Adelaide on track to be Australia’s smartest city

Thanks to the city’s adoption of Big Data and Internet of Things analytics, Adelaide could soon be Australia’s smartest city, according to a global authority on the use of technology in government.
At the 2017 Australian Smart Communities Conference on 30 May, Adelaide was singled out as an example of government using technology to better its understanding of challenges.
Brett Bundock, Managing Director of geospatial technology company Esri Australia, said Geographic Information System (GIS) technology offers governments the ability to better understand their challenges.
“By integrating data sets from a variety of sources and visualising them across a time-space continuum, decision makers can see more clearly the cause and likely remedy of even the most complex of issues,” Bundock said.
“Adelaide is showing real leadership in this space. Areas such as driverless cars, smart lighting enabling lower energy consumption, environmental monitoring of CO2, sound and temperature to innovate solutions to improve the city and plans to make the capital a high-speed internet zone.
“The technology is here. By displaying Big Data, policy and program information on a map, a clear picture emerges that can show the best ways to target resources, track performance, and communicate with the public.”
Governor Martin O’Malley said that embracing advanced location-based analytics technology could help Australia support significant economic and social growth.
During his tenures as Governor of Maryland and Mayor of Baltimore, O’Malley was credited with cutting crime rates, improving healthcare, reducing government expenditure and taxes and transforming environmental management practices, earning him a reputation as one of the US’ most effective leaders.
O’Malley now heads the MetroLab Network, a collaboration between US cities and universities to develop technologically driven solutions to urban challenges.
O’Malley told attendees that GIS technology enables leaders to be on the front edge of the wave of change.
“When you have government, business community and thought leaders committed to embracing new technology, you can completely rethink how cities are planned and operated to develop economic and social growth,” he said.
“I’ve seen a new way of governing emerging – a change that’s being brought about by smart cities.
“Cities that understand that spatial intelligence allows us to better reduce crime, better manage traffic and understand what’s going on at any given point in time in our city. This visibility to see, track and act ultimately delivers better data-driven decisions.
“In Chicago – a city of 2.7 million people and growing – we’re installing more than 500 sensors on city streets by 2017 to understand the movements of pedestrians and vehicle traffic and measure air pollutants is expected to give a sound data-driven vision of the situation,” he explained.
“This will provide the basis for clear decisions based on evidence for solutions – things like public apps that display safe walking routes at night or apps that monitor air quality.”