Smart cities – are they still a thing? Well, Berg Insight has issued a report that brings together various of the IoT ‘verticals’ that comprise various of the metropolitan monitoring solutions that tend to get designated as such, and concludes that, yes, cities are getting ‘smarter’ with accelerating deployments of of smart-city surveillance, street lighting, parking, waste collection, and environmental monitoring solutions.
But it warned, as well, of the same old challenges with vertical silos and technological interoperability. It claimed “great opportunities for growth” in all disciplines, but pointed to “interoperability between the different layers and technologies” as “one of the biggest challenges”. It said: “Truly, smart cities are starting to emerge but their continued development will largely depend on the ability of local governments to navigate the complexities involved.”
The firm has researched these five disciplines, and combined its findings in a single report and also into a series of separate blog posts. It says smart-city surveillance, covering both fixed and mobile video and audio surveillance, is the largest application area by volume, with a global market value of €12.5 billion in 2023. It is the longest-established of the five groups, and is expected to grow at a compound annual rate (CAGR) of 16.8 percent through 2028.
In second, by volume, the global base of “individually controlled” street lights stood at 23.4 million units at the end of 2023; the figure excludes China. Berg Insights expects CAGR of 21.9 percent through 2028, finishing at 63 million units. A way back, the 2023-count for smart-parking and -waste monitoring solutions, comprising in-ground or surface-mounted occupancy detection and pre-integrated or retrofitted fill-level sensors, was 1.3 million and 1.25 million units, respectively.
Smart parking is expected to see compound growth of 19.8 percent in the period to reach 3.2 million in 2028; smart waste will see growth of 22.8 percent to reach 3.5 million by 2028. Berg Insights reckons smart waste management will be the fastest-growing of the better-established smart-cities IoT sectors over the next five years. But non-regulatory urban air quality monitoring, a “more nascent smart city technology”, will outstrip everything else in terms of growth in the period.
The total base of outdoor air-quality monitoring sensors, increasingly comprising small and low-cost monitoring devices that work as “valuable complements” to traditional regulatory monitoring stations, stood at 154,000 units globally at the end of 2023, and will reach 498,000 units in 2028, representing CAGR of 26.5 percent in the period.
Europe is the leading “smart city technology adopter” outside of China, followed by North America. The Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions constitute the fastest growing markets – “fuelled by ambitious top-down initiatives and rapid urbanisation”. Berg Insight, said: “These regions offer fertile ground for innovation and investment, presenting significant opportunities for stakeholders to capitalise on the demand for sustainable urban solutions and digital transformation.”
