Smart cities market to expand by govt. initiatives and IoT adoption

Smart cities market to expand by govt. initiatives and IoT adoption

Smart cities incorporate various information and communication technologies to fuel sustainable economic growth. They are developed with the aim to provide enhanced urban services to reduce resource overall costs and energy consumption. Continuous growth in urbanisation leads to surge in demand for smart technology for efficient day-to-day services for better resource management. The wide adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) devices supported by rise in number of connected devices drive the deployment of smart devices. This also helps enrich the data available to users and managers of city services. According to Cisco, total number of connected devices are expected to exceed 50 billion by 2020, which is anticipated to lead to higher adoption of IoT devices in smart cities.

Various countries such as the UK and Australia are aimed to reduce their carbon emissions and improve their use of resources. Major cities in these countries have set their national goal of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions in the upcoming years, which is highly supported by smart energy projects. Moreover, government initiatives have been playing a crucial role in smart city implementation as countries continue to rely heavily on innovation funding from the government agencies and research councils. For instance, smart cities in the UK are being supported by European regional infrastructure and R&D funding. Several programmes are being evolved into more long-term support from city councils or through city deal programmes. Recently, London government awarded more than US$19,000 each to eight smart city projects under the Smarter London Together programme that focuses on charge points for electric vehicles, dementia support, along with reduction of social isolation.

The smart governance and education has been predicted to achieve substantial growth during the forecast period. A significant trend of a close relationship developing between local government and the university sector is being observed, which is expected to drive the adoption of IoT in education sector during the forecast period. In addition, developed as well as developing countries are creating their infrastructure based on smart governance to strengthen democracy, citizen participation and public welfare, which is expected to be opportunistic for the market growth.

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