usage during times of peak overall network utilization. Develop a sound networking plan for any proposed project, verifying the infrastructure capabilities and documenting the planned intelligent use of existing network infrastructure and any new infrastructure to be added. Simple Scalability On-premises systems have fixed capacities for compute, memory, disk storage and networking. Well-engineered true cloud systems can scale those resources up or down on demand. NIST defines cloud computing as “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (for example, networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” A true cloud application – not just a client-server system hosted in the cloud – supports cloud-managed local devices and maximally automates their management. Automation includes performing system-wide firmware upgrades and digital certificate issuance. Well-designed cloud-based systems and tools can enable large-scale…