Smart City as Innovation Platform(2/2)

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

Deployment of IoT infrastructure

“Smart Columbus”，smart city project initiated by the city of Columbus, the state capital of Ohio, initially started to solve the social issue of high infant mortality rate in the region. In order to improve the mortality rate by 40% by the year 2020 the city introduced IoT (Internet of Things) consolidated data information platform to collect and process the traffic and transportation data.

The platform was established to arrange suitable traffic and transportation route and process to facilitate the medical care to be provided to infants in critical health condition without the delay.

This IoT data platform is so designed that the information is freely exchanged in real-time over cloud applications and that the other local city services are also provided by consolidating and administrating all the available data not only in the area of transportation such as autonomous driving , operating schedule control but also in the area of non-transportation.

The platform consolidates the transportation information not only with hospitals operations but with polices and fire authorities as well.

A large variety of diversified data and information related to urban activities is collected, consolidated and shared widely in the city.

In order to materialize the business utilizing these data and information the collaboration and cooperation is absolutely needed among those involved in the activities of city, state, county, universities, institutes, enterprises, and start-ups.

Public and private organization embodied by local utilities, medical, financial, apparel and health care industries play the role of central driving function to unify parties in the different fields.

Creation of new business
Columbus city make public data and information openly available for application software developers, start-ups, IoT application designers, researchers and citizens who are actively utilizing these data and information to develop new urban services and new business.

In the area of new business exploitation by start-ups “Singularity University”, IT consulting and educational organization famous in Silicon Valley is involved to find out promising start-ups and enterprises in cooperation with local venture capital “NCT Ventures”.

11 start-ups have been already nominated. Among them the start-up comes under the spotlight who are developing the software to predict possible infrastructure accidents with AI technology and autonomous flying drone (flying robot).

The city operation is a good basis to apply innovation platform where advanced technologies and innovation are locally adopted to solve social issues in the progress of establishing smart city.

Activation of local economy and employment
In Columbus project IoT (Internet of Things) consolidated data information platform was judged effective to reduce infant morality rate. The idea was further expanded that the local economy and employment could be activated if the traffic and transportation access were improved by consolidating the IoT data and information in the shared IoT platform with the non-transportation data and information in the area of medical, school, groceries and other urban livings.

In order to achieve the objective it is essential that citizens and of users are participating and involved in the project from the initial stage. In order for these parties to actively involve themselves in this innovation process it is important also that public-private cooperative ecosystem and central hub organization is properly established.

The Japanese Government enacted the Basic Act on the Advancement of Public and Private Sector Data Utilization and announced the policy to promote positive utilization of public data and information.

From now on it is required that the government make further efforts to improve the environment so that enterprises and citizens can access and utilize the public data and information while the users are protected safely and securely in the environment.