How to Build a Smart City
Today’s cities are facing challenges in many areas, from public safety and transportation to zoning and utility management. Constituents may be frustrated with slow emergency response times, inefficient traffic patterns, and complex permit application procedures. Smart cities help municipalities meet these challenges by using technology, including AI, to connect digital systems and unlock the untapped potential of data.
By building a smart city, communities can promote economic growth and workforce development to thrive. Using AI overcomes data, technology, and security constraints that cities face by uniting siloed and disparate data systems and replacing manual processes with automation.
While cities may be participating in smart city initiatives such as shared Wi-Fi and IoT, they need to take advantage of AI to build a truly smart city. Many cities lack the infrastructure and AI expertise needed to build a smart city. Infrastructure is aging, and systems don’t communicate with each other. These systemic pressures, along with concerns about increased costs, may be holding cities back from making the transition.
Teranexa’s Smart City as a Service platform provides the infrastructure and services needed to build smart cities using AI-powered solutions from IBM watsonx.
Phases of Building a Smart City
A smart city wasn’t built in a day. To successfully build a smart city, municipalities need to go through phases that include Crawl, Walk, and Run.
Crawl
The Crawl phase is the place to start. Cities need to determine how to build a strong technology foundation for smart city initiatives by conducting an AI infrastructure assessment. The assessment will help them uncover gaps that need to be filled and identify which new technologies must be adopted to support AI.
In this phase, cities will gather requirements for implementing AI applications to fulfill key use cases, particularly those that help the community lower costs. At Teranexa, we conduct workshops to take inventory and help communities create a plan for building a smart city. We use on-site engagement to gather the necessary requirements.
Walk
During the Walk phase, communities can begin implementing smart city solutions within a timeframe. The timeframe depends on the size of the community. For example, Los Angeles started working on their SmartLA initiative in 2019, with a goal of completion by 2028. A smaller community would be able to achieve implementation in a shorter amount of time. The community can also set short-term and long-term goals for implementation and start by achieving short-term goals.
Creating AI agents in the Walk phase helps municipalities begin automating processes using ready-to-deploy components that integrate with the existing infrastructure. AI-powered automation efforts during this phase can be focused on cost saving measures.
Run
The Run phase enables communities to monetize data to create new streams of revenue and reduce tax burden. In this phase, cities can see the measurable results of their efforts in building a smart city.
The Run phase will show how smart city initiatives create additional revenue streams without relying on taxpayers.
How to Know If You are Ready to Build a Smart City
To start building a smart city, your community must have the time, money, and resources. Smart cities do save time and money over the long term, but your community needs to be able to invest in the necessary infrastructure.
Most cities have one IT professional that runs everything. Outsourcing smart city initiatives to a third party helps to control costs and ensure you have the necessary AI expertise. By partnering with a third party, your city can handle larger projects instead of making small fixes.
Achieving Smart City Readiness
To help municipalities get ready to build a smart city, Teranexa has developed a cutting-edge secure architecture that empowers cities to transition to modern AI infrastructure seamlessly. Our innovative platform simplifies AI adoption for municipalities, regardless of their technical resources. With pre-integrated systems, your team members can deploy AI solutions with just a few clicks of a button, allowing them to concentrate on strategic initiatives rather than navigating complex systems.
Our mission is to enable cities to leverage AI using our Smart City as a Service offering so they can increase efficiency, enhance citizen services, grow businesses, and create new non-taxpayer revenue streams.
How to Get Started: Smart City Discovery
To get started with building a smart city, communities need to go through a discovery process as part of the Crawl phase. Creating an AI community council helps constituents agree on smart city initiatives and see how they help cut costs. As the AI community council develops and approves budgets, they can be presented in front of the city council.
When Teranexa worked with Texas, the state established an Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council and Regulatory Framework. The Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council was created to oversee AI development, procurement, and utilization within state agencies. Texas also introduced bills for regulating AI systems and allocated funding for AI initiatives as part of the state budget.
In Los Angeles, they established smart city governance through the Information Technology & General Services (ITGS) City Council Committee that advises, coordinates, and approves large technology investments and Smart City projects.
Smart City Implementation Process
The proper infrastructure needs to be in place for cities to enter the Crawl and Walk phases of building a smart city. Establishing a data lake early unifies all sources of data so that operational decisions can be made based on an accurate and complete picture. For example, city services can track patterns and predict maintenance needs for public infrastructure, water and waste management, and traffic flow.
During the Walk and Run phases, AI agents and monetization can be added, respectively. AI-powered chatbots allow users to get on city websites and surface data. Cities can start by taking existing assets and hooking them up to agents to retrieve information. These AI agents can surface questions that constituents are asking. This information helps municipalities understand community members’ interests, so they know how to best serve constituents.
Implementation starts with the Discovery phase, in which city leaders assess infrastructure and priorities in a workshop. Targeted upgrades should focus on high-impact pain points and how they can be targeted with AI. Scalable growth occurs as needs evolve.
Managed Services for Smart City Implementation
Managed services help to support and maintain smart city solutions, freeing city employees to focus on other projects. Teranexa managed services for smart cities include:
Data Preparation: Smart City Data Solutions
Our data consolidation platform enhances cross-department collaboration and enables raw data to be transformed into actionable insights. We standardize formats to ensure system-wide communication. A data lake unifies diverse streams of information from traffic, weather, and IoT sensors. Data can be exchanged while maintaining privacy through secure storage and accessibility.
Operating System: Smart City Operating System One Pane of Glass
Our smart city operating system has a central interface that brings all city functions together. The modular framework has pre-built, interoperable components. The scalable architecture supports the Crawl, Walk, and Run phases of adoption. Customizable service activation aligns with city timelines, and implementation can be accomplished within days or weeks.
Supporting Infrastructure: Smart City Operating System Infrastructure Platform
We provide integrated architecture for unified operations that provides a secure, scalable foundation for all smart city initiatives. End-to-end security protects all your city’s data. Teranexa uses a hybrid cloud infrastructure to combine flexibility with control. By streamlining processes, smart city infrastructure frees IT staff to focus on high-value priorities.
AI Monetization Portal: Smart City AI-Powered Operation and Data Monetization Solution
Our AI Monetization Portal creates sustainable non-taxpayer revenue streams, preventing the need to raise taxes. Options for AI monetization include optimized permit fees and fine collection through automated enforcement, and demand response revenue from smart utility management. Efficient city services will begin to reduce operational costs. Data subscription services can be created to monetize city-owned assets. Data gathered by monitoring traffic patterns and utility use can be strategically monetized.
AI Agents: Pre-Built AI Applications for Seamless Smart City Integration
Our AI agents seamlessly integrate with your existing infrastructure to achieve immediate impact. AI agents, including chatbots, are ready-to-deploy components designed to tackle real-world challenges. Using advanced technologies powered by AI, your city can minimize complexity and reduce costs.
Creating a Smart City Infrastructure
At Teranexa, we help municipalities build smart cities through our smart-city-as-a-service platform powered by IBM watsonx. Our Smart City Platform uses watsonx Orchestrate to provide a catalog of pre-built apps and skills that make automating repetitive tasks and simplifying processes easy using AI agents. Watsonx.data equips our Smart City Platform with a data lake for collecting and unifying streams of data needed to create services for citizens.
Through Smart City as a Service, we provide:
- End-to-end, integrated architecture for unified AI operations
- Centralized management dashboard
- Hybrid cloud infrastructure
- Always-on managed services
- Security across all systems
Our operating system allows cities to manage their smart city initiatives using one pane of glass. We provide data preparation services to unify data streams and standardize information. Pre-built and interoperable AI agents can be integrated into your smart city infrastructure to transform city operations.
Teranexa conducts 2-day discovery workshops to help municipalities map out a plan for building a smart city. During the workshop, city planners, government officials, tech providers, and other stakeholders can identify high-impact use cases that we can use to develop scalable solutions.
Get started building a smart city. Reach out to Teranexa to request a workshop for smart city discovery.
