Smart City as Innovation Platform(1/2)

This article is written by Mr. Tadashi Shikimori,Chief Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies（NEC Group）

Basic Act on the Advancement of Public and Private Sector Data Utilization

We are now at the stage that we can collect, share, analyze and utilize efficiently and effectively a large amount of and a variety of data thanks to the spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and evolution of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

In December,2016 the Basic Act on the Advancement of Public and Private Sector Data Utilization was enacted in Japan to facilitate the formation of local communities with attractive individuality and self-supporting power, the creation of new business and the reinforcement of global competitiveness by sharing and utilizing the data stored by the national government, local governments and private enterprises.

It is expected that the utilization of these data realize the creation of new business, new service, the streamlining and sophistication of manufacturing activities, the security of people’s daily activities and the improvement of convenience as well and so on.

70% of population concentrated in urban areas

It is forecasted that in the year 2050 70% of the total population will be moved and concentrated in urban areas.

It becomes, therefore, a big issue how we can cope and deal with a variety of urban problems such as managing convenient and efficient administration service, efficient transportation system, environmental problems and disaster and crime prevention system.

In order to tackle and solve these urban problems the new idea gradually penetrates in these days that people in the cities of advanced nations challenge to evolve the city itself to the platform of innovation for creation of new business and service.

As illustrated in the drawing many cities in the advanced nations move from the stage of introducing individual smart solution to the stage of organizing common data platform. From now on it becomes essential that the innovations are created utilizing data stored widely in the city and communities.

As a background of this move we can see the advent of new “Data Economy Era” where the new business and service are created by collecting and analyzing the data, the evolution of digital networking to connect every things and the emergence of new platform business based on this digital networking,

Urban areas or cities are repositories of abundant data. Such data is daily created and stored there as natural environment, people’s daily life and activities, social activities and industrial activities.

Moreover cites are organized and equipped appropriately with essential digital infrastructure such as broadband network and mobile sensors required for creation, transfer and collection of digital data.

Free Access to Urban Data

There is a movement that the platform is designed and established so that any parties as citizens, corporates and start-ups can have free access to the data and information managed and sotred by the national government and local governments.

On top of this movement there emerges “Civic tech” where people are challenging to improve the quality of community services and to solve the local problems by utilizing data resources released by the city.

These movements are just starting and there is still an issue to solve, for example, how to establish profitable business model to manage sustainably the city operation with the proper utilization of the data.

In the next issue (to be published on 24^th August) the examples of these actual challenges in the overseas countries are reported.