A new report on the market for new smart city platforms has been written by Eric Woods, a research director with Navigant Research.
The report assesses the smart city platforms market and outlines recommendations for the right platforms which will allow cities to make sure their economies, environment, and services are suitable for the future. The report is informed by the key market drivers and challenges of city platforms, as well as assessment of the landscape as competition.
What is a smart city platform?
Woods defines a city platform: “A city platform provides the integrated capability to coordinate data, applications, and services at one or more levels across operational domains for multiple stakeholders. Diverse sets of platform technologies enable the smart city. The capabilities these technologies offer can be combined in multiple ways to create a smart city platform suited to specific needs…The city as a service concept is the natural development of this move to a platform approach. Developing the right platforms will be key to cities building the partnerships they need to ensure that their economies, environment, and services are fit for the future.”
The investment in smart city platforms
Woods predicts that cities will invest for than $4bn in city platforms over the next ten years. Furthermore, he expects the wider market for smart city services to be worth more than $1.5tr.
Woods identified that companies such as Uber and Airbnb have already made use of smart city platforms to show how city services can be transformed and are leading the way in the market. They have also shown that the services offered by smart city platforms can be contentious. Woods says that while cities are striving to reap the benefits of smart city platforms, but want to retain the control over the quality of services using new regulations.
