SMART CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT

– POWER TO SENSE

Dr. Mazlan AbbasCEO - REDtone IOT Sdn Bhd

Email: mazlan.abbas@redtone.com

Asia Pacific Smart Cities ForumSept. 28, 2016

KEY TAKEAWAYS1. Too much focus on the role of large technology companies and

governments as the catalysts of technology-enabled progress.2. Most of the time we tend to ignore the most important dimension of

cities i.e. the people, who live, work and create within them.3. Harness the valuable inputs of citizen’s by empowering them to

sense and make the invisible visible

TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENABLE IOT

Cheap sensors(50% cheaper)

Cheap bandwidth(40x cheaper)

Cheap processing & smarter

(60x cheaper)

Ubiquitous wireless coverage(free wifi)

Big data(unstructured

data)

IPv6

Smartphones(personal gateway)

For the Past 10 Years

People (Non-Tech)(More sophisticated)

THE HUMAN SIDE OF

TECHNOLOGY

Technology for technology's sake rarely serves a useful purpose.

Citizen engagement is more than just a user friendly municipal website.

MAKING SENSE OF DATA … BUT WHAT

DATA?

THE GOLD RUSH

DATA OWNERSHIPS

Personal /Household

Private

Public Commercial SensorData Provider

Home Health Transport OfficeWaste

IOT MAKE SENSE WHEN YOU BLEND THE DATA

Creating New Compound Applications

Wisdom

Knowledge

Information

Data

More Important

Less Important

Evaluated understanding

Appreciation of

Answers to questions.

Symbols

Understanding

Answers to

questions

WHO

WHY

HOW

WHAT

WHERE WHEN

VALUE IS CREATED BY MAKING SENSE OF DATA

Wisdom

Knowledge

Information

Data

More Important

Less Important

Understanding

VALUE PYRAMID FOR SMART PARKING

N/A

Empty (0), Full (1)

Who park at this lot? What kind of vehicle?

Where is the empty parking lot?When is the peak period?

How to implement a tiered charging?How to find “overstayed” vehicles?

Why my car park is under utilize?

DELIVERING THE WHOLE IOT PUZZLE

Internet

BiometricUltrasonicTempHumidityPressureMotionPositionLight Image

MotorSwitchLightingValve

Sens

ors

Actu

ator

s

IOT M

iddl

ewar

e

Analytics

Applications

WiFi

2G/3G/4G

LoRa

SigFox

SMART CITIESYour Journey in Building

BUILDING 3 TYPES OF CITIES

ROI-driven

Carbon-driven

Vanity-driven

CITIZEN-FOCUSED • BUILDING TRUST

Citizen-Centric Data-Driven Decision

Smart Tools Responsive

Cost Effective

Accountable

Transparent

Collaborative

STRUGGLING TO KEEP UP

“For most of history, citizens’ response to unhappiness with infrastructure was

that they might line up at an office to complain. Today, with social media and websites, it is a constant stream, and

cities are struggling to keep up.”- Maxwell Anderson, executive director,

New Cities Foundation

VISION OF THE CITY OF THE FUTURE

Open source and open data

Make visible the invisible

Sensing the city Provide tools for the citizens to interpret and change the workings of the city

Technology may help mitigate the “black hole” problem.

SMART

#bettercitybetterworld

CITYBETTER CITY • BETTER WORLD

Build cities through the eyes of

the CITIZENS

CITIZEN

ENGAGEMENT

CROWDSENSING VIA

We Build Cities Based on Citizen-Centric Approach

CROWDSENSINGGet citizens input via their smartphones

LIVEABLE CITIESCitizens have a better quality of life

BUILD NEXT SMART CITY SOLUTIONLeverage innovative IOT solutions to solve the pain points of cities inhabitants

RANK & DECIDEAuthorities decide and justify their next plan of action

CITY INDICATORCitizens will see how their cities perform

REDtone IOT APPROACH

BUILDING THE NEXT SMART CITY SOLUTIONS

IDENTIIFY & SOLVEIdentify locations of issues and City Authorities respond accordingly

CITIACT

TIME TO ACT

CRIME AREAS FLASH FLOODS

NOISE LEVEL ROAD QUALITY

PROFILING OUR CITIESGAINING INSIGHTS • OPTIMISING RESOURCES

BUILD YOUR

NEXT SMART CITY SOLUTIONS?

HOW-TO

CITY’S PAIN POINTS

SMART VANDALISM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Local Councils

Illegal PostersWill be uselessIllegal Posters with

Telephone Numbers

Phone NumbersBlocked

Regulator

SMART WASTE MANAGEMENT

TIMELY SCHEDULE

ALERT

“I’M FULL”

UNATTENDED GARBAGE

RIGHT ROUTES

SMART PARKING

Smart ParkingWith Sensors

Location ofParking

Availability

Parking Utilization

Tiered PricingParking

TWEETING POTHOLES

ROADSENSE YOUR POTHOLES

AVOID CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT PITFALLSHow-to

[Originalarticle- https://iotworld.co/2016/08/01/tips-for-city-authorities-how-to-avoid-citizen-engagement-pitfalls/ ]

TIP (1) – BUY-IN FROM BOTH SEGMENTS• It requires the active participation of both

parties. It’s like “chicken or egg” question. Who starts first?

• Residents felt that their complaints would go down the deaf ears of the local councils –just like going down the black hole.

• The local authorities that are sensitive to the citizens feel that the citizens need to channel their grouses into a proper channel rather than letting their anger on social media and become terribly viral.

• Even after launching their own city’s citizen engagement mobile app, the take-up, and reports from the people are lukewarm –seems that the residents are not keen to use such apps.

TIP (2) – PUBLICITY• If you ask 100 or 1000 people on the streets

whether they have heard such application. I can almost guarantee you that none have heard that.

• It’s easier to get ridiculous viral message over Social Media

• After such a big hype during the launch of the service and what media posted the next day, the message will be a deafening silence after a few days.

• There’s no continuous effort in educating the public.

TIP (3) – FINDING THE RIGHT CONCERNED CITIZENS• Who are these people? What type of individuals

that are concerned about the cleanliness or safety of the surrounding.

• Sometimes, the same person that always complained in their Resident Association or Community WhatsApp group, when being offered an official channel or tool, they are the ones most likely will not use them. They love to complain but not to take action when given the opportunity to participate.

• You might think – what about savvy smartphone users like the yuppies or Gen-Y? Are they the majority of the users? Surprisingly, they are not concerned with such apps – weirdly they prefer to take selfies and viral the issues on their social media channels. In other words, they love to make themselves famous and proud to see their message gone viral but unfortunately it’s not on the official channel.

TIP (4) – GAMIFICATION IF NECESSARY• People wants an incentive to participate in

crowdsourcing initiative. Either get themselves paid in monetary or prizes.

• The other way is to gamify the app in such a way that gives some form of status within the community app. Give them points and elevate them into a different status or higher rank on the leadership board.

• Launch contest with prizes for being the most active users.

TIP (5) – PRESSURE GROUPS• No administrators of the cities would love to

receive complaints every day. Nobody likes to handle hundreds or thousands of complaints each day throughout the whole year. But if they did not manage and close the complaints, how could they solve all the problems which are already in the queue?

• Why need to be in a reactive mode when local councils can be proactive?

• Sometimes, city authorities need a little push or “pressure” from the people. Who elects them if not the people themselves?

TIP (6) – SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS• The most popular official channels by local

councils are either through phone, fax, web portal or email. But technology has rapidly changed the landscape of communications with the advent of smartphones, mobile Internet, and Social Media.

• Allow the citizens to communicate on their favorite social media channels.

TIP (7) – IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCE• There’re a lot of similar citizen engagement

mobile apps in the market. But most of them forgot that the backend system that handles the reports are not visible to them.

• Thus, a lot of cities who thought that they could just develop the mobile app (i.e. the front-end) in-house did not realize what they are going to end up.

• Nearly all local council IT departments are not set up as a product development house. The budget given to them are only enough to operate, manage and maintain the IT system but not to become innovative and develop their application.

• Think twice before embarking on in-house development.

TIP (8) – PRODUCT ROADMAP• Handling a continuous development and

future enhancement of the backend system requires a sustainable IT support resources.

• New technology emerges and thus it must quickly be adapted with the current process workflow.

• Developing and supporting this in-house will probably give the IT department of the local council a horrible nightmare that they will always regret.

TIP (9) – SMART CITY VISION• Citizen engagement is only one of the single

component in a Smart City. They are many applications which require integration to a smart city platform; thus, it cannot be developed in silo manner.

• Remember that IOT also requires input from physical sensors (other than the sensors from the smartphones).

• A real Smart City need an integrated platform that collects and aggregates various sources of data (structured or unstructured) to discover the insights of the city and make cities a better and sustainable place to live.

TIP (10) – IT’S NOT AN IT JOB!• Of course, any IT company can develop the

mobile app. • However, IOT requires different skills that

encompass embedded programming, understanding different communications protocols, cloud services, and big data analytics.

Smart Parking Smart Waste Management

Smart Street Light

Smart Transportatio

n

Open Data Parking GarbageCollection Lighting Public

Transport Smartphone Users

SMART CITYHUBSocial Media

IOT APPLICATIONS

SENSOR DATA

CitiAct

We Build Cities Based on Citizen-Centric Approach

MINIMUM VIABLE CITY - THINK BIG START SMALL

COMMITGet Mayors, local leaders and citizens to agree

MEASUREUse data and evidence for decision making process

BENCHMARKDecide and monitor areas for improvements

ACTImplement programs together

THANK YOU@REDtoneIOTREDtoneIOT

• EMAIL: mazlan.abbas@redtone.com• TWITTER: @mazlan_abbas• FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/drmazlanabbas• LINKEDIN: my.linkedin.com/in/mazlan/• SLIDESHARE: www.slideshare.net/mazlan1• ABOUT ME: about.me/mazlan.abbas• BLOG: iotworld.co