Cities worldwide are competing with each other to gain prominence, draw investment, and attract new highly productive citizens.  How do they create and sustain an economic environment that will foster long-term prosperity, safety and security, environmental well-being and cultural vitality?  These are the key challenges city leaders face today.  

How can Smart+Connected City Infrastructure Management and Internet of Things solutions that Cisco provides help cities achieve these outcomes?

Chances are you've searched for a parking space recently or been stuck in traffic.  It's estimated that 30% of traffic in city centers is caused by drivers searching for parking spaces.  Connected cities are addressing that.  Perhaps you've had spotty wifi connectivity on public transportation?  Connected cities are addressing that too. Have you wished your streets were safe and pothole-free? You guessed it.  Connected cities are already working on these issues, too.

As city leaders struggle with the challenges of rapid population growth, they'll have new tools to support their efforts to protect and nurture the needs of residents, visitors and city businesses.  As Wim Elfrink, Cisco Executive VP for Industry Solutions and its Chief Globalisation Officer, puts it, "Cities are growing at the rate of10,000 people per hour.  Through the Internet of Everything and advanced analytics, we can transform the related challenges into an opportunity to revolutionize urban living."

Brisbane, A City with an Internet of Everything Digital Agenda

After watching the video are you wondering if the City of Brisbane, Australia, is an anomaly?  Not at all. Brisbane is part of a growing trend for cities around the world...to get smart.  Cisco is working with partners like AGT, Streetline and others to help them do just that. They are assembling teams with a wealth of expertise in optimizing city systems to develop a combined, end-to-end IoE architecture that supports solutions complete with specialized hardware, software, and services. AGT's capabilities, for instance, can transform the way cities secure and manage traffic incidents and street safety. Streetline's parking sensors, video capture and cloud-delivered analytics, let cities greatly improve the parking experience for drivers by identifying open spaces faster and increase revenues for cities through centralized management of meter payments and infraction detection.

In fact, sensors of all kinds along with analytics technologies are adding to a city's ability to monitor and analyze daily (and nightly) activities. Video and acoustic analytics, license plate recognition, and facial recognition have all become quite advanced. Social media allows a city to exploit crowd sourcing via feet-on-the-street citizens with increasingly more sophisticated mobile devices and apps. Apps are also available to support city workers' information exchange needs as well as connect citizens to city offices conveniently.

Interested in seeing these technologies in action?  Check out the Cisco Live demonstrations of the Internet of Things  Smart+Connected Cities solutions, including those for parking, traffic, and safety and security.

Read Wim's blog for more of his insights on the Cisco and AGT alliance.

To learn more about IoT presentations, solutions, demonstrations and other activities at Cisco Live, please visit Cisco IoT Solutions at Cisco Live US 2014.