Kansas City is just one of many cities who are looking at incorporating new “smart” technology into its core infrastructure.
The technology itself is innovative and has the potential to really improve things, but the concern is that the cost is too high.
Fortune Magazine examines the idea in depth in their article,
“Cities are looking to technology to save electricity used by street lights, monitor water mains and reduce crime. But is the cost worth it?
Kansas City dreams of being a city of the future where street lights dim automatically when no one is around to help save on electricity. Sensors would keep watch on water mains and warn city officials when they need to be replaced – long before the pipes break, of course.
In short, Kansas City wants to turn itself into a smart city, the new buzzword used by urban planners and municipal visionaries. The idea is to use more technology to track what’s happening in the city to help improve the quality of life.”
Other concerns include the fact that smart technology is perhaps not able to be accessed by lower-income residents and that better technology doesn’t always make a better city.
Is this kind of infrastructure improvement realistically going to have long-term benefits or is it merely aesthetically pleasing – these are things that the planners in Kansas City will have to evaluate in the near future?
Pilot Studies of ‘smart’ municipal technologies have been underway for some years, with major corporations such as IBM involved in the development and trials.
There is no doubt that the rapid advances in sensing, monitoring, and information technology will continue to be deployed into the municipal and utility sector as this Kansas City example shows.
In the future demand section of your infrastructure asset management planning you will need to:
- Evaluate the impact of these potential technology changes for your assets or network,
- Estimate the capital, maintenance and operations costs of technology deployments
- Evaluate how these technologies will potentially impact on your business processes and asset lifecycle management strategies
- Evaluate how these technologies will change your service levels
- Adjust your asset management planning accordingly
Analysis of technological change in your infrastructure asset management planning adds to the robustness of your planning, and will assist in your preparation for and transition to future changes.
PHOTO CREDIT: “Plaza Night” by Hngrange – Own work by uploader. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia.
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