Lack of funds holding back smart cities, says Wi-Sun

Lack of investment is the biggest challenge to smart city development, according to half the people who took part in a poll. Wi-Sun Alliance says a fifth of participants in its survey point to security and privacy issues while 14% see interoperability as a major factor for progressing deployments. Wi-Sun – whose members include Cisco and Toshiba - seeks to accelerate the implementation of open standards-based field area networks and the Internet of Things (IoT). Phil Beecher, CEO of Wi-Sun, says
July 4, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
Lack of investment is the biggest challenge to smart city development, according to half the people who took part in a poll.


Wi-Sun Alliance says a fifth of participants in its survey point to security and privacy issues while 14% see interoperability as a major factor for progressing deployments.

Wi-Sun – whose members include 1028 Cisco and 5392 Toshiba - seeks to accelerate the implementation of open standards-based field area networks and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Phil Beecher, CEO of Wi-Sun, says security and interoperability remain critical factors in any smart city deployment.

“As more IoT devices connect to the network, the opportunity for major disruption through security vulnerabilities is increasing all the time, while greater IT/OT [operational technology] convergence, especially in utilities, will increase the risk of attacks on critical infrastructure,” he adds.

When asked about specific security concerns, respondents point to data privacy as their biggest worry (37%), while attacks on critical infrastructure (28%) and network vulnerabilities (24%) are also a worry. A tenth of the participants cite insecure IoT devices.

Despite this, more than half of the 20,000 respondents expect to see widespread smart city deployments in 10 years or more, while a third predict five to 10 years. Just 15% expect it in less than five years.

Beecher emphasises that smart cities are already here as “smart lighting is being deployed using canopy mesh networks and is already helping to save operational costs through reduced energy consumption and better reliability”.

“These deployments can be used to improve public safety and for additional services such as intelligent transport systems, smart parking and electric vehicle charging stations,” he concludes.

Urban Traffic Control

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • A streetcar named...reliable
    June 27, 2018
    When Atlanta’s streetcar project had some issues, Siemens helped to solve them – but started out by just listening, says Chris Maynard, the company’s head of rail services. It’s funny how often niggling problems can be a warning sign that there are bigger issues requiring attention – and not so funny how things can escalate if you don’t pay attention to them. With that in mind, Siemens was hired as service provider for the Atlanta Streetcar system - four vehicles operating on a two-mile loop in downtown
    Read More
  • Six easy steps to security
    October 22, 2018
    As security threats become increasingly vast and varied, multinationals are beginning to see the need for an effective global security operations centre to protect their organisation. James I. Chong spells out what is required. You know you need a global security operations centre (GSOC) to support what you’ve built, identify threats, and prevent disasters before they happen - but how do you know if it’s truly effective? There’s no shortage of information coming into operation centres. Too often, it’s the
    Read More
  • Dutch strike public/private balance to introduce C-ITS services
    November 15, 2017
    Connected-ITS applications are due to appear on a nation-wide scale this summer, through the Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership – if all goes to plan. Jon Masters reports. The Netherlands’ Talking Traffic Partnership (TTP) looks almost too good to be true: an artificial market set up and supported by national, regional and local government to accelerate deployment of Connected ITS (C-ITS) applications. If it does have any serious flaws, these are going to become apparent quite soon, because the first
    Read More
  • Data crunching ‘can prevent cars crashing’
    March 25, 2013
    Having already cut traffic collisions resulting in injuries and deaths by nearly forty per cent in five years by analysing patterns from data it has collected, the city of Edmonton, Canada, is using predictive technologies to increase road safety even more. The city’s Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) has installed as many as 200 digital signs as just one element of an innovative traffic safety program that has dramatically reduced vehicle collisions in the Edmonton region since OTS launched in late 2006. Unde
    Read More

Highlighted Content