4 ms·

I work in urban planning and have to say theres a lot of empty puff that comes under 'smart cities'. Sensors and IoT can help with some things but are more abou

• longerthoughts 8y ago
  >more about efficiency or informing of issues rather than solving the issues themselves Isn’t identifying issues a prerequisite for solving them?
  • dredmorbius 8y ago
    How many urban issues are poorly identified? Does increased surveillance do anything to improve the score? At what direct and/or indirect costs?
  • twelvechairs 8y ago
    Sure but many are reasonably well identified already. In a small town with a tourist event everyone knows which streets get full on which days already. And hotel managers will advise their customers what to do. Adding a network of sensors isnt going to change much in most of these scenarios.
• Animats 8y ago
  Yes. The article somehow claims that an "Internet of Things" will somehow be useful for managing tourists. Probably not. Most of the "smart city" efforts seem to be devoted to collecting data that would be useful for marketing, but not city operations. There's not much interest, say, in sensors which measure ground conductivity between separated points and process that data to detect water main leaks. Yet water system leaks are a big issue for many cities. Sensors mounted on city vehicles to detect and report potholes and road damage would be useful. Put them on garbage trucks; they see most streets regularly. Those are things cities have to fix and need to track. No, the author wants to track tourists in detail. Guess who wants that data.