Smart City Expo in Barcelona is an exciting event. Compared to the equivalent in Sweden, Stockholm Smart City Expo As I visited in 2023 and 2024, the event in Barcelona is much larger and more international. Both America and Asia are present. Also a large presence from the Arab countries. The event is large and many exhibitors have joined together by country, and with neighboring countries, to form delegations that share space on the fair floor.

Few sensors and gadgets – focus on common challenges

In addition to the exhibition floor, there were several large stages with panels and lectures. Unfortunately, these did not provide much. Most of what was said was generic and they never went into depth about lessons learned or solutions. The unofficial stages were all the more interesting and often presented specific solutions and more in-depth topics.

Another observation was that there weren't that many actual sensors or gadgets at the fair. Instead, cities and larger companies dominated with a broader focus on projects and different types of common problems.

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Of course, AI had a big presence. However, more focus was needed on how IoT data can enrich machine learning models rather than how AI is needed for IoT functionality.

Difficult to show measurable effects

One insight is that the introduction of IoT and the idea of the smart city is now a worldwide movement. Not just something that happens in certain parts of the world or a few cities.

Many describe their pilots and how it is difficult to scale up and coordinate all the data collected. One would like to get a coherent picture of all the different initiatives in the city and region. However, it is difficult when you are dealing with many different systems, organizations and people who are supposed to work together in a common direction. This creates a inertia that several people I spoke to expressed irritation about. Finally, it was also a common experience that it has not yet been possible to point to specific measurable effects. Concrete Business Cases are a rarity.

The questions asked to the cities

I started from the same questions that were asked in previous years:

1. What are your most successful IoT or smart city solutions?
2. What effects have you achieved?
3. Have you measured the effects and do you have figures for the measurements?
4. What are your biggest challenges now and in the next 1–2 years?

This is how the cities responded

Here is a selection of all the cities that participated during the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona 2024.

Bordeaux Metropole

Bordeaux Métropole is an administrative region in France that brings together 28 municipalities. Here, IoT is used, among other things, for property management for sports facilities. It is still a matter of individual applications in each area and no one has really scaled up yet. They still work in verticals and there is no common platform or common network for IoT.

Smart Dublin

In Dublin, they have come a long way with weather stations and also have sensors for flooding, as well as for lifebuoys. For example, they have been able to save five full-time jobs that previously had to check the lifebuoys. They are prioritizing climate-related solutions. Among other things, they want to measure in their low-emission zones.

Dublin has worked together in the procurements in four municipalities, where instead of one solution, four solutions have been procured. Each municipality has then used one solution each. After a period, an evaluation has taken place. If a certain solution is found to be better than the others, the other municipalities have been able to switch to that solution without having to do a new procurement. In this way, the risk of procuring a single solution that you are then stuck with is managed.

One insight from procuring in this way was that the suppliers who did not offer a completely ready-made "out of the box" solution, but instead said that they would work iteratively to come up with the solution that ultimately suited the client, were the suppliers who performed better and who were then retained.

Karlsruhe

In the German city of Karlsruhe, a LoRaWAN network and measures, among other things, the moisture in trees. There are no power measurements yet, but dashboards where you can see the values that are coming in.

The challenges in the coming years are about money, resources and information. and cybersecurity.

There are motivated people but no real network where you can share information. It is unclear who has which sensors and there are many administrations where people do not talk to each other. More transparency is needed.

Tianjin

In the city of Tianjin in China, IoT is being used for transportation and to measure speeds and traffic on roads. This is done through Green Wave, where traffic lights are coordinated to optimize traffic flowing past several connected traffic lights. In this way, the number of braking and accelerations, as well as the time when cars are stationary, is minimized.

City of Pilsen

In Pilsen in the Czech Republic, they work with traffic management, security, LoRaWAN network, water leakage, air quality and ice formation on roads. Among other things, they have 4,000 water sensors that measure water leakage and other sensors that measure carbon dioxide and dust particles. They use AI to make forecasts.

In addition to IoT, they are working hard to try to keep the population in the city, as many are moving to other larger cities around the country or abroad. They are working to educate their population at a young age about entrepreneurship and enterprise. By supporting innovation through hackathons and similar challenges for young people and students, as well as supporting start-ups, they are trying to promote entrepreneurship in the city to create new jobs and an interest for the city's young people to stay in the city even as adults.

Rome

In the Italian capital, there is a plan for building a smart city. The first focus is on having an infrastructure for communication. There, they are now investing heavily in the rollout of 5G and WiFi networks. In the future, they plan to invest in waste management, mobility and security regarding the smart city. For waste management, they want to work on demand and only empty garbage cans when they are full instead of on a static schedule. For traffic, they are installing 2,000 high-resolution 5G cameras so that machine learning can reduce traffic congestion using predictable traffic patterns. Also to increase security by being able to monitor crowded places.

The biggest challenges we see for this work are in the following order: money – competence – culture.

Smart city Berlin

In Berlin, there is a collaborative initiative for a smarter city called Gemeinsam Digital. In this, one of the projects is Kiezbox 2.0, which are solar and battery-powered boxes deployed in the city. One function of these is to build a mesh network that can provide WiFi to critical personnel and the general population in emergency situations in the city. Another function of these boxes is that they can measure things such as temperature, air quality and noise. This data can be made available via a LoRaWAN network to the public or various actors in the city.

Another project was SmartWater. This aims to support the planning of a blue-green infrastructure in the city. At the same time as implementing these preparatory measures for future climate change, the aim is also to be able to warn the population in the event of, for example, heavy rainfall. Concrete initiatives in this regard are: a digital planning tool for urban planning, with a focus on green and blue infrastructure; a web application that can be used to visualize the different parts of a blue-green infrastructure and demonstrate the positive effects of these; a concept for digital communication in the event of a risk of flooding during heavy rainfall.

It took about two to set up the collaborative initiative, and now they are working on the above-mentioned project.

Wiesbaden

Another German city on site was Wiesbaden. Here, among other things, they are working on a mobility project called DIGI-V, where they use cameras and sensors to create dynamic traffic signs that can provide information about optimal routes. These cameras and sensors are installed in the traffic lights along the main streets of Wiesbaden and can also collect data about the environment and pollution. All the data is collected on a platform and, using the collected picture, traffic can then be adjusted in the future.

They try to get all the different parties not to use their own sensors or parts that then don't work with the rest of the system. They also try to collect and consolidate all the data to get a common overview. The three most difficult things you see in this project are: management – communication – politics.

Seongnam

IN Seongnam in South Korea IoT was started in 2009 and measures water and air quality, among other things. This is done at a few specifically selected locations in the city. A digital twin has been built to simulate how a flood in the rivers will affect the city hour by hour, so that planning can be done for such a situation.
They are also working a lot with drones and, among other things, delivering both food and medical supplies by drone to people in Seongnam's central park. A problem in the future regarding the smart city is that there will be many departments and administrations that will have to cooperate.

Liverpool city region

In the Liverpool region, air pollution is measured around the city of Liverpool. Here, some measurements are made that are more general but also more precise measurements for studies at the university. For example, hydrogen buses have been introduced and they want to measure whether there is any change in air quality when the buses drive past the measurement stations.

There have been previous initiatives where they wanted to count the number of people passing through certain streets or areas. One way they tested was to work with stores that installed sensors in their storefronts. Either sensors that counted individuals using visual presence or sensors that could detect when devices with WiFi connectivity, such as mobile phones, passed by.

One challenge is to get an overview and joint control of all sensors in the city. This is difficult with many partnerships, for example all store owners. The quality from the different stores could vary greatly as sensors were moved or reoriented when the store, for example, rearranged the furniture in the shop window. The collected data is then not nearly as secure or uniform.

Smart City Busan

IN Busan, South Korea second largest city, has used a slightly different approach to working with innovation regarding IoT. There is a district in Busan called Eco Delta City, where companies can pilot tests of their products and services against a real population. As a living experiment, those living in the district are the test subjects. Among other things, they have tested how to use sensors and data to evacuate buildings effectively in the event of an earthquake.

The problem with the development of IoT is that everyone uses different types of data and data structures, as well as different platforms and models. For example, each city uses different variants of these, and it becomes difficult to get everyone to collaborate and share data with each other.

Malaysia, Smart City Alliance

There was no city represented from Malaysia, but I spoke to someone who knew of several initiatives underway in the country. They measure a lot related to geospatial monitoring, such as detecting landslides at railway tracks or other critical infrastructure. There are also systems for measuring and managing parking spaces.
You buy cheap sensors and all the data is different because all municipalities in Malaysia use different silo-based solutions.

To know how far a city has come in Malaysia, a scale has been introduced for how technologically mature the cities are. On this scale, you can be at different tiers (levels). I was told that at the moment only a few cities have moved up to a higher level. What was important, however, was that they now have a way to measure and compare their technological development. If such a system existed in common throughout the world regarding IoT/Smart City, I probably wouldn't have had to write this blog post...

I finally learned that Southeast Asia's first smart city expo will be held next year and Malaysia is the host country. Keep your eyes peeled for this coming September 2025.