ChannelVision September - October 2016

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and behavior with a fine spatio-tem-
poral resolution.”
In addition, smart sewage could
impact the way non-communicable
diseases are studied, because bio-
markers for diseases such as obe-
sity and diabetes can be measured
at unprecedented scale.
MIT is also heading up the Trash
Track project in Seattle. The city
placed digital tags onto trash and
then followed it as it moves through
the city’s sanitation system.
“We discovered many things, and
one of those things is that simply by
sharing information you can promote
behavioral change,” Ratti said. “People
involved in the project would be able to
follow their trash. This prompted many
of them to change their habits. One
person told us, ‘I used to drink water
in plastic bottles and throw them away
and think that they would disappear,
but I know it is not true anymore. They
just go a few miles from home to a
landfill. So I stopped drinking water
in plastic bottles.’”
Challenges, and
a Strong Future
Against all of the innovation, it’s
important to note that there are
challenges in bringing smart cities
to fruition. For one, when it comes
to the Internet of Things, operators
are moving from a limited scope of
network requirements and deploy-
ment issues to a much more com-
plex scale and range of use cases.
Whether it’s video surveillance and
other high-bandwidth apps that need
as close to zero latency as possible
or networks of environmental sen-
sors that transmit small amounts of
information frequently and need a
long battery life, IoT will be a funda-
mentally different story for the mo-
bile ecosystem to support – and that
presents a learning curve.
Also, the sheer complexity in-
volved is a potential gating factor, as
is the fact that new systems require
new regulations. And, security will be
a big issue in the IoT world consid-
ering that hacking into information
systems is nothing new. Add that to
the fact that low levels of operational
efficiency in emerging countries and
absence or lack of robust telecom
and networking infrastructures in
these regions are majors restraining
factors for non-first world areas.
Nonetheless, the future looks very
bright indeed. MarketsandMarkets
said the market size of smart is esti-
mated to grow from $312.03 billion
in 2015 to $757.74 billion by 2020,
representing an estimated compound
annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.4
percent for the forecast period.
Among the regions, the Asia-
Pacific (APAC) region is expected to
grow with the highest CAGR, while
Europe is expected to be the high-
est contributor followed by APAC,
according to MarketsandMarkets.
The market is in the emerging stage
in the regions of Europe, APAC,
Latin America, and the Middle-East
and Africa (MEA). Therefore, these
regions present immense scope for
the development of smart cities.
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September - October, 2016 | Channel Vision