A number of countries across the world, from Spain to the United Arab Emirates, are investigating in technologies that will transform their cities into smart cities, with devices throughout the city gathering data and feeding it back into a centralised computer system. The data will then be used to increase the efficiency of infrastructure and other services.
For example, a device would collect data from every set of traffic lights in a city and tell the central system where the traffic is heaviest. The system would then be able to adjust the phasing of the lights accordingly to manage the traffic and hopefully create a smoother journey for everyone.
All sounds good to us. But maybe we shouldn’t get too carried away.
As Mike Weston, CEO of London and Dubai based data science consultancy Profusion, identified in the Wall Street Journal, smart cities will know everything about you.
"In a fully 'smart' city, every movement an individual makes can be tracked," he says. "The data will reveal where she works, how she commutes, her shopping habits, places she visits and her proximity to other people. You could argue that this sort of tracking already exists via various apps and on social-media platforms, or is held by public-transport companies and e-commerce sites. The difference is that with a smart city this data will be centralised and easy to access."
This is a dream come true for businesses and marketers. They’ll be able to access so much more information about their consumers and could use it to their advantage to personalise and target advertising even more than the internet already allows.
Imagine the scenario: A beverage company knows a particular individual’s Friday or Saturday night routine. The company knows what he drinks, when he drinks, who he drinks with and where he goes," Weston says. "It also knows how the weather affects what beverage the individual chooses and how changes in work patterns influence how much alcohol he consumes. By combining this information with the individual’s social-media profile, the company could send marketing messages to the person when he is most susceptible to the suggestion to buy a drink."
But, of course, there are concerns over so much data being easy to access, so what will moderate how a smart city works and how brands can use data? Legislation is often slow to catch up with these kind of technological developments so to some extent it will be down to the businesses to self-moderate and act responsibly with the data.
A smart city doesn’t have to be as Orwellian as it sounds,” Weston concludes. “If businesses act responsibly, there is no reason why what sounds intrusive in the abstract can’t revolutionise the way people live for the better by offering services that anticipate their needs."
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