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RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Integrated approach to safety issues is

crucial for smart city initiatives

vest more than US$100 million in public safety initia-
tives over the next two years. Of those investments,
24% are expected to be allocated toward surveil-
lance technology, with 19% earmarked for big data
analytics, and another 19% for mobile and network
technology.
 Public and community safety ranked as respondents’
top priority, followed by transportation and urban in-
frastructure, and the advancement of Internet or IT
capabilities.
With recent reports predicting that the Asia Pacific re-  Crime investigation, transportation and traffic ser-
gion will see the largest growth in smart city initiatives vices, as well as cyber security, were the top three
over the next 10 years, many have focused on the cost public safety issues that respondents felt their coun-
saving benefits and efficiencies that technology can tries had struggled with.
deliver. In fact, a recent report predicted the number of
smart cities worldwide to quadruple over the next ten  A lack of alignment between government agencies
years, with Asia Pacific expected to see the highest was selected as the top factor that was holding back
number of smart cities, reaching 32 by 2025, ahead of the implementation of public safety projects.
Europe and the Americas.
Tony Field, senior director of Hitachi Data Systems’
Gartner defines a “smart city” as an urbanized area Social Innovation Business Unit for Asia Pacific, com-
where multiple sectors cooperate to achieve sustaina- mented, “The survey results highlight that many Asia
ble outcomes through the analysis of contextual, real- Pacific countries are looking to implement technology
time information shared among sector-specific infor- solutions that can have a meaningful, measurable im-
mation and operational technology systems. The tech- pact on public safety. While a willingness to invest in
nology research and advisory firm estimates that smart such solutions is apparent among respondents, the
cities will account for more than 1.1 billion Internet of main barrier appears to be a failure to adopt an aligned
Things (IoT) items this year (2015), rising to 9.7 billion and integrated approach to safety initiatives, which
by 2020. would allow cities to create a single holistic view of
crime in their cities.”
This raises the question if smart cities can be safer
places for people to live and work, and what role does Hence, the secret to creating smarter and safer cities is
the advancement of technology and IoT have to play in not to work a little harder in a few specific areas. The
delivering public safety? real solution is to stop looking at each of these safe city
components in isolation. To be truly effective, a munici-
To find the answers, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation pality should view and manage all of the various parts
(HDS) conducted a survey of delegates at the Safe Cit- together holistically. This allows each piece of the
ies Asia conference in Singapore in May 2015. The smart city puzzle to support the others. Moreover, by
event provided the right sample base to identify the role taking an integrated approach and employing more
that technology is currently playing when it comes to comprehensive analytics, the potential benefits multiply
delivering safer cities. tremendously.

The results of the HDS survey have been extremely “Cities that fail to take a holistic, fully integrated ap-
revealing. Nearly 90% of respondents said that either proach to planning for the future are likely to remain
they or their organisations had already been involved in stuck with the problems of the past”, the report con-
a safety project. Moreover, 69% of respondents are cludes.
planning to invest in public safety projects in their coun-
tries over the next two years. The whitepaper “Can smart cities also be safer cities”
from Hitachi Data Systems offers in-depth analysis of
Making municipalities safer for people to live and work the survey findings, and focuses on adoption barriers
in is clearly the primary concern of those involved in
smart city planning: that prevent full implementation of public safety initia-
tives and real-world solutions that are helping to create
 44% of those surveyed expect their countries to in- smarter and safer cities. ◊
By MediaBUZZ
10 Asian eMarketing August 2015: Security
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