A new report projects smart city spending will reach $189.5bn (€167.98bn) by 2023, primarily focused on infrastructure and energy projects.
Global marketing intelligence firm IDC’s Worldwide Semiannual Smart Cities Spending Guide, a comprehensive regional and global spending forecast for smart city initiatives for the period spanning 2019 and 2023, predicts more than 50% of all worldwide outlay on smart city projects will be directed towards energy resilience, infrastructure upgrades, intelligent transport projects and public safety initiatives driven by data analysis. Meanwhile the sectors projected to see the fastest growth in spending included connected vehicles, wearable technology in law enforcement and ‘digital twin’ technology, the digital replication of physical assets.
Serena Da Rold, Programme Manager of IDC’s Customer Insights and Analysis Group, said: “In the latest release of IDC’s Worldwide Smart Cities Spending Guide, we expanded the scope of our research to include smart ecosystems, added detail for digital evidence management and smart grids for electricity and gas, and expanded our cities dataset to include over 180 named cities. Although smart grid and smart meter investments still represent a large share of spending within smart cities, we see much stronger growth in other areas, related to intelligent transportation and data-driven public safety, as well as platform-related use cases and digital twin, which are increasingly implemented at the core of smart cities projects globally.”
The regional list of spending projections was headed by Singapore, whose Virtual Singapore initiative entails a dynamic 3D digital model of the city to enable public and private sector bodies, researchers and citizens to research and test new concepts and technologies. New York City, London, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai are all expected to spend more than $1bn on smart city endeavours by 2023.
Vice President of IDC Government Insights and Smart Cities programmes Ruthbea Yesner said: “We are excited to present our continued expansion of this deep dive into the investment priorities of buyers in the urban ecosystem, with more cities added to our database of smart city spending and new forecasts that show the expanded view of smart cities, such as smart stadiums and smart campuses. As our research shows, there is steady growth across the globe in the 34 use cases we have sized and forecast.”
