What is Smart Environment?
Environmental changes more often affect cities and their inhabitants. This brings new challenges for city planners, such as the need to improve air and water quality and to control noise pollution to create a healthy and pleasant environment for city dwellers. In addition, the consequences of extreme weather on a city, such as flooding caused by typhoons or heavy snowfall, must be well managed to prevent adverse impacts on citizens and businesses.
Smart city technologies have high potential and largely unrealized potential to improve the quality of life. The idea behind smart cities is to intentionally use technology and data to make better decisions and provide a better quality of life. Beyond the benefits in terms of safety, time, health, connectivity, jobs and cost of living, huge improvements can be made in the environmental sector. Smart environment solutions in smart cities include air quality monitoring, optimization of energy and electricity consumption, water and waste tracking can produce results such as 10-15% less GHG emissions, with 30-130 kilograms less waste. solids per person and 25 -80 liters of water saved per person per day.
The environmental benefits of smart city solutions
Smart solutions can improve many aspects of quality of life in cities.
To obtain such benefits, three levels of intelligence in a city, based on traditional physical and social infrastructure, are required. First, the technology base includes networks of connected devices and sensors, such as smartphones connected through high-speed communications networks. Next, smart applications and data analysis capabilities are used to translate raw data into alerts, information and actions. Finally, widespread adoption of applications and use by cities, companies and the public, together with efficient data management, inspire better behavioral decisions and changes.
Smart applications that contribute the most to environmental improvements include (but are not limited to) those focused on mobility, water, energy and waste. For example, real-time public transit information and building automation systems can reduce GHG emissions, better air quality can be achieved as a secondary benefit of many energy-saving and mobility applications, detection and control leakage can support water conservation and digital tracking and payment for waste disposal can lead to solid waste reduction.
In a new study on smart cities, McKinsey Global Institute investigates how technology can deliver a better quality of life, including an analysis of smart applications that will be relevant to cities by 2025. The results indicate that smart technologies could improve key metrics up to 10-30. % once introduced and the fact that using the current generation of smart city applications could effectively help cities make significant or moderate progress by reaching 70% of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Smart Enviroment
• The attractiveness of natural conditions (MI1)
• Waste management (MI2)
• CO2 equivalent emission (MI3)
• Sustainable resource management (MI4)
• Pollution prevention (MI5)
