Question #1: What is a Smart City?
Answer #1: Smart city can mean one or more of the following:
Question #2: Why do we need cities to be smart?
Answer #3: A major problem faced by global citizens today is sustainability and improvement of quality of life despite over-population and limited resources. As the world’s population increases and it puts increasing demands on the planet’s limited resources due to shifting life-styles, we not only need to monitor how we consume resources but also to optimize resource usage. Some examples of the planet’s limited resources are water, energy, land, food and air. Today, significant challenges exist for reducing usage of these resources, while maintaining quality of life. The growth of human population has now shifted towards cities and that is why we need them to be smart.
Question #3: Who started Smart City?
Answer #3: The best place to resolve credit is on wikipedia ( here). Smart City is very well articulated vision lead by IBM (under Smarter Planet umbrella) that has been adopted by increasing number of countries including India and major IT vendors but also called Computational Sustainability in academia. The resulting systems are also called Intelligent Cyber-Physical Systems since they tend to involve integration between IT (cyber) elements and physical sensors.
Question #4: What technical disciplines are involved in a Smart City?
Answer #4: Although it is very hard to list all but what is clear is that the field will be multidisciplinary. There will be data storage and analysis, so Computer Science is necessary. City planning is needed and hence urban planning is necessary. If sensors are needed, related disciplines of engineering (electrical, instrumentation, telecommunication, ...) are necessary. Since there has to be actual construction, civil is necessary.
Question #5: What more can be Smart?
Answer #5: As a cheek-in-tongue comment, who will not like to be smart? On a serious note, one can take a stand that whenever we make data-based decisions, we are being smart. So, we can have Smart People who seek and act on data. We can have Smart Health where everyone makes decisions based on best available data. ... The contrast is situations where decisions are made on whim, hunch, etc without justification continuously with no effort to improve.
Question #6: Will a Smart City be costly? Is it only for rich countries?
Answer #6: Much of the decision is taken today in cities without holistic data and metrics. This is more true in cities of poor and developing countries than rich countries. The resulting wastage is what a resource-oriented smart city action would want to reduce. So, Smart City is more, and not less, desirable in poor countries. Further, if planned well, the savings from waste reduction will more than sufficiently pay for any additional costs that a Smart City effort may require at the outset.
Question #7: How should a city start for becoming a Smart City?
Answer #7: If a city already exists, this situation is called a "brown" city. As Step 1, it should start by collecting data about all its efforts to know the as-is. Then as Step 2, it should set metrics of what it wants to aspire for (the to-be) along with the constraints of time frame and budget available. As Step 3, it should pick 1-2 small projects and achieve its defined goals. This may lead to changes to the city's standard operating procedures and IT practices, especially data management, and thus, needs to settle down. Then as Step 4, it should scale to all the city's procedures. Finally, as Step 5, it should review its experience and start from Step 2 again.
Question #8: What is the Smart City status in India ?
Answer #8: The official page is here (http://smartcities.gov.in/) but it is not up-to-date. My own perspective of the status and links can be found at Smart Cities in India.
Question #9: What is IBM Research doing in Smart City ?
Answer #9: See a summary of Research efforts here. IBM itself summarizes initiatives here.