Smart City concept relies on data and data collection to simplify and improve the lives of individuals and to manage public services more efficiently. It can be organised into data stores, to enable officials and interested third parties to create new and innovative applications.
Smart City also mean better urban services, less waste, and citizens empowered to make a difference. This is about improving the lives of millions of Yaba residents, building a stronger society, and making better use of all her resources. ICT has a big role to play here. It can boost productivity, make services more efficient, and stimulate new ideas and innovations.
For this to happen we must understand how people, process, data, and things — play specific roles, and work together, to build a better Yaba in the future. Yaba needs to begin to engage with its citizens and promote digital economy innovation as well as bring her citizens together in an information marketplace.
@emeka_okoye is the leader and moderator of this conversation. The live document of the smart city article for the Yaba Manifesto is available to view here.
For a start, smart cities are mainly driven by Internet of Things. In order to achieve this, an IOT playground is highly needed. Only the key players involved in the field can drive the development of such a playground. A good model to follow is it SmartSantander - a similar playground for the Spanish city of Santander.
So your first steps may be to first identify all the key IoT players in Yaba and get them to speak to each other physically or via the playground…
These are some of the most pressing issues facing smart city development that we need to explore in-depth:
leadership
partnership working
citizen engagement
data ownership
trust and ethics
privacy and security
integration and interoperability
value proposition and business models
finance and procurement.
As you already know, many of these are wider than the smart technology itself. These are the areas where greater focus is needed if our smart cities are to fulfill their visions and become more sustainable. This is one area i am deeply interested in. Let’s keep the conversation on.
I am a firm believer of having prototypes before deployments on a larger scale
Let’s itemize
The barest minimum scope of a typical Yaba smart city deployment ( Power, Traffic light, waste management, sanitation, e-governance, public transport , Fast data connectivity)
Identify the a small area as test bed , within Yaba, which the entire barest minimum scope above be tested on
Put together the resources required and and prepare a budget for the ‘test bed’ and the entire city
Share plans and integrate with other committees
I also believe in us having a meeting, if physical
@deormayoks I agree with you. As tempting as it might be to come up with grand projects that might take years to execute, we can focus on the smallest things to start with. Such as having traffic lights at key areas(Yaba Market, E-center etc) where it is currently lacking. Simple automated parking solutions and other areas you mentioned.
Simple things whose impact can be felt easily and measured. They would obviously be a part of a grander plan but would serve as the MVP. That way, tens of millions of naira can be easily deployed and opposed to hundreds of millions.
It has been an absolute thrill reading the comments and contributions made to the Smart City pillar of the manifesto. It goes to show our depth of thought and our yearning for progress.
The great ideas proposed, if properly implemented, can truly grow our tech ecosystem and greatly increase the quality of products.
What are the next steps?
Over the next week (Aug 7th - Aug 18th), the volunteer committees for each team, coordinated by pillar leads would collate all the suggestions made here and across social media. They would refine it and make the additions to the existing draft.
We are using this opportunity as well, to ask people who are interested in being volunteers for each pillar to do so by dropping their email addresses. You would be contacted by the pillar leads.
After the collation of all elements of the manifesto, the committees would create a sample implementation plan for executing the ideas we have proposed during this process.
Simultaneously, Dele Bakare and his team would create the website that would house the manifesto.
Further information about the progress of the manifesto would be provided as time goes by.
Shoutouts to everyone who contributed to this thread; @Chikere@Tola@Famous@deormayoks, if possible I would advise we indicate interest to be a volunteer and take a part in seeing these ideas to fruition!!