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The open road

A smart city is an interoperable city

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 Executive summary
Becoming a smart city remains a goal rather than a reality for cities
around the world. Many are at a pivotal point in their journey where
they must make decisions over which technologies to use and
which vendors to work with. The route they take could have serious
implications in terms of what they achieve further down the line.

Interoperability and a lack of standards remain among the biggest

issues for city innovation. The good news is that progress is being
made and there is increasing recognition by cities, vendors and other
stakeholders that true progress comes from creating ecosystems and
tackling problems and challenges collectively.

There is still much work to be done but there is no doubt that moving
towards an open approach, based on interoperability and vendor
independence, will help to avoid issues that can curb smart city
CONTENTS aspirations in the medium- and long-term.
3 Executive summary
The future is open
5 The challenge to cities
This report examines how openness represents the next key phase
7 Advancing on the open road for smart cities. It highlights the importance of having an interoperable
and scalable network infrastructure and an open management
14 Unlocking the value of data
platform at the core. This enables cities to add vertical smart city
16 Practical strategies for applications when appropriate and therefore enables them to advance
interoperable smart cities much more organically. An open architecture and platform also make it
easier to scale projects and assure the ability to easily accommodate
future needs without being locked in to proprietary technologies.

The open approach is illustrated by best practice case studies from

the cities of Chiasso, Switzerland; Gijón, Spain; and San Leandro,
USA. Each city embarked on its journey from a different starting
point and with different priorities but an interoperable and scalable
network and platform has been central to them realising their aims and
delivering benefits for citizens.

The report also looks at how, with an open and scalable infrastructure
in place, cities can unleash new innovation and economic value
through data.

We hope this report helps to highlight the benefits of openness but

that it also generates discussion to help inform this important next
phase for smart cities.

Written by: Sue Weekes, News editor, SmartCitiesWorld

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The challenge to cities
More than half (55 per cent) of the global population lives in strong public accountability and multi-stakeholder decisions,
urban areas today, according to the United Nations. This is procurement and implementation processes can be very long.”
expected to increase to around 70 per cent by 2050, which will He adds: “While there are many mature, consolidated smart
lead to 2.5 billion more urban residents across the planet. experiences around the world, I would say that most cities
are now between the ‘storming’ and the ‘norming’ phase.
Cities must prepare now for the huge pressure this puts on Many initiatives are being launched but are often far from
their infrastructure. At the same time, they must also confront being established and accomplished. In reality, smart cities
associated challenges such as climate change, poor air quality, are a journey.”
increasing congestion and housing shortages.
Setting the standard
Smart technology exists to tackle these urban issues and While a range of factors and issues are dictating the direction
help cities become more sustainable, resilient and safer, of smart cities around the world, many of the decisions being
as well as improve quality of life for citizens. For instance, taken now could impact on what a city can achieve further
sensors can gather data that assesses the air quality in parts down the line. Connected solutions still suffer from a lack
of the city at specific times and diverts traffic away from high of standards, and interoperability issues remain. A vendor
levels of pollution, and smart lighting systems reduce energy decision taken by those responsible for a municipality’s lighting
consumption and can lead to major cost savings and the could affect those in the traffic department too.
ability to deploy illumination when and where it’s needed,
increasing effectiveness and safety further. Traffic technology Moreover, the siloed approach to working that exists in many
can help to reduce congestion and smart waste systems can local, regional and national governments also obstructs the
identify when bins need to be emptied and support smart route integrated approach. It can lead to missed opportunities when
planning, enabling waste-as-a-service models. it comes to collaborating and sharing technologies, good
practice and data with other functions and impinge on a city’s
In addition, digitisation of civic services helps to streamline overall plans to work smarter. It may also hinder the progress
operations and save further costs as well as make it easier of data monetisation strategies in the future.
for citizens to access services. In the most forward-thinking
cities, systems are also being rolled out to more closely involve A study undertaken by The Academy for Smarter Communities
citizens in helping to co-create a smart city by engaging them (TASC) on authorities in cities around the world found
in decision-making. consensus on the view that no single platform will be able to
offer the best end-to-end solution across all urban domains.
The long and winding road
The road to becoming a truly smart city is typically a long and This was based on the views of authorities in cities including
complex one. While cities such as Barcelona, Singapore, New Amsterdam, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Jaipur, Kansas City,
York and London are heralded among the most advanced Palo Alto, Reykjavik, San Diego, Santander, Singapore and
models of smart cities, even their city officials would Tampere. Its findings were also informed by smart city experts,
acknowledge there is still much work to be done. private sector companies and not-for-profits.

In an ideal world, each city would have an integrated plan and TASC also revealed serious concerns around issues such as
a smart city strategy that addresses both immediate priorities vendor lock-in and limitations on scope for customisation,
and sets out a holistic vision for the future. This seldom alongside a lack of clarity on data ownership, storage and the
prevails in reality, though, because of a range of factors. Chief “future fate of data collected”, when determining the choice,
among them are budgetary and funding challenges as well timing and scale of platform adoption. It reported that the
as the need for cities to address their most pressing issues, majority of cities and communities remain undecided on which
whether it be reducing congestion and improving air quality or approach to take, and most conduct “a handful of pilots”, and
putting measures in place to improve public safety. wait for results elsewhere.

“Smart city Internet of Things (IoT) projects are very Despite this significant complexity, there is little to be gained
complex in nature. So many cities have launched their smart by dwelling on the challenges for too long – much of the
initiatives, often inspired by digital transformation policies, change smart cities are working to effect is too important for a
new technologies, and other more budget or politics-related ‘wait and see’ approach.
reasons,” says Gianni Minetti, CEO of Paradox Engineering.
“However, also in the light of the various city stakeholders In the next section, we explore the way ahead – interoperability
involved, and because of the fact that projects are subject to through openness.

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Advancing on the open road
The answer lies in taking a more open approach that Smart lighting: A starting point
navigates around many of the potential issues and allows Smart lighting is often the first application to be rolled out
the city to much more easily add vertical smart applications and it is frequently quoted in studies as a smart city starting
when appropriate. Through such an open approach, data point. It is one of the more mature smart city technologies,
from connected infrastructure can be smoothly exchanged, delivers cost-savings in a relatively short timeframe and,
without the need for technology changes or adaptations, in many cases, streetlights provide the ideal connected
creating a more holistic picture and opening up a world of infrastructure to fit sensors that can be used for other
new opportunities. This strategy will also enable cities to smart applications.
more easily scale pilot projects.
Gartner predicts that smart streetlamps will be the
Crucially, the open approach means that applications primary network infrastructure for 80 per cent of smart
can work together in a more integrated way – and increase cities by 2020, and recent research carried out by
their collective power. Data collected in a smart traffic infrastructure market intelligence firm the Northeast
application, for example, could be used elsewhere to Group reveals that smart street lighting continues to
brighten lighting in an area where there has been a road strengthen its position as the foundational layer for
traffic accident or a crime committed to assist the work of broader smart city projects.
emergency services.
The Global Smart Street Lighting & Smart Cities: Market
This kind of openness relies on the development of open Forecast (2019-2028) reveals that the total investment in LED
standards and open application programming interfaces and smart streetlights, as well as additional smart city sensors
(APIs) that allow applications and data to be integrated and attached to streetlights, will reach $50.4 billion (€45 billion)
shared. It also requires the creation of ecosystems made up over the next decade.
of technology providers and stakeholders who are willing to
truly collaborate to advance the smart city movement across “LED and smart street lighting projects have always
the world. Cities around the world are at very different stages represented enormous efficiency opportunities for cities, with
of their smart city journey but there is no doubt that the drive savings typically reaching over 65 per cent,” said Chris Testa,
towards more open standards and systems could become a research director at Northeast Group.
major factor in helping many of them achieve their goals and
objectives much more quickly. Minetti agrees that in Paradox Engineering’s experience,
smart lighting is the most popular application to be
Anatomy of a truly open smart city introduced first on PE Smart Urban Network. “The street light
While there are numerous examples of municipalities infrastructure is the natural backbone of any urban area, so is
around the world reaping major benefits by taking an the perfect platform to kick off smart network deployments,”
open approach to smart cities, much more education Minetti commented.
is required and best practice needs to be shared
among cities. He added: “For this reason, most cities ask for
multi-application networks which deliver smart lighting
Indeed, learning from other cities is one of the best ways and/or smart parking/traffic and then ask for the
to understand how an open smart city can be created. development of sensor-based applications or APIs and
That’s why this report features a selection of case studies of services. This is where third parties, local businesses
cities which have realised the benefits of IoT and taking the and system integrators come into the game as they can
route of openness, interoperability, scalability, and vendor integrate hardware and software applications designed to
independence. While each had different priorities and fit the specific business case.”
objectives at the outset, they are all able to grow their range of
smart services to meet their needs organically, building from The open movement
the bottom up. The good news is that momentum is gathering behind
the open standards movement in the smart city space.
A true open smart city will have an interoperable and Paradox Engineering, for instance, is among those to
scalable network infrastructure and an open management have joined the uCIFI Alliance to further contribute to
platform that can centrally manage and control a range of the development of much-needed open, multi-supplier,
smart devices and applications, which could be from interoperable, multi-transport wireless communication
third-party providers. solutions for cities and utilities.

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 A major advance in this area was made in February 2019 Open smart cities aren’t just about technology and
when the Alliance launched the uCIFI Data Model that will interoperability, though. Minetti believes they can also bring
provide interoperability and interchangeability between IoT economic benefits as local enterprises, universities and other
devices from various suppliers on any IoT network. It is organisations can more easily build applications and engage
being released as an open source document as well as a with them.
resource on the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) repository,
which the Alliance hopes will significantly accelerate adoption In San Leandro, California, for instance, students from
among IoT device suppliers. It will be generally released by Harvey Mudd College developed a smart waste monitoring
the end of 2019. pilot solution for street trash cans that connects to PE Smart
Urban Network (see case study on page 12).
The next major step will be to release an open, long-range
mesh network stack to the public as open source to further “This is a key point for cities as an open infrastructure fosters
support openness and interoperability. local jobs and services,” Minetti says. “So, ultimately, having
an open approach has a positive impact not only on direct
The TASC research referenced earlier found that there is a changes in infrastructure and services, but also in developing
growing interest in open source solutions for smart cities the local economy and improving quality of life.”
to more easily manage and scale IoT projects. At a time
when it can be challenging for municipalities to scale up He added: “We have seen what interoperability and openness
even successful pilot projects, the open approach is key to enabled for the Internet. We should aim for and steer towards
accelerating progress. the same success in smart cities.”

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PE Smart Urban Network: Backbone of a smart city
Paradox Engineering’s PE Smart Urban Network provides a dedicated hardware security module, granting safe
an interoperable and open end-to-end system to enable any data storage and cryptographic operations acceleration.
urban service, such as smart streetlights, smart parking and Communications are secured at different layers and strong
other sensor-based applications, over one city-wide wireless authentication features offer an effective defence against
network infrastructure. malicious attacks, hackers and other threats.

PE Smart Urban Network provides a single unified In addition, the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain technology is
infrastructure to manage multi-sensor, wireless IoT built into the PE Smart Central Management System (CMS)
applications and wireless high-speed IoT services such to enhance security in commissioning operations. It provides
as pervasive Wi-Fi, video surveillance and other high- authentication, authorisation and auditable operation at any
bandwidth applications. level of the infrastructure where any change is validated by

The network allows cities to design and implement

an infrastructure to manage multiple services at once,
seamlessly integrating third-party systems and devices.

In addition to interoperability, the latest Neptune generation

of PE Smart Urban Network helps city managers to increase
efficiencies in key urban services as well as improve
decision-making.

Paradox Engineering calculates that through leveraging data

generated by connected objects and sensors, city managers
can reduce the power consumption and greenhouse gas
emissions from streetlights by up to 80 per cent, increase
parking facilities usage and reduce traffic congestion by up the consensus model of the blockchain, thus eliminating the
to 30 per cent. weaknesses of single vectors of cyber-attacks. Blockchain
is also integrated in PE Smart Gateways to enhance security
PE Smart Urban Network has been developed on the in network device registration and command validation.
principles of security-by-design. This means it has been
designed from its foundation to be secure, which is a “We’ve always advocated open
criterion of regulatory compliance. Application and data
protection is granted by reliable encryption features and standards and interoperability,
making them a distinctive feature
of our smart IoT solutions,” said
Gianni Minetti, CEO at Paradox
Engineering, who added that
with the Neptune generation of
its Smart Urban Network, the
company wants to push forward
a “truly” unified technology and
data model for open wireless
environments. “We hope it will
accelerate the development
of innovative applications
for smarter cities and their
communities,” he said.

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 Case study: Gijón, Spain: A historic city on a digital roadmap
A coastal city with about 280,000 inhabitants, Gijón is It then moved into its next phase of modernisation
the largest municipality in the autonomous community of by turning the existing lighting infrastructure into
Asturias in Spain. Evidence of its Roman past can be seen an intelligent network to better control energy
in the city which, today, is a cosmopolitan resort attracting consumption in the city and increase the efficiency of its
many visitors. It is notable for several attractions, including street lighting.
some of the best-preserved Roman baths in northern Spain
(Campo Valdes) and as the start of the Route of Silver, The platform enabled Gijón to tailor lighting for single
which enables visitors to travel through the country, north to districts in the city and even single lamps, triggering on/off
south and complete their journey in Seville, Andalucia. and dimming actions according to programmed schedules
or on-demand.
The historical city is on the path towards digital
transformation and sustainability. It has embarked on a The management system was developed on a
plan to use advanced technologies to improve key urban private cloud by T-Systems, which streamlined the
services and make more efficient use of public spaces and collaboration among the various companies involved
resources, as well as provide a higher quality of life for its in the project, developing an integrated intelligent city
citizens and visitors. management model.

Like many cities around the world, its smart roadmap The investment in smart lighting enabled the City of
kicked off with smart lighting in 2016 by modernising 1,150 Gijón to increase efficiency by achieving a significant
luminaires in the centre of the city and making the switch to reduction in energy consumption and the municipality
LED-based devices. estimated cost-savings of around €100,000 a year. The
project was also named best smart city project at the 6th
Gijón municipality worked with IT services and consulting edition of the National Congress for Innovation and Public
company T-Systems and utilised PE Smart Urban Services (CNIS).
Network platform.
The smart IoT network that Gijón has put in place
has positioned the city well for its smart future. In
“The municipality estimated addition to the lighting application, the municipality is
cost-savings of around €100,000 considering the integration of other services such as
public parking management, refuse container monitoring
a year from the smart lighting and air quality measurement. These can be integrated
initiative and its smart IoT into the existing PE Smart Urban Network infrastructure,
network has positioned it well for creating a unique municipal management system to
improve the efficiency of all public services.
a smarter future.”

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Case study: Chiasso, Switzerland

Chiasso is a Swiss municipality in Ticino canton on the prominent arterial road in the city centre. The smart lighting
southern tip of Switzerland, close to the Italian border. It infrastructure now covers multiple areas of the city, including
is home to around 8,500 inhabitants and has grown from the ring road, a portion of the city centre, municipal buildings
its rural roots to become a centre for commerce and sports facilities.
and telecommunications.
Corrado Noseda, director at AGE SA, said: “Investments we
The city is dedicated to sustainability and innovation, which are making to improve streetlighting are delivering benefits
helped it earn an ‘Energy City’ title from the EU association back to Chiasso’s citizens and businesses, as well as to local
Energy Cities. The municipality works closely with AGE SA, government and AGE itself.
the local utility managing water, electricity and gas distribution
in the area, to find ways of increasing sustainability and “Thanks to LED transition and the ability to calibrate each
achieving higher green targets. light point remotely, we estimate a 70 per cent reduction in
daily energy consumption in Via Dante Alighieri and similar
results in the other areas.”
“Investments we are shouldering
to improve street lighting are Noseda added that when it comes to service quality, the city
can ensure every street, crossroad and crossover is properly
paying relevant benefits back to lit, thanks to light intensity features. Management and
Chiasso citizens and businesses, maintenance costs have been reduced, too.
as well as to local government and
The systems can be used to enhance lighting in specific areas
AGE itself” for festivals and events and also to assist emergency services
Corrado Noseda, AGE by lighting an area where an accident has taken place.

Chiasso first invested in a smart lighting infrastructure back in Following the initial installation, AGE and Chiasso decided to
2013 with the aim of reducing energy consumption, as well as extend the use of PE Smart Urban Network to manage other
piloting ‘future-proof’ technologies and improving the quality urban applications, such as public Wi-Fi in some city areas,
of urban services. traffic video surveillance along the ring road, and a pilot smart
metering project.
Existing lamps were replaced with LED devices and PE
Smart Urban Network was implemented as an advanced Smart parking, which can help citizens and visitors to more
system for remote monitoring and control. Further easily find parking spaces, has also been rolled out in the
deployments were made in 2015 in Via Dante Alighieri, a city centre.

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 San Leandro: the Californian city committed to climate action

The City of San Leandro is located in the San Francisco Bay enabled the city to support multiple smart city applications
Area and is home to nearly 90,000 residents. It dates back and services. These included integrated parking systems,
to 1771, discovered by a Spanish explorer, and became public wireless internet service, traffic video surveillance and
famous for its cherry harvests. It also has a significant more.
industrial area for advanced manufacturing. Citizens take
real pride in the city, which features tree-lined streets and “San Leandro embodies sustainability in action. We invest
some 21 public parks. in green infrastructure and programmes to ensure that San
Leandro furthers its legacy as a smart and sustainable city,”
The city is committed to its Climate Action Plan goals said Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter.
and is investing in infrastructure retrofits and smart city
applications to achieve them. In summer 2017, students from Harvey Mudd College
(including a San Leandro High School graduate) interned
“San Leandro embodies with the incubator Pilot City to develop a smart waste
monitoring pilot solution for street trash cans that connect
sustainability in action. We invest to PE Smart Urban Network.
in green infrastructure and
Climatec calculated that the entire investment would
programmes to ensure that San generate $8 million (€7.1 million) saving over 15 years
Leandro furthers its legacy as a through strategic reductions in energy and water use, and
smart and sustainable city,” $1.5 million (€1.3 million) in positive cash flow over the
same period.
Mayor Pauline Russo Cutter
In addition to major cost-savings, San Leandro’s
To this end, Climatec, an energy services company, was investments in clean infrastructure will reduce GHG
chosen by the city council in 2016 to install $5.2 million emissions by 1,390 metric tons annually, the equivalent of
(€ 4.6 million) worth of energy and water-saving equipment. 3.3 million miles driven in a year.
The council asked for a guarantee that savings would wholly
cover the costs of the improvements and related debt “As we continue to live with limited natural resources, it’s
services of the initiative. important that the city leads by example in being more
efficient with municipal operations,” said Debbie Pollart,
The project involved the replacement of 4,730 streetlights public works director at the City of San Leandro.
with smart LED lamps and implementing PE Smart Urban
Network as a centralised management and control system. She added: “Realised budget savings on our utility bills
The existing fibre optics network was used for high-speed will be turned back into funding additional municipal
communications, and Paradox Engineering’s infrastructure efficiency projects.”

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 Unlocking the value of data
Data is the lifeblood of a smart city and the open approach cases. It pinpointed key challenges such as an immature data
makes it not only much easier to share data within a market, fragmented data landscape, reluctance to share data
city, across different departments, but also externally due to concerns about privacy and competitor access, and a
and with third parties. This, in turn, creates much greater data skills gap.
opportunity for innovation and can also open up new revenue
opportunities for cities to help fund smart city expansion Stumbling blocks to data-sharing
plans and future projects. There are also two major technical issues to address before
a city can advance data-sharing and monetisation: data
Some cities have already opened up their data to enable third privacy and security. The rise of cyber-crime is a global issue
parties such as local businesses and start-ups to develop and cyber-attacks and data breaches threaten the growth of
new applications that address their cities’ challenges. smart and IoT-based applications in urban environments.

The London Datastore, for example, offers free access to more According to digital security company Gemalto, only around
than 831 datasets in areas such as transport, environment, half (48 per cent) of organisations can detect if any of their
health and housing. It was created by the Greater London IoT devices suffers a security breach. Meanwhile, increasingly
Authority (GLA) as a first step towards capitalising on London’s tech-savvy citizens and consumers are already asking
data. It recognises that raw data is meaningless and wants to questions about the use of their data. A survey from on-device
encourage other organisations to use it to visualise or build artificial intelligence solutions provider, Anagog, found that
apps. Similarly, Dubai Pulse provides access to more than 420 two in three consumers said they are willing to dump data-
datasets. It invites organisations to use it to enhance people’s collecting apps if the information collected is unrelated to the
experience of Dubai. app’s function. A study by Ipsos Mori on behalf of the Internet
Society and Consumers International revealed that two-thirds
of consumers (65 per cent) are concerned about the way
connected devices such as smart meters and personal digital
“Cities need to make sure assistants collect data and more than half (55 per cent) do not
trust their connected devices to protect their privacy.
they chose a partner whose
Cities not only need to make sure that they address the
technologies grant truly intrinsic considerable security and privacy issues around data but
data security.” that they also have practices in place that demonstrate
transparency and build trust with their citizens in these areas.
Gianni Minetti, CEO, Paradox Engineering
Security can be a concern when it comes to using open
systems, especially when working with a number of vendors.
In terms of cities monetising their own data, it is still Cities must, therefore, undertake due diligence in this area.
very early days, although exploratory work is underway. “Cities need to make sure they choose a partner whose
Copenhagen’s City Data Exchange, a collaborative project technologies grant truly intrinsic data security,” advised Minetti.
between the Municipality of Copenhagen, the Capital Region
of Denmark and Hitachi (which provides the technical Moreover, legislation and regulation around these issues are
platform), is an advanced marketplace which facilitates the only going to become tighter. The General Data Protection
exchange of data between public and private organisations. Regulation (GDPR), for example, requires that systems are
Third-party data augments the public sector data and it can designed to be secure from the foundation.
be bought and sold.
Blockchain for security and data monetisation
The Copenhagen Solutions Lab shared the findings from two Recent years have seen the emergence of blockchain,
years of operating the exchange earlier this year in a report the distributed ledger technology that uses a peer-to-peer
and said that both public and private sector organisations network and cryptography to ensure data held is secure and
have used the CDE to gain insights into data use cases, new immutable. It was launched in 2008 as a ledger for Bitcoin
external data sources, GDPR issues, and to explore the value transactions but has since expanded outside of the world of
of their data. Those accessing the CDE have sold data to FinTech to sectors such as energy and transport. It is also
each other but the report stated that there is a need to create seen as having the potential to be one of the underpinning
a larger data-sharing community and to work on the use infrastructure technologies for smart cities.

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Paradox Engineering has integrated blockchain into PE Paradox suggests that PE Smart Urban Network could
Smart Urban Network (see page 9) to provide enhanced also help to support a local currency or rewards
device and data security to mitigate cyber risks but it also programmes used by citizens, local shops, authorities,
provides a “ready-to-access” data monetisation model for schools and visitors.
urban applications. It is built on the Hyperledger Fabric private
blockchain and data and devices are intrinsically secure We are already starting to see examples of this type of initiative.
because they are held on the same cryptographic chain of trust. Belfast City Council, for example, is exploring the use of digital
currencies to boost the city economy, meet environmental goals
The network can support cities in monetising the value of and help citizens become healthier. Residents will accumulate
data generated by urban applications and devices such as ‘Belfast Coins’ in return for activities such as shopping with local
streetlights and waste bins in two ways: businesses, volunteering, civic activity and more.

• sharing real-time data in an off chain network and Minetti said: “Many cities are at the early stages of finding
tokenising it; out how they can unlock the true value of their data and
• buying and selling data stream subscriptions through a they will need to share knowledge and best practice over
secure marketplace. the coming years.”

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 Open up: Practical
strategies for interoperable
smart cities
These are our strategies for creating smart cities that are open to future possibilities –
whatever they may be.

Open and interoperable infrastructure

Cities need to beware technologies that can serve today but are not equipped to evolve
for future needs – many of which haven’t even been imagined yet. “We wouldn’t have
what the Internet offers us today if it was built on the proprietary, closed and vendor-
locked technologies that were mainstream until the late 1980s,” commented Gianni
Minetti, CEO, Paradox Engineering.

Smart cities are a journey that needs to be mapped

To understand the path ahead more clearly, cities need an overarching smart city
strategy that addresses immediate priorities but also defines a more holistic vision for
the future. This doesn’t have to be an endpoint – arguably, a smart city journey never
ends – but it takes a 360-degree view of how a city can transform its services over time.

Break down silos

An open approach is key to not only breaking down technical barriers such as
interoperability but also in terms of internal culture and communication. An open
platform helps different departments share and manage data and extract more value
from it. It also helps to generate organisation-wide interest and discussion around smart
city projects.

Open up data
Making datasets in areas such as environment, health, housing and transport freely
available enables external organisations to leverage the city’s data to develop
applications that will benefit citizens. In the medium to longer term, cities could explore
the use of monetising the data to bring new revenue opportunities.

Foster local business and talent

An open approach makes it far easier for local businesses, educational establishments
and the community to co-create a smart city. A killer smart city app can come from
anywhere in the community and is more likely to be realised if the city has open
technology at its heart.

Share meaningful best practice

With every smart city on a learning curve – even the more mature ones – there is a
pressing need to see good practice in action. Cities do not need to reinvent the wheel
(nor do they have the time or resources to do so) so showcasing repeatable and
scalable pilots, approaches and applications is key to the next phase of smart cities.

Engage with the open movement

There is a raft of work going on to create more open systems and standards in the smart
city space and it is important for city authorities to tap into this and engage with some of
the work being undertaken. Getting as many cities on board in such projects will help to
accelerate the open movement around the world, speeding progress for everyone.

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 About Paradox
Engineering and
MinebeaMitsumi
Established in 2005 and headquartered in
Switzerland, Paradox Engineering offers an
integrated portfolio of future-proof IoT solutions for
smart urban networks. Unique competences in data
collection systems, radio design and wireless sensor
networks are at the core of its offering.
Want to learn more about PE
Since 2015 it has been part of MinebeaMitsumi Smart Urban Network and
Group, global provider of Electro Mechanics
SolutionsTM that combine control technology with live an exciting Augmented
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through difference. The Group is striving to create
Download ‘AR Smart City’ mobile
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