Resilience on Smart Cities

Many people have been concerned about the water crisis that Cape Town on the African continent has suffered in recent months. Not long ago, managed to reverse what would be an extreme crisis: The lack of water supply in the city. The deadline was extended due especially to efforts by the population and authorities based on economics and also to avoid water waste such as management improvements and population awareness programs.

However, this opens up a very important issue which is the Resilience of large cities. Also, this in turn is part of the study of Smart Cities: What these cities need to have, so that they do not suffer with so many crises, not only of water; but of energy; problems of natural disasters; recycling problems; transportation problems; safety, etc.
It is a subject of study of various consulting and analytical entities in the improvement of smart cities.

For instance, on the innovations side, the Devex.com site addresses four important issues to take care:

1. Inventory the infrastructure very well;
2. use drones to access damaged structures safely;
3. build buildings with High Tech materials to increase resilience and durability; and finally
4. use sensors to increase the resilience of new buildings and protect existing buildings.

On the other hand, McKinsey has done a resiliency study based more on processes and management. They cite 6 important items:

1. Hire a resilience expert to lead the initiatives;
2. identify what are the threats and make a study of the potential impact on Security Systems;
3. classify and prioritize critical services;
4. establish resilience goals for the city;
5. develop desired resilience results for a potential crisis; and
6. determine the resources needed and define roles and responsibilities.

In Ernst & Young’s case, they mention several important elements from 3 main drivers: for the Government; for Business; and Entrepreneurs.

• For the area of Government, they cite the use of Big Data. It suggests understanding the institutional configurations to better reach the quality and how the information can be made available in a granular and real time way to better inform the population about Losses and Gains from each public action.
• In the Business area, they mention that smart assets or smart facilities can bring a higher return on investment. They infer that specific changes in role planning and standards can spur business to bring resilient and intelligent solutions to cities. It also proposes to list investments and financing for these smart initiatives.
• In the Entrepreneurship section, it proposes to investigate the emergence trends for citizens and where the biggest challenges are in the commercial offerings. It also proposes a study of how to bring investments to initiatives of resilience intelligence, and also finally proposes a study of emerging technologies that have the potential to develop resilience in smart cities.

There are really technologies that are very important for the development of resilience in smart cities. Note that all technological innovation is involved in this. That is, all the developments around innovations will be important in the resilience of cities. Be it in the internet part of things, Big Data, the creation of sensors, artificial intelligence, the use of drones, etc.

We started this article talking about water. Water really is an important element because it is related to everything. With transportation, with mobility, with buildings, public services, and mainly with energy. It is assumed that 50% of the energy spent in a city is related to the water supply. Including technology to prevent leaks, losses, waste is important. There are many devices today that can be used in this context.

In addition to Cape Town, some California cities, The Mexico City, Sao Paulo and other places have warnings about water use. Thinking effectively and acting on resilience right now is important. As we know, most of the water on the planet is salty and this prevents it from being consumed (or transformed in a viable way) by the population.

Another complicating factor is the impact of climate change that can reduce the amount of drinking water, since it influences the sources where water is collected either in aquifers or in water on the surface. This is a concern of the city of Miami for example.

The fact is that on one hand governments, municipalities need to be aware of a program of water management and waste management. On the other hand, it is necessary to identify which technologies in each city may be essential to avoid a future crisis. In addition, other factors that may impact the resilience of smart cities need to be included in the discussion agenda in order to list which technologies are key. This depends on each city according to its history and its exposure to problems.

In any case, it is interesting to note that once again a more holistic approach to innovative technologies and trends in smart cities needs to be studied together, aiming for a maturity in resilience programs.

Main Image from Toronto at https://www.100resilientcities.org/