Smart cities could lead to cost savings of $5 trillion for firms and governments, report claims

Smart city technologies could save businesses, governments and citizens globally over US$5 trillion annually by 2022 according to a new whitepaper from ABI Research (registration required). The new white paper analyses the scope for cost savings and efficiency as a driver for smart city deployments, smart technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT). According to the report, titled ‘Smart Cities and Cost Savings,’ the use and deployment of IoT and smart technologies will be pivotal to the future success of smart cities, but only if players collaborate to embrace a holistic approach. With higher concentrations of people and enterprises in cities as a result of urbanisation, smart city and IoT technology, along with new sharing and service economy paradigms, will be key for cities to optimise the use of existing assets, maximise efficiencies, obtain economies of scale and ultimately create a more sustainable environment. Automation, artificial intelligence, along with sensors, data-sharing and analytics, will all be critical in helping cities save costs.

The report, commissioned by InterDigital, on behalf of its Smart Cities-focused business, Chordant, in partnership with CA Technologies, considers the aggregated absolute cost-saving potential for the government, enterprises and citizens in a typical smart mega city of the future (i.e., in the next 5 years) with 10 million inhabitants. This is based on the yearly savings achievable for 75 of the world’s cities that have a total urban population of more than 5 million (source: World Atlas). Key cost savings from the ABI Research report highlight that, in each such typical smart mega city of the future:

• Governments: Could save as much as $4.95 billion annually. Street lighting and smart buildings are two areas that could yield savings, with smart street lights expected to cut repair and maintenance costs by 30 percent.
• Enterprises: A $14 billion cost-saving opportunity exists for enterprises, in areas that include freight transportation by using more energy efficient transport options, such as drones, robots or driverless vans and trucks, and smart manufacturing plants.
• Citizens: Savings of up to $26.69 billion per year could be achieved in areas such as utilities, through the deployment of smart meters and micro-grids, and in education with the development of a hybrid education system (physical and online).

“While smart cities technologies offer multiple benefits, very significant direct cost savings represent a key incentive to embrace urban innovation for city governments, citizens and enterprises alike; this allows building stronger business cases with faster ROI, facilitating project approval and accelerating deployments,” said Dominique Bonte, VP President, Markets, ABI Research.

The report references a B2B technology survey of 455 US-based companies across nine vertical markets conducted in March 2017 in which the companies ranked a list of 11 key benefits expected from implementing innovative technologies. “Reduction in operational costs” barely surpassed “faster and more efficient decision making” as the number one expected benefit, with a five percent margin.

“Smart cities are built upon the Internet of Things (IoT) allowing citizens to reimagine how they work, live and play,” said Rahim Bhatia, General Manager, API Management, CA Technologies. “We’re excited to see quantifiable outcomes being delivered across today’s local governments, with application programming interfaces (APIs) playing a fundamental role in seamlessly connecting the critical infrastructure that makes smart cities a reality. If managed effectively, APIs deliver a number of benefits including the secure exposure and reuse of open data, acceleration of app development velocity, and the expansion of city partner ecosystems, to help maximize ROI and improve decision making across all corners of the new smart city.”

Additional findings from the report also include: the scope for efficiency improvements across all urban sectors and segments amounts to more than US$5 trillion in yearly cost savings globally by 2022; and enterprises within a mega city (a city of with a population in excess of 10 million) could save as much as US$14 billion, or 25 percent of total enterprise costs, with smart city technologies.