Published on the 10/05/2016 | Written by Beverley Head

Frazzled commuters, unaffordable housing and the high cost of delivering services are all targets of a rash of smart city initiatives now gathering pace…

Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, unveiled his Smart Cities plan ten days before calling the election this week, claiming that efficient cities were essential to the innovation capacity of a nation. “We are at our most creative, most innovative when we get together – which is why an efficient city is critical…to the growth and development of our economy.”

He claimed that; “Liveable cities, cities that work are enormous economic assets.” The plan, while laudable in intent, is still very light on detail of how Smart Cities will evolve, and success will require unprecedented levels of collaboration between the Federal, State and local Governments.

The Federal Government has nevertheless signalled that it will pay particular attention when reviewing infrastructure projects to their use of technology to optimise results.

In reality it won’t all be new infrastructure plans that deliver smart cities – instead retrofitting will be essential to bring Australia’s cities up to scratch, with organisations and householders deploying sensors that will deliver the data needed to smooth traffic flows, manage efficient transport systems, monitor environmental conditions, manage energy consumption and plan future development.

That retrofitting will also extend to the back office information systems of organisations. They will need to ensure they can capture, integrate and action the data collected through sensors. It’s going to cost serious money, and although the savings from reduced congestion, lower energy bills and more efficient services are likely to be significant, investment in IoT is still largely an article of faith.

Gartner has predicted that the journey to smart cities will start with commercial buildings being equipped with sensors in order to drive operational savings before connected homes then start to emerge. It predicts that there will be more than a billion IoT devices installed in commercial buildings by 2018, spurred by legislation such as that in the UK where all public construction must feature some form of building information management solution.

The Australian Government has not gone as far as to mandate building information management systems be deployed – though the consultation phase on its Smart Cities plan runs until June.

Even without a mandate some progress on smart cities is being made. Accenture was this week named as smart city partner for Queensland’s Ipswich City Council.

Ipswich has already unveiled its innovation hub Fire Station 101 to act as a magnet for emerging digital businesses in the region, and will work with Accenture on initiatives that will collect and use data to “anticipate, mitigate and prevent problems” and also design new classes of services for residents and businesses.

Meanwhile Sydney incubator Blue Chilli will this week host a Smart Cities Forum to discuss how Internet of Things solutions could be deployed to improve our cities, and provide a showcase for local IoT startups.