Machina Research: open systems best for smart city development

Machina Research has released a white paper, The Smart City is Open, which has outlined the role of open systems as a key enabler in smart cities.

The paper advocates an open systems approach to the development of smart cities to ensure the maximum degree of interoperability between cities and their systems.

Jeremy Green, one of three authors of the white paper and principal analyst at Machina Research, has seen system integrators not delivering on smart city platforms, promising pilots and the linking of data.

The white paper states that this could be due to the problems surrounding proprietary technologies designed for one particular function. To challenge this, the white paper advises that the introduction of new technology-based systems can be maximised by adopting a holistic, rather than a silo-based, approach.

“Open standards are good, but when you can’t have open standards because they’re not available, developed yet or take too long, then you take a layered approach with open interfaces between the layers,” added Green.

“In the Smart Cities of tomorrow, more than in any other typical IoT deployments, openness and interoperability are key, for three reasons,” said Remy Marcotorchino, Sierra Wireless’s smart city expert and director of marketing, who contributed to the report. “First, in the short-term, it allows a drastic reduction of deployment and operation costs, by means of sharing and reusing a common infrastructure and field equipment such as communication equipment, sensors, interfaces.