Although Big Data has a lot of buzz around it, I believe that in many ways it is still a relatively new and unexplored concept. However, its potential for human analysis is already obvious. This makes it a perfect and integral part of the planning and creation of smart cities.
As populations grow and resources become scarcer, the efficient usage of these limited goods becomes more important. Smart cities are a key factor in the consumption of materials and resources. Built on and integrating with big data, the cities of the future are becoming a realization today.
Watch For Population, Crowd And Big Data Growth
Crowd control is one area that big data is already being used to great success. Anytime a much larger than average group of people congregates in one place, there’s an unplanned need for services in that area. This includes meeting the crowd’s needs (food, drink, etc.) and ensuring their safety (emergency responders, police, etc.). As the world’s population grows and cities become more crowded, these events become more frequent—and cities are trying desperately to predict and understand them.
Thankfully, this is the kind of thing that big data is created to analyze. Large groups of people mean tons of data is generated. Big data is being used to understand when, how, and why crowds form, and to predict their movements and actions.
Connect To The Cities Of The Future
With the growth of our population and the advent of ideas such as big data and the Internet of Things, the natural step cities will take is to become more interconnected. There are millions of sensors in place already, monitoring various things in metropolises. In the near future, these sensors will multiply until they can monitor everything from streetlights and trashcans to road conditions and energy consumption.
These smart cities will allow us to make more efficient use of our resources, lower our energy consumption, and build our cities to maximize efficiency. Big data is essential to understanding how people in cities move, how energy is used, how various aspects of infrastructure interact, and much more. Smart cities aren’t some far-off dream of the future, either; some urban areas are already using big data to improve themselves:
• Los Angeles’ LED lights: LA is replacing 4,500 miles of streetlights with new LEDs. Not only will this result in brighter streets, but the new lights will also be an interconnected system that will inform the city of each bulb’s status. If one malfunctions, it can be identified and fixed almost immediately. In the future, we could have lights that change colors or blink to warn citizens of various conditions.
• Los Angeles’ landscaping: To conserve water, LA is using information gathered and analyzed to best replace areas of non-native plant life with native, drought-resistant flora.
• Shanghai’s new Natural History Museum: The recently built Natural History Museum in Shanghai has a unique spiral shape. This shape was partially inspired by the shell of a nautilus, but it also incorporates big data’s analyses to control crowd movement.
• Saudi Arabia—a city built for crowd control: Every year, Saudi Arabia’s population increases by more than three million people visiting Mecca for the five days of the Hajj. Tragedies have occurred as crowds turn into stampedes, but Saudi Arabia is fighting back by incorporating numerous ideas suggested by big data to control such crowds.
As these cities demonstrate, the integration of big data and interconnected technology—along with the increasing population—will lead to the necessary creation of smart cities. To continue providing people with safe, comfortable, and affordable places to live, cities must incorporate techniques and technologies to bring them into the future. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing the advances that will come to my city in the near future.
