How much time do you save every day thanks to smart city technologies? It is on the basis of this quality of life criterion that the Juniper institute has established for Intel a new ranking of smart cities around the world. The result: living in a smart city can give you up to 15 days’ free time per year!
For its “Smart Cities – What's in it for citizens” study, the Juniper institute’s definition of a smart city focuses on the contribution of technologies to four areas closely connected to daily life: “A Smart City is an urban ecosystem that places emphasis on the use of digital technology, shared knowledge and cohesive processes to underpin citizen benefits in vectors such as mobility, public safety, health and productivity.”
How to save the equivalent of 15 days per year ?
Living in a smart city reportedly therefore allows us to save the equivalent of 15 days per year of otherwise wasted time. The Juniper study gives some examples of time savings:
- Mobility: 60 hours saved by setting up smart traffic management systems, including phasing of traffic lights or the opening of open data platforms used to select the best public transport route;
- Safety: 35 hours saved thanks to predictive policing using machine learning and better traffic coordination when calling out security or emergency services on the ground;
- Productivity: 21 hours saved by improving interactions between the public and authorities;
- Health: 9 hours saved by deploying telemedicine applications or with the help of technology, improving preliminary diagnoses and healthcare administrative services.
Top 20 Smart Cities Globally
The four criteria of the Juniper study have been used to establish a ranking of the top 20 Smart cities globally. The city-state of Singapore tops the list, followed by London and New York.
The study stresses that the smart cities of Asia and the Indian sub-continent are proving successful in terms of the speed of deployment of their smart city strategy, in particular because of the wide national support that they receive and a mainly “top-down” approach, where decisions are taken by government leaders before being applied.
By contrast, the smart cities in North America and Western Europe stand out in terms of transparency and openness in implementing their strategy: “these cities actively seek expertise from a wide range of actors, including third party entities and citizens themselves.”
