Smart Cities Working Group – Survey Results

The Smart Cities Working Group is a group of like-minded individuals who have been meeting regularly since May 2022 to discuss how IoT technology can be used to advance and assist the development of a smarter city environment.  Members of this Working Group are all passionate about IoT technology and how this can be used to benefit and grow a city’s ecosystem.  Together we have developed a set of deliverables which aim to establish key interest areas driving smart cities and match these to the creative solutions being developed by trail blazing IoT technology providers throughout New Zealand.  

Our recent survey of the IoT community established the following areas of interest and range of solutions. As we only surveyed our database, it is natural that the results are limited, however, it still shows an interesting insights and trends within the NZ IoT ecosystem. Highlights from our results:

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Sector Interest

83% of those surveyed have an interest area in infrastructure, as well as 67% being interested in asset management and environmental monitoring. Other noteworthy sectors of interest were transport (42%), health and safety (42%), utilities (42%) and citizen engagement (33%). 

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Enabling Technology Interest

83% of those surveyed also have an interest in artificial intelligence, with 58% also being interested in utilising location intelligence alongside their IoT solutions. 50% of respondees stated that they are also interested in utilising or learning more about blockchain technology as part of their data management solutions. 

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Current Solutions

From our results, the range of solutions that are currently being developed and/or planned show similarities across the board, with compliance being noted in 58% of those surveyed. Other solutions that are commonly being seen are through drone data collection (42%), solutions for community well-being (42%), and water quality solutions (42%).  Other noteworthy common solutions that are being seen across New Zealand are safer city collaboration (33%) and solutions towards sustainability goals (33%).

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Key Challenges

There is also a common thread in regard to key challenges that most New Zealand businesses face, including: Access to key decision makers, where connecting to the right person is difficult; the procurement process, which was noted as being often biased towards larger vendors; as well as technological knowledge and training, where there are current limitations of software and training to upskill staff. Collaboration between departments and across the industry was also noted as a key challenge in developing IoT solutions. 

Following from these results, our next steps is to produce case studies to further understand the role that IoT has in developing smart cities in the New Zealand context. If you would like to take part in our research, you can contribute to our survey here.