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Smart Cities in 11th Malaysia Plan (2016–2020)

Last year, Malaysia has published the 11th Malaysia Plan. The information regarding “Smart Cities” described in the document is still at very high-level. As stated, most probably it will be discussed further in 11th Plan period.

“During the Eleventh Plan, a framework will be developed to prioritise areas of focus in the development of smart cities. A fundamental initiative to realise the migration to smart cities will be the development of smart communities.”

Our company is fortunate enough to have started our journey towards building smart solutions as shown in No. 16 & 18 (see Page 7–32 of 11th Malaysia Plan)

Interestingly, the majority of the smart city services are either to reduce costs or to increase operational efficiency. The city’s mission should not be really in “making more revenue” via smart city solutions but rather providing better services to the citizens.

However, there is must be a balance between reducing costs of operations and making new revenue streams so that cities can become more self-sustainable. The city should allocate smart city funds to pay for these solutions (just like in many other countries such as UK, India, USA, Australia, etc.) or use an OPEX-based (pay via savings) business model. In return, more people willing to stay and work in the cities which will further spur the economy in the long term.

I would recommend that cities or government budget funds for pilot trials too. Without trials, we will not be able to experience how complex is the process of developing smart cities. Frameworks are insufficient to move forward. Experiencing what’s happening on the ground is the best way to understand the pain points and finally will be able to resolve the levels bureaucracy, factors impacting decision-making process, governance, business models, etc.

We need governance mechanisms at local councils, city and national levels which decouple the political cycles from the technological ones, and thus facilitate a proper uptake of smartness. Due to the political cycles of every five years and if the timing is unfortunate, this can leave you with only a 20% sales window opportunity. Can smart city business thrive under these conditions?

We need governance mechanisms at local councils, city and national levels which decouple the political cycles from the technological ones, and thus facilitate a proper uptake of smartness.

Recently, on June 29, 2016, Selangor State joined the ranks of other Smart Cities initiatives in Malaysia such as Iskandar Malaysia, Cyberjaya, Malacca by launching their Smart Selangor Lab Phase 1.

The Lab discussed four different cores (domain) to generate pilot projects based on the Smart Selangor concept. The four domains were ‘Smart Governance’, ‘Smart Development’, ‘Smart Digital Infrastructure’ and ‘Smart Waste Management’.

Besides these four domains, there will be eight additional domains to be discussed, making it a total of 12 domains.

These include ‘Smart Education’, ‘Smart Energy’, ‘Smart Water Management’, ‘Smart Agro’, ‘Smart Transport and Mobility’, ‘Smart Safety and Security’, ‘Smart Disaster Management’ and ‘Smart Healthcare’.

Just imagine — what if you know how much waste generated, how much crime has reduced, how much carbon footprint per square kilometer and what’s the happiness index of the city, etc

Personally, I felt “Smart Governance” is key to the development of any Smart Cities and the primary factor would be “transparency.” Without clear indication what is meant by transparency, many data regarding cities will not be able to exploit for further usage and will remain as “closed-data.” Of course, data will give insights that might be hard to swallow. To take a step forward, cities need to accept their weaknesses and shouldn’t be in the state of denial. Get the current City’s indicator before starting any new projects. This way, citizens, and cities will be able to track their performance in a transparent manner.

Just imagine — what if you know how much waste generated, how much crime has reduced, how much carbon footprint per square kilometer and what’s the happiness index of the city, etc. Display that in a big billboard in the middle of the city. Any takers?

Where Do I Begin My IoT Journey?

What’s your answer when people asked — “Where do I begin my IoT journey?” or “I want to do my PhD in IoT, please advice in which area should I focus” or “I want to implement IoT solution in our Company, could you please propose what applications” or “Please propose IoT solutions for our City”, etc

Many times, I have been asked mainly by two groups of people i.e. (1) Students who wanted to pursue either their Masters or PhD (2) Organizations who wanted to embark their IoT journey but don’t know where to start. The question is too broad that it’s quite impossible to give a very effective or accurate answer without defining the scenario or scope.

The starting point for an IoT journey is to pick an application scenario, understand the problem statement and redefine the scope.

  1. Application scenario — For example, if you want to embark on a Smart City project, you need to pick one of the application scenarios such as parking, transportation, environmental or security, etc. Sometimes, we wonder what ioT applications are considered under the category of “Smart City”? Is it anything which resides in a City (which can be almost all the IoT applications that you can be mentioned) or is it anything that interact between citizens and the government? Which application is more important for the city — is it for the convenience of the citizens or reducing costs of city operations or generating new revenue streams for the city?
  2. Define the Right Problem Statement — Once you have identified the application scenario, you need to ask the right set of questions. It’s critical because not only it will define the right sensors and network connectivity type but it will reduce the risk of gathering the wrong data and thus give wrong insights. The diagram below shows the Value Pyramid. People are willing to pay more if you can answer the question of “Why.”
  3. Redefine the Scope — Sometimes we can become overboard in trying to capture as many data either from sensors data or external data with the intention to have some form of correlation. If you are not a data scientist and not a domain expert, you might be collecting 90% of data which is garbage and unnecessary thus a wastage of storage. Physical sensors are not cheap, thus, placing at the right place and collecting data at the right time is important to ensure you good ROI.

For most businesses, they will use IoT solutions to help lower operating costs, increase productivity, and allow for expansion into new markets.

Where do companies focus their resources or investments when it comes to planning for IoT projects? Among the businesses surveyed by Business Insider that are using IoT solutions, these companies focused on:

  • 66% used IoT technologies for risk reduction. For instance, oil companies are starting to use drones to inspect oil rigs, which can be a dangerous task for humans to perform.
  • 63% used IoT solutions to optimize operations. For example, manufacturers can use sensors to gather data about machines on their assembly line to predict when they might fail, and fix them before experiencing any downtime.
  • 33% used the IoT to develop new or enhance existing products, such as car companies that are putting cellular data connections into their cars to gather data about them and provide Wi-Fi hotspots for passengers.
  • 21% leveraged IoT solutions to enhance customer targeting. A good example of this would be a retailer that uses in-store beacons to target customers with real-time offers sent to their smartphone based on their location in the store.

For most businesses, they will use IoT solutions to help lower operating costs, increase productivity, and allow for expansion into new markets.

Once you have answered the above questions, it will mark your first important steps in your IoT journey.

Please share your experience and what are the main challenges in starting your first step into the hottest topic in the industry — Internet of Things.

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