How to improve quality of life using smart city technologies ?

Written by Ajša Hadžić, QA Analyst at Softray Solutions

1. What are smart cities ?

Smart city represents a technologically modern urban area that uses a framework of information and communication technologies to create, deploy and promote development practices to address urban challenges and create a joined-up technologically-enabled and sustainable infrastructure.

Smart city solutions of IoT are focused to develop cities of future that promote economic development, improve infrastructure & environment, and digitally optimize public assets. A smart city is a collection of billions of smart devices that collects and shares information over a wide network spread across a city. These smart devices share data with each other and coordinate accordingly to ease the lifestyle of the citizens.

A city doesn’t become smart by just installing digital interfaces in traditional infrastructure. The ability to use technology and data purposefully to deliver a better quality of life to the citizens and make better decisions is what makes a city smart. For citizens, a better quality of life means the ability to enjoy fresh air and water or walk the streets without any fear.

2. Best examples in the world

Cities across the world are in different stages of smart technology development and implementation. There are several cities who are ahead of the curve, leading the path to creating fully smart cities.

The city of Singapore is considered to be one of the front-runners in the race to creating fully smart cities, with IoT cameras monitoring the cleanliness of public spaces, crowd density and the movement of registered vehicles. Singapore also has systems to monitor energy use, waste management and water use in real time. In addition, there is autonomous vehicle testing and a monitoring system to ensure the health and wellbeing of senior citizens.

Oslo is frequently mentioned on rankings of the world’s most innovative towns.

The city has achieved tremendous progress in lowering energy use and greenhouse gas emissions through information technology.

Oslo has placed sensors to aid in parking monitoring like other intelligent cities. Furthermore, the city has established a sensor network to help better sick and elderly patients’ care. The city has also set up a smart street lighting network, which has cut energy use by roughly two-thirds.

Copenhagen is working actively on making the city cleaner, healthier and smarter, tackling the issues that arise with a growing population. Many data-driven smart-city IT solutions are tested in Copenhagen’s Solutions lab, to ensure that the City’s needs are met. Besides that, Copenhagen provides free access to public data sources to drive innovations like the City’s tech solution that helps to predict free parking spots by combining historical data, real-time data, algorithms, and machine learning.

Chicago is using a variety of smart city technologies and strategies to continue their growth and development. Its Open Data portal plans to address and overcome the digital divide, which has been heightened by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and its ‘Array of Things’ urban sensing network aims to address the city’s issues with poor air quality, congestion, climate change and pollution.

3. Top Examples Of Smart City IoT Solutions

As cities get smarter, they are becoming more livable and more responsive — and today we are seeing only a preview of what technology could eventually do in the urban environment.

There are many great examples of smart city solutions in place around the world already; let’s mention some of them:

• Smart Waste Management Systems

With waste production in cities increasing, municipalities are looking for ways to make their collection processes more efficient. Rather than using predefined routes and a fixed collection schedule, waste management workers rely on sensors placed in waste receptacles to measure fill levels and notify them when bins are ready to be emptied.

• Smart Street Lighting

Many cities are upgrading their street lighting in more ways than one — they’re both switching to LEDs and implementing connected lighting solutions. This smart city IoT use case has multiple benefits, from increasing energy efficiency to reducing energy and maintenance costs.

• Smart Roads

Smart roads incorporate the use of sensors and IoT technology that makes driving easier and safer. These roads provide drivers with real-time information about weather and road conditions. They can also help drivers to find free parking space and prevent accidents by alerting drivers about incoming traffic.

• Smart Parking Management

Usage of Sensors or Cameras have enabled the development of smart parking management systems. These systems help drivers to immediately identify a vacant parking spot in a mall or city center. A central parking management system uses local signal processors in parking spaces and transmits an empty parking area to the nearest vehicle. This reduces congestion in parking lots, decrease vehicle emissions, and reduce the stress a driver face to park a vehicle.

Smart cities are our future. Together with our clients we work on developing cutting edge solutions in order to make the lives of the people easier together with decreasing the negative impact on the environment.

4. What could be done in our country and city

Cities around the world utilize the intelligence of their communities and businesses to create and adopt technology-based solutions to help them transform into smart cities and become prosperous and liveable place for all residents.

Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina is already making steps toward becoming the smart city.

The Smart Sarajevo Initiative is a 15-month project launched in December 2018 implemented by UNDP in partnership with the City of Sarajevo, the Municipality of Stari Grad and Canton Sarajevo.

This pilot project included several smart city topics like air pollution, smart parking, smart waste management and smart public lightening.

Sarajevo is also participating in a new EU program with the mission to transform itself into a smart and climate-neutral city by the end of the decade. This mission will help Sarajevo to transform into innovative hub that would serve as an example for other cities.

Several companies are already creating smart city solutions together with showrooms where it is possible to see how these solutions work (both hardware and software).

Other cities in Bosnia and Herzegovina are also transforming themselves into smart cities. Banja Luka serves as a good example how smart parking can help with traffic jams.. Thanks to this smart city solution, it is possible to see if there are free spaces in the parking lot by checking it on the mobile phone. Other solutions include smart waste management, digitalising management of urban green areas, smart public lighting system, intelligent and people-centred urban transport.

5. How QA can benefit in smart cities

While modern technology provides smart options, it also poses unprecedented challenges that must be addressed. There is an absence of global scalability approaches for an IoT framework, lack of privacy, data security and global ICT governance standards. Quality Assurance (QA) teams clearly, have an enhanced role and responsibility beyond executing test cases and validating functionality. They must work as part of the overall IoT ecosystem, and as an important stakeholder of the smart city ecosystem, QA too must be smarter.

In order to assure Smart City technologies QA teams are tasked for different to-do lists:

Practice Inclusive Assurance: To assure the Smart Citys ICT components, QA teams must practice inclusive testing, with a 360 degree coverage across the SDLC phases.This means involving QA and testing teams in Smart City projects, from the very outset, and making them part of the business needs and requirements discussions.

Gear up for Agile: Smart City infrastructure is based on web technologies, new business models, and an evolutionary ecosystem of connected apps. With Agile practices and DevOps techniques becoming part of Smart City implementations, testing too must be smart and agile.

Deploy Extreme and Smart Automation: Smart test automation frameworks will evolve around cognitive technologies, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning techniques. QA teams must keep pace, and adopt and deploy these new testing technologies in Smart City contexts.

Increase Focus on Performance, Security and Mobility Testing: Testing beyond optimal loads, QA teams must measure scalability, resilience and endurance of smart solutions.

Real-time data collected from Smart Things, demands a 360 degree security wrapper that includes components such as threat modeling, vulnerability assessments, and ethical hackings. This security assurance wrapper must be combined with all phases of the SDLC.

Mobility testing takes center stage in Smart City assurance. Apart from validating the application behavior and business flows, QA teams also verify citizens experiences across various mobile device configurations.

Innovate and Adopt New Testing Engagement Models: As an active and important stakeholder, QA must evolve and articulate new ways and methods by which ICT components will engage with governmental bodies, businesses, and citizens of smart cities. These models define how software applications will be created and consumed by the future smart citizens.

The smart revolution, combined with ongoing technology developments, promises new opportunities for future Smart Cities and citizens. This future brings for the QA and Testing function greater responsibility — of assuring smartness, and ensuring a happy beginning.

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