Amazon Web Services | AWS for Smart Cities
Column 02.06.2023
Cloud technology will be the backbone infrastructure for more sustainable cities of the future. AWS and its partner community can help customers implement smart city solutions to support goals regarding energy efficiency, air quality, intelligent transportation, public safety, public health, and other programs focused on improving quality of life and livability for citizens. By leveraging the multiple data sources that customers have today and integrating additional datasets, customers can design modern programs and services that make a city smart. Most smart city solutions rely on a combination of core technologies like compute, storage, database, data warehouse, and advanced technologies like big data analytics, machine learning, IoT, and ingesting streaming data. In each of these categories, AWS offers the broadest set of services, available on-demand with pay-as-you-go pricing, making the AWS Cloud a key enabler of urban innovation.
Any city that collects data (citizen supplied, sensor captured, open data, etc.) and uses that data to make decisions in real or near real time to provide better services to citizens, improve operations, and lower cost can be deemed a smart city. For example, a smart city might lessen congestion in its streets and lower pollution by optimising transportation infrastructure and assets; AWS partner Vianova has helped City of Bruxelles and City of Helsinki do so through its Intelligent Mobility Platform. It might dramatically reduce energy consumption by employing a range of real-time analysis sensors to provide just-in-time or incident-based illumination. It might provide faster response to public safety incidents via real-time capture and analysis of sensor and surveillance data; for example, by leveraging the AWS infrastructure, the City of Chicago was able to launch a program real-time situational awareness software intended to improve the quality of life of citizens and improve the efficiency of city operations.
To build and operate efficient and sustainable services, data is critical to gain insights that help optimize hard and soft infrastructure. However, one of the biggest challenges territories face is to break down silos and bring data together into one single space from different sources. Standalone and vertical solutions with a narrow focus create data silos and prevent territories from creating a holistic strategy that maximizes citizen impact: a city becomes “smart” when it can collect data from multiple and heterogeneous sources and turn data into insights that support informed decisions. This involves interacting with an ecosystem of solution providers and sharing data securely across different departments and with external organizations. To help customers and partners achieve this vision, AWS has created the Smart Territory Framework which is a set of technology-agnostic modules that combines the flexibility, cost-efficiency and scalability of Cloud computing with the open-source technologies and standards of the FIWARE Foundation.
The Smart Territory Framework (STF) standardized modules offered by AWS can be utilized to build and operate sustainable and effective solutions, in line with global industry standards and based on the open-source offering of the FIWARE ecosystem. It helps customers and partners build and operate a scalable, efficient, and interoperable platform that create differentiated value and accelerate innovation avoiding being locked up with data silos. In July, 2022, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and FIWARE have joined forces to develop digital cities and solve this issue by bringing the Smart Territory Framework (STF) to market.
The Naxos Smart Island project, for example, will be built around the AWS Smart Territory Framework. This ambitious project will leverage advanced AWS Cloud technologies to introduce smart solutions for mobility, primary healthcare, and the transport of goods, such as vessel monitoring and reporting from a coastline tower, and the delivery of blood samples and medical supplies via drone. Using the Smart Territory Framework will maximize benefits for the citizens of Naxos by allowing non-personally identifiable information (PII) data to be securely and simply shared between government departments and external organizations.
Foucauld Laurent, Business Development Manager State & Local Government Europe, Amazon Web Services