Don't let the technology dictate your smart city project. Unless you adopt citizen-centric decision making you will not achieve the outcomes being sought. Unfortunately "60% of smart city projects fail" (Velosa & Mok 2013) due to insufficient outcome specifications and allowing the technology to determine the project deliverables.
“Human factors are the main reason smart city projects fail" (Gartner 2017 and Smart City Consultants 2018) because local governments seldom have a united and cohesive vision of what "smart cities" means. Differing expectations, a failure to address culture, degree of technological maturity, and appetite for risk all too frequently result in sub-optimal outcomes leading to disenchantment, blame-mentality and reluctance to adopt further technological innovation.
Technology, IoT and smart cities infrastructure is the enabler to achieve pre-determined citizen-centric outcomes which deliver improved services, convenience, information, cost reductions and business/government efficacy.
"Smart city projects are risky when resources focus too much on technology only" (Berger 2019).
Involving all key stakeholders who could possibly benefit from smart city deployments in the early consultation process provides greater certainty of designing a fit-for-purpose system which will have strong user uptake and endorsement.
LoRaWAN is one such technology that is proving itself to be a valuable and cost efficient deliverer of mesh based services for local governments across Australia and New Zealand.
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