2023 Year In Review

2023 has been, in general, a positive year for the smart city and utility industries. We've seen investments across the field and big milestones being reached, like many utilities hitting the 1 million smart meters installed or EU member states turning to smart waste solutions to comply with the bloc's new regulations. We've also seen the EU pushing, with policies and funding, for a greater EV infrastructure deployment to encourage electrification. In 2022, events were returning to pre-pandemic normalcy, but this year, that normalcy was reached and exceeded, with the Smart City Expo World Congress hitting its biggest attendance numbers ever, showing how interest continues to grow. But the industry has had its setbacks as well, like the one in the autonomous vehicle market with GM's Cruise robotaxis being banned by California authorities. In any case, it has been a year in which we've seen the industry take a clearer path towards settling. I explored some of the trends with the experts from the Kurrant consultancy branch. So this year, the buzz has all been about AI. We heard it everywhere. But in my opinion, what truly matters, is not the technology itself, AI is a means, it’s a tool. But what really matters is the objective. And so, really, more than just the technology, it's about understanding which use cases and which industry benefited the most from the technology. In 2023, businesses in the smart city and IoT industry realized that cities are on the lookout for solutions tailored to their specific needs, not just for high tech for the sake of it. And you can really see this change in how these businesses are communicating. It is starting to become more visible in their marketing and branding. They're focusing more on use cases. It's no longer about pushing the most advanced tech, it's about demonstrating how that tech can solve real world problems. Their messaging is now centered around practical benefits. The industry previously focused mainly on how modern and cutting-edge the technology was. But as it grows and settles, vendors have had to change that narrative and focus. And instead of selling their tech, they're selling a use case, a problem solver. Cities don't care if the solution uses infrared or radio waves, they want the challenge solved, which often requires insightful data and vertical expertise. So, what we have seen this year is that all the smart city projects always tend to solve a use case. And when you want to solve a use case, you need to focus on the data you need. And very often you will find out that that data that you need for solving your use case is already available and you can get it very easily. So you don't need to buy hardware, you don't need to deploy devices in order to solve the use case. And in most cases, this can save you a lot of money. So 2023 has showed us that smart city projects are successful when four ingredients are present. First, and more important than anything else, knowing where is what in the city, in the street and in the buildings. Second, live data generation is more important than the technology itself. Third, good data science engineers who can make sense of all of this data to develop predictive maintenance and energy savings algorithms. But the fourth part, and the most important is the business expertise. Experiencing the issues from the field is important to contextualize the work and to evaluate the value, versus with time and the effort. As we've said in videos over the past year, in many cases, the data's already there, so there's no need for more sensors. For example, cities wanting to monitor their energy consumption can use the utility smart meter’s data instead of deploying additional sub-meters and sensors themselves. Many projects are also exploring non-sensor data, some coming from third parties like telco or satellite companies. Anglian Water, the UK utility, uses satellite data to find leaks in main pipes, and the city of Bordeaux used it to understand heat islands. Cellular data can be used to learn about and predict mobility flows, which has led to projects in mobility and even street lighting. Satellite or cellular data have proven to save a lot of money and time, as no additional hardware needs to be installed. And in many cases data is already being collected anyway, so results and return on investment are quicker. 2023 has also seen environmental use cases and players coming in strong into the smart city industry. They're gaining traction and taking more space in the industry as the use cases become more obvious and needed as concerns about resource preservation and climate change grow. I think this year, flooding has been a really hot topic because we saw a lot of large flash floods happen all around the world. In New York, for example, in September, the Smart City Expo USA got canceled because of floods. New York had already been testing the FloodNet, a system that they use sensors to alert them of flooding with an investment of $7.2 million. And overall, I think until now, we've seen cities take more of a responsive approach. But because flooding is becoming a lot more frequent and severe, a lot of these technologies have been coming up. So water level sensors, but also AI enhanced cameras. I think this is a year that will really mark a turning point into starting to see larger scale deployments. 2023 marked a clear milestone in AI and digital, enhancing water utilities, water operations and the water industry in general. I'm not talking about AMI and AMR, which basically is becoming the standard, but I'm really talking about emerging use cases, more at the resource preservation level and at the water treatment and optimization. So the smart city and utility industry was traditionally focused on energy, traffic management and security verticals. However, we are witnessing a transformation in the industry landscape as environmental use cases such as water AMI, distribution network monitoring, waste and cleanliness management, but also flood and biodiversity monitoring are now demonstrating a clear business case and attracting special investment. So as a result, on one hand, traditional players are expanding their offerings to address this environmental use cases at scale. And on the other, water and waste utilities, along with environmental services provider, are now contenders to become the smart city industry leaders. The 2023 trend of more and new players coming into the industry coupled with the development of digital technologies like AI and a bigger focus on use cases and new ones like distribution network monitoring, waste and cleanliness management or flood and biodiversity monitoring is set to become an accelerator in the digitalization of utilities and cities, as more applications come in to play their role. The industry is becoming more open to nontraditional players, opening the horizons. Non-hardware deployment solutions are also in line with the advancements as results, and ROIs can be quicker and will also force the industry to go towards openness and interoperability. The faster we get there, the quicker cities will truly be smart and working at their full efficiency potential.