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By Cathie Ericson "There is nothing more valuable than safe water -- whether it’s potable water for people or healthy, pollution-free ecosystems for wildlife. Recent industrial spills and extreme weather patterns have brought the importance of safe water to the surface of public consciousness and are inspiring calls for new regulation. " 
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DIsney's MyMagic+ technology may make a trip to Disney World more magical—or creep customers out
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"Why insurers, pension funds and politics will be more important to Smart Cities in 2014 than "Living Labs" or technology..."
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
We've been saying that "technology is the easy part..."
Here's the compelling question laid out in this very savvy article, that is well worth reading:
Will European and American cities in 2014 continue to invest resources competing for funding, or will they focus on building viable business cases for investment, that support their vision of Smart City development?
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Any time you run into a leading IoT engineer who says she draws inspiration from the early NYC skyscrapers (Why? "..Most of them were built during the Great Depression and make me think that in big crisis like the one we are living there are also the greatest opportunities for creating amazing things.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
David Stephenson posted his interview of Alicia Asin, citing Libelium’s passion for open systems, its technical expertise at integrating a growing array of sensors and software, and its ability to partner with both big and small firms as key factors to the company's growth and success as an enabler of the IoT.
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5 Tests You Need To Apply To Your Internet of Things Strategy |
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Chris Rezendes of Inex Advisors lays our a 5-part "and test" model, gleaned from actual IoT use cases and real deployments. He says that customer experience trumps everything, and that partnerships are the motor.
His five questions are thought-provoking, or action-provoking ideally. Read them to help get past the hype...
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The IoT community is still debating which of three different funding models will best support development, with some favored by Europe and some by the US. Understanding these models is crucial to understanding where the technology is heading and what region will lead the way.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Alicia Asin of Libelium talks about financing Smart Cities and IoT projects, highlighting some of the differences that exist today between public and private projects.
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Amazingly as far back as January 1967, we were quite literally talking about ‘a science of cities’, using the cliche. Jennifer Light’s book From Warfare to Welfare published in 2003 recounts the optimism of the 1960s in which many believed that one could import the products of the space program specifically and the military industrial complex more generally into tools that we might used for solving the urban crisis. In America this was the crisis of segregation and poverty in cities as well as traffic congestion, housing conditions and endemic decay..... Via Rob Kitchin
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Which European cities are doing the most innovative things with infrastructure technology and entrepreneurship?
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Boyd Cohen ranks the 10 top Smart Cities in Europe in Fast Company. He reminds us that to accomodate our growing populations, the goal of every city is to "maintain the quality of life, but also improve it. In short, smart cities are innovative cities."
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This panel session at RE.WORK Cities Summit in London in December 2013 brings together technologists, entrepreneurs, academia and business leaders to talk about the challenges and advances for Smart Cities in the era of the Internet of Things. https://www.re-work.co/cities-2013 The Internet of Things and sensors...
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Community-led projects, citizen involvement and open data initiatives will continue to play a role in the technology choices for Smart Cities, according to Alicia Asin of Libelium.
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2013 brought remarkable clean energy developments that are helping to bring us closer to a clean, prosperous, and secure energy future. Here we list our top ten.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
The Rocky Mountain Institute lists the 10 most important clean energy developments -- such as electric vehicles, the rising use of transportation apps and including several large US cities' initiatives to monitor energy use in large buildings. These are all points for Smart Cities...
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A rapid increase in urban growth and a desire to reduce environmental impact are creating new challenges for cities in areas such as energy use, mobility, security, and governance.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
City leaders, citizens and investors each play a part in the making of our future "smart cities." Startups should be able to seize the opportunities. A report by Shaun Abrahamson of Mutopo in GigaOm delves into the matter.
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IoE has the potential to transform supply chains, manufacturing plants, retail, transportation, energy megaprojects, and much more by "lighting up" dark assets of all kinds with connectivity and smart capabilities.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Cisco calls it "the Internet of Everything"...
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From
tech
Incredibly, some people still think Europe hasn't produced any great tech companies aside from Spotify and Skype. Here are 120+ other ones, just for them.
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Smart Parking could relieve congestion, reduce driver frustration, improve health and give a vital boost to the future of our cities.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Parking is a major problem in all cities (except perhaps Venice...).
The use of modern communications and information technology is enabling city authorities to explore new ways to make their cities work better. The report published by Beecham Research examines a number of ongoing smart parking trials in major cities from Birmingham to Moscow, with road mounted sensors in busy shopping or tourist centers.
Drivers use smartphone apps to access data collected from these sensors and analyzed in central IT systems to produce a map of free spaces.
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Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Alicia Asín is CEO and co-founder of Libelium, a company that designs and manufactures hardware for wireless sensor networks for the IoT market, with commercial deployments as varied as parking, traffic congestion, environmental monitoring, and precision agriculture.
IoTWorldNews talked with Alicia about the exciting potential of the Smart Cities and Smart Agriculture markets.
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How are cities using sensors, social media, and the power of their own citizens to become smarter?
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Yes -- this is the crux of Smart Cities: collaboration. Data measurement gives an objective view on city services, expenses and management and incites citizens to participate in decisions relating to city development.
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Pneumonia is the number 1 killer of children worldwide with 2 million deaths each year. With a child dying every 20 seconds, pneumonia is a significant contributor to neonatal mortality in developing countries – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. The illness is treatable and preventable, but accurate early detection is key. To reduce child mortality due to Acute Respiratory Infection (ARI), the Smart Object Sensing Array invented by Guardit and licensed by Inspire Living Inc., contracted with the global NGO Project HOPE to create a device to aid in the efficient detection of tachypnea, an indication of pneumonia in children, based on Libelium’s e-Health Sensor Platform.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
The Internet of Things, through low-cost sensors and prototyping tools, has an important role to play in public health. A new sensor device to monitor infant breath rate in the third world — and to better diagnose and treat pneumonia-- is featured on Libelium's website.
The name of the device -- INSPIRE (inspirer, in French, also means "breathe in")-- is very appropriate for this sensor system currently in field trials. The inventor Michael Script (co-founder of Inspired Living, Inc.) describes the process and steps involved from idea to prototype to actual device.
The availability of low-cost sensors, from Libelium's eHealth sensor platform, contributed to this project.
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This book written by Michael McGrath and Cliodhna Ni Scanaill of Intel, is an exploration of the current state of sensor technology. Focusing heavily on real-world healthcare and environmental applications, the book discusses both technical and non-technical challenges to consider as we move toward a more connected world. Read more.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
The Internet of Things is made of sensors. In Smart Cities, citizens are taking a proactive approach to sensor technology—from radiation detection to air and water pollution monitoring to self-administered biometric sensing for home healthcare—and the future is driven by consumers. The proliferation of Smart Technology will inform and shape the next steps in this technological evolution. "Sensor Technologies," published by Apress and written by Intel engineers, cites real-world, impactful deployments by such industry innovators as Libelium. This is a great read and very accessible to all levels of readers.
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A year ago the smart cities team at IDC Government Insights unveiled its first-ever list of smart cities predictions. Now they're back with a new list and -- long story short -- they're making out 2014 to be a big year for smart cities. Find out why.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, Research Director for the smart cities team at IDC Government Insights says that in 2014, 15% of cities in the world will be in the opportunistic stage of smart city maturity. This sector is taking shape very rapidly.
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The Sensor Applications reviewed in the Smart Cities solution overview here include: liquid presence on pavement, icy road predictions, vehicle and pedestrian detection, monitoring cracks, noise maps, pollution points
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Libelium gives practical examples of some of the sensor solutions used in Smart Cities solutions today and how they are deployed to solve problems of parking and environmental monitoring, as well as public safety, transportation and noise pollution.
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Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
A new infographic shows the evolution of the open-source hardware platform Arduino and the maker movement. From rapid prototyping to finished products, the makers and inventors are using open-source hardware to create the new devices of the IoT.
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Related columns: The Internet of Things: Look, It Must Work... For twenty-five years, we’ve been promised a thoroughly connected world in which our “things” become smarter, safer and save energy. We count on WiFi and Bluetooth in our homes, but we don’t have appliances that provide self-description or reliable two-way communication. As a result, the Internet of Things for consumers is, in practice, a Basket of Remotes.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
In MondayNote.com, Jean-Louis Gassee eloquently lays out the device management challenge of the consumer IoT space.
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Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
PTC acquired ThingWorx in the last days of 2013, in a strategic move that makes perfect sense. If billions of "things" are to be connected to the Internet (and there's no going back now...), manufacturing itself will be linked to the use of the IoT. Product development will change accordingly, as will the way products are operated, maintained, serviced, upgraded, etc. The very definition of "product" will undergo a transformation... this is a very interesting read.
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Car-sharing services, EVs, self-driving vehicles, bike fleets and more helped rev up sustainable mobility over the past year.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Smarter parking, smarter cities, electric vehicles, car sharing, aviation biofuel, ultralight vehicles, and new emphasis on old technologies like mechanized freight transport, sail systems and "pedal power" are driving the trend for sustainable transport in 2013.
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Creating Internet of Things products can place businesses and their product teams in an uncomfortable place by pushing them outside of their comfort zone.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's insight:
Look at this: Intelligence, Connectivity, Sensing, Expressing, Energy, Safety -- these can be seen as the basic building block elements for devices in the Internet of Things.
Nat Sones's comment,
December 19, 2013 7:03 AM
I love this post. I quibble slightly about expressing - but I love any work to pin down some key terms here to aid analysis and discussion.
Judy Curtis / SIPR's comment,
December 19, 2013 10:45 AM
Thanks, Nat. Yes, "expressing" would be the placeholder word for the function of making sense of the data flow. All of these concepts are crucial to design.
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In an era when we use the term “smart” for everything from our TVs to our phones to our home appliances, deploying the possibilities of the IoT to something as vital as water sensing for health and well-being is truly smart.