Lately, we are attending an explosion of the concept “smart” specially applied to the urban environment. This way, the concept of “smart-city” arises as great smart ecosystem composed by effective and efficient systems and services, connected and integrated, that allows the optimization of resources consumption and improve their quality.
These systems and services cover the different fields in a city: energy management, transport and mobility, security, citizen participation, knowledge management, environment, health, etc.
According to Wikipedia: “A city can be defined as ‘smart’ when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance”. [1]
The concept “smart-city” is being tackled in different ways by the diverse agents implied in its value chain: research groups, technology companies, public administrations and the citizens themselves. While the first are specially focused on developing technology, tech-companies give sense to applications, services and their associated business models that will be deployed by city-halls and public administrations to provide service to the citizens.
Despite of the fact that citizen take of special relevance due to services are addressed to them, it is indispensable to take into account those business models that allow the administrations to afford required investments and make the services to be financially sustainable.
The business aspect has an essential role, since it is necessary to reach sustainable models that facilitate the maintenance of implemented infrastructures. The technological deployment must not be an end in itself, but it must be perfectly complemented by a financial model that facilitates the consecution of objectives in terms of efficiency improvement and economic promotion.
As consequence, a smart-city must be strategically planned, be conceived as a great ecosystem, y count on a business model that facilitates the financial sustainability of technology infrastructures, that might be deployed not as a series of R&D or isolated projects, but with global vision as an integrated whole.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_city
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario