Future of Smart Cities | Libelium's Alicia Asin

and regarding the the the most demanding use cases I think that smart parking will continue to grow in in the outdoors because it fits uh it it completes the three pillars of uh of the Smart City should be looking for you your citizens happier you reduce traffic and and the carbon footprint and and you can increase the revenue of the City by matching offer on demand at all times hello everyone and Welcome to our episode of the iot for all podcast presented by iot for all the number one publication for the internet of things I'm your host Ryan Chacon if you're watching on YouTube we truly appreciate it if you give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to our Channel if you have not done so already if you're listening to this on a podcast directory like apple podcast please subscribe to get the latest episodes as soon as they are out alright on today's episode we have Alicia I've seen the CEO of libelium um they are a complete iot Solutions company that focuses on designing and Manufacturing wireless sensor network devices so that system integrators Engineers consultancy companies can deliver reliable iot and smart city solutions with minimum time to Market fantastic episode a lot of fun she is a great great guest we talk a lot about the current Smart City landscape we talk about where this landscape is headed technology that's kind of leading the way in the Smart City space challenges facing smart cities how to fix those challenges and what she is most excited for going in to this new year but all in all fantastic episode I think get a lot of value out of but before we get into it any of you out there are looking to enter the fast growing and profitable iot Market but don't know where to start check out our sponsor leverage leverages iot Solutions development platform provides everything you need to create TurnKey iot products that you can white label and resell under your own brand to learn more go to iot changes everything.com that's iot changes everything.com and without further Ado please enjoy this episode of the iot for all podcast welcome Alicia to the iot for all podcast thanks for being here this week now that's a pleasure delighted to be here yes it's great to have you um let's kick this off by having to give a quick introduction about yourself and the company to our audience well I'm uh I'm the CEO and co-founder of libelion which is a company's that lives in Spain 16 years ago before the iot was even attempt by by the moment we created the company uh the term was wireless sensored networks and we started by creating sensor devices all kinds of of devices with all kinds of magnitudes and in the in across this journey of 16 years we've been expanding our technology in more than 140 countries all over the world and and expanding to to give more value into the solutions not only providing the hardware pieces but also the the device management for those devices and also some specific applications and today Rebellion is playing a role as a solution provider in in agric in Agri food sustainability and smart this fantastic so since you've been in the space for over 16 years now um what have you seen kind of some of the biggest just like changes from you know when you got started Fountain think or co-founding this company until now what have been some of the biggest things that have kind of stood out to you over that time well what curiously I think that the reality because we saw the iot were born with we've been growing and evolving as the iot so when we were in the face of being a very newborn startup I think that was that was much in this the status of the iot in the market so before 2010 or so it was all about the revolution of the of the May care platforms so we have all those all those companies like Spar fun Adafruit Seed Studio who continues in in China for providing all kind of stuff for for May cares and hobbies and it was it was a revolution because it it aligned with the launch of of crowdfunding platforms as well and it was like oh suddenly making Hardware sexy again right um after that there was a phase where where which I call the the age of smart cities phase one um and we saw uh a big hanger for many cities and city managers for uh claiming they have the the biggest number of sensors in in their city so it was a time about uh quantity not quality not thought not direction and you have like um all the projects where driven by the uh one ID guy not aligning with anyone else and and consider and not really understanding them about the potential of what a smart City should should be and now we are in in a new phase of the iot where I think that we've seen a much more sophistication in the in the business models not only in the kind of projects I mean the kind of value propositions but also in the in the way that companies are approaching the market absolutely I've I've seen very similar um kind of growth even in only the six years that I've been in the space you've been based obviously much longer than I have but just seeing how far it's come in in six years with how companies kind of viewed iot Solutions house even like municipalities and and cities viewed incorporating smart technology into their City what the real benefits were what they were really trying to solve what implementation was like and I think a lot of that has also or a lot of things that have also helped is around this the mature and or the the growth of a lot of the Technologies and a lot of these Technologies maturing um and as we start to see more use cases deployed and become successful that kind of provides a good case study for a lot of cities organizations around the world to understand how this technology truly can be used for the benefit of not only the end user but also um uh solving other problems that they they have which I think is very fascinating yeah so if if we if we talk a little bit about the the Smart City landscape here for a second um obviously you've kind of already highlighted that it's changed a ton since uh you got into the space until now but as it sits and today where are we when we think about when people think about smart cities because I think there's a lot of talk around it there's still a lot of questions to be answered where do you kind of view us as um or view smart cities as an industry and where it kind of currently sits right now well it differs a lot from municipality to municipality that's one uh that's one characteristic of this Market but I would say that number one we have uh more understanding inside the cities inside the municipalities about what they are trying to pursue so uh 10 years 15 years ago when we were talking about smart cities uh very often you have you you found that I.T guys we're designing solutions that were meant to be used by lighting Eyes by traffic guys um parts and garden guys and they were not being they were not involved in the in the solution design and now that's change and in many often you see more preparation in part of the for for the municipalities but still there are many challenges and many questions to be solved um interoperability is one of them and it's it's really difficult for for cities to put all the pieces together and to understand the the implications of the of Designing their their city with one vendor or with another one depending on the on the vendor lock-ins uh the that it's vendor may include in in the in the proposal and then there's also a big fear of uh in the part of cyber security and and very critical whenever I talk about cyber security because I I believe it's something we are not really paying attention to everyone says that he or she is concerned about that and and you will always find lots of requirements but I think that we must be more demanding during the implementation phase because in in many cases not only in smart cities I'm talking also in private companies sure um the some projects are deployed just by expanding the proof of concept developed in a proof of concept you never Implement all the security mechanisms sure it's like when you have a Pilot House a damn house you never start the visit talking about the door and the security look you just get into and assume that of course there will be a door and it will be closed today by the house so that's the effect we need to contrast so so after so talking about some of the topics you've already mentioned interoperability and security aside from those what do you see as some of the other biggest challenges that smart cities are facing and then also on top of that what do you what is what is your advice or kind of suggestions on how these these secure or sorry these um these challenges security interoperability and other ones you could mention uh how we can overcome them and and kind of approach prepare for them and make them less of a challenge than they were kind of in the past okay well regarding the security and interoperability I think they are the challenges that are more in the side of of vendors um and technology companies so in those cases um I see that companies are trying to become more sophisticated and offering more uh more broad Solutions I'm seeing that this is a result of a of a initial movement of uh lots of M A movements and and that concentration moment in the in the market due to the situation which will create and allow companies to be more Broad and offer more complete Solutions of course uh all kinds of standards definitions and and for example Rebellion is part of the uh of the the fiber Foundation uh the the the participation of companies in in Frameworks and platforms like that also definitely helps because those are platforms aggregating different vendors to create those of standards for smart cities um in the case of in in the site of the municipalities I think the biggest challenge is accept the that we are entering into uh into a new age ruled by data and that will that can lead us to uh the autocracy which I think it's something good indeed where uh where our governments need to be more used to accountability the more data you have the more tools you have to demonstrate whether you are making good or bad decisions and that should be used to empower citizens we shouldn't leave the Smart City speech only in the technical side we should take it beyond that to the to the citizen side and and see what's really going on and one last important thing if you allow me would be in the quality of data because if we are if we are using data to make new decisions in in our cities and we want to use those data to even evaluate our governments we should ensure that the data has a a really good quality yeah absolutely yeah I totally agree with you I think that's been a problem for many years is just getting a quality data that they uh that people know how to use and and how to find Value in it and if without that it's the use cases provide no value and are hard to justify spending the money um is there are there any um kind of characteristics of a city that makes one city more uh kind of ripe for Smart City integration and Technology like Smart Technologies being brought in like do you kind of view certain city makeups locations um um even the overall strategy that the municipality has being more maybe forward leaning into technology helping like what do you think are some of the big characteristics of a city that make it more Prime to to adopt Smart Technologies and really see success um I think for sure a city need to have a very global vision of and and a global approach of the of the smart city and involve um a multi-disciplinary team in the design of all the services they want to they want to pursue um all the the main benefits of of smart cities use cases are are free basically you can increase Revenue in the city or reduce costs like for example in smart parking applications or smart lighting right you can you also reduce the carbon footprint and make them and make the city more sustainable and and here you have all the use cases for uh for part a traffic monitoring traffic congestion and monitoring air quality and make decisions to to make um uh to drive and divert traffic to avoid um congested areas right and finally you also need to take it to to put attention on making citizens life happier and better so the cleaner you have the air the the less time you spend driving around searching for a parking spot the best so if you use those kpis and those goals you know the you know the the services I think that's a that's a strategy to start building all the use cases and evaluate how are they impacting in each of these three pillars or smart cities yeah absolutely that's fantastic yeah I think that's great kind of approach for for for companies or for cities to be thinking in kind of a very well outlines um the cities that are most likely to see success um now let me ask you as we kind of look forward in into the future of the Smart City space uh where do you think we're headed what do you what what kind of technology is really leading the way and and on top of that what use cases do you see becoming the most popular to kind of take smart cities from where it is now into something that I think a lot of us have uh truly envisioned over the years hoping we can get to well that's a lot of things in the same question uh trying to make it start uh regarding Technologies I think that we will see cellular Technologies for connectivity dominating the the space at least in smart cities because they have the the big advantage of of relying on a public network infrastructure which is always uh better in terms of cost and maintenance in the long term and I'm putting here all the protocols from ndiot to 40 and 5e of course in in the future so the the whole Suite of them and [Music] and regarding the the the most demanding use cases I think that smart parking will continue to grow in in the outdoors because it fits uh it it completes the three pillars of uh of the Smart City should be looking for you you citizens happier you reduce traffic and and the carbon footprint and and you can increase the revenue of the City by matching offer on demand at all times so what we will be seeing is a more a bigger sophistication of this kind of use cases but maybe introducing not only the guidance but also the dynamic prices uh policies or also the abilities to be able to bid for a parking spot and to regulate the amount of of traffic condition at a certain moment smart lighting is also a strong use case not one in which leveling has a big presence honestly but we are seeing that in in many countries that's also expanding yeah and the other one is monitoring the air quality because even also you don't have a direct relationship between the the pollution and and the and the economical impact there are lots of space correlating the level the pollution levels of a city with the public health Span in the same city due to increased respiratory diseases and and things like that so I think that we will see more attention on those use cases and and even in the case of of air quality we will be able to to make a better and real-time planning for cities so seeing not only what's going on right now but also being able to forecast what uh what the pollution levels will be in 24 hours according to the atmospheric parameters and applying devices so that's the line where Rebellion is today offering Solutions in not only not only so when what's going on but helping to change the the picture when you when we don't like it right absolutely yeah fantastic stuff there um I guess one question that came up while I was listening to you kind of tell us about the use cases and the kind of the future of the space um because I haven't had too many guests talk about this but how do you see iot helping transform the way that the citizens of a community of a city interact with the city itself so local authorities other organizations things like that how do you see that happening that's something that I'm very curious to kind of hear your thoughts on well I think that's something I'm sorry and and for sure we will not have Smart cities or fully small smart cities if we don't use technology to change the way that cities are communicating with citizens that's for sure but I can give you an exam a beautiful example of Technology empowering citizens it happened in Fukushima right after the the tsunami and the nuclear accident in 2011.

we design in a record time a geiger counter so that citizens could monitor by themselves the radiation levels in the places where they were living and we send some some boards to to the Tokyo hacker space and to several tax spaces and they just served with some hackers and makers yes two weeks after that without any anyone coordinating the movement spontaneously all the people accessing a geiger counter we're starting to to share the information into a platform on the internet at the moment I think that was the name of the platform it's a long time ago and the nice thing about that was that citizens were keeping an independent real-time map of the radiation levels in the city oh wow wow and and they were feeling empowered because but we were trying to to fight was without was against the misinformation sometimes where you suffer in a disaster like that you may feel that maybe you are not having access to the full information maybe because um because media are trying to show you one specific part of the of the problem maybe because you have a government has uh has some issues to to deal with or if if the radiation levels come from the company some people may not be comfortable or or maybe they can trust so we were not only proving that citizens wanted to be involved and and could be could be empowered by using technology but also it proved to be uh a self-corrective metal because by having one one map with multiple sources that was very easy to identify Superior later so if someone was trying to inject data that was not aligned with the rest uh automatically you could question that Source exactly in the Wikipedia works so right right I I still think this is one of the one of those powerful stories about the iot I've ever seen and it's one one of my favorite ones yeah I haven't heard that story and it uh but the whole I mean the whole time you're telling it I was just more and more fascinated with not just the technology of what's capable of but just the way that the citizens kind of rallied together and crowdsourced this information basically and kind of used each other as Checkers for what is factual what is not when it came to these levels um in order to help their community and help those in their community so um that's a perfect example it's such a good one and I'm sure we're going to see lots and lots of other ones in in different areas of the world covering different different um different problems and challenges that that arise but it's going to take companies that really understand the technology and how to put these things together um like what you all do to to make it possible and put this in their hands for for them to be able to benefit um from Solutions like this um so that was that was a fantastic example last thing I want to ask you before I let you go here is just looking forward what are you most excited about in the space what what kind of catches your attention um uh you know and and it makes you makes you all pretty excited about what's to come well I'm most excited with the connection between iot and blockchain because I think that it can totally change everything so by transforming by by Design iot devices are natural oracles to to be able to trigger lots of processes and and I'm very excited about all the potential of the joining iot Ai and blockchain so for example the revolution that we can see in the insurance sector for example with those parametric primes where One sensor can not only trigger the alert of something that has happened like a river flowed in in your shop or or a fire but also send the right information about the status of that of that disaster and automatically issue the compensation and other trans a bank transfer to the user can revolutionize the efficiency of those processes the user experience and the way that we can relation with the with other companies so I I think that's what keeps me more excited is right now fantastic well um thank you so much for taking the time this has been a great conversation I know you all have been working pretty hard to to put out more content and um things to kind of keep educating the market you have a connected human report white paper um what's can you tell us a little bit more about what that what that is and kind of what it's focused on kind of um sharing with with the world yeah absolutely well the connected human report is the the response that we have after observing that some parts of the society are maybe fear enough technology in some cases so what we wanted to show is that technology is something amazing that we never we must never forget that technology is made by humans and it must be used to solve human challenges so this is a series of three reports the the smart cities one is the first one and we will aim we want to showcase how technology is being used by by people uh to solve their problems and and we are trying to outline those use cases where where people are at the at the center of those Solutions and in the following months we we will be publishing and a similar one focused on sustainability and we will finish with uh with one focusing on Agri Fort as well so we'll find all of that in our website great great well thank you so much again for taking the time here um fantastic topics I think we got to cover today and and um kind of your expertise experience and just the knowledge you have in the space I think about our audience is going to get a ton of value out of so so thank you so much again and um really appreciate your time and and look forward hopefully having you back at some point to keep uh keep the conversation going whatever you want happy happy to be invited yeah absolutely thank you so much thank you all right everyone thanks again for watching that episode of the I2 for all podcast if you enjoyed the episode please click the Thumbs Up Button subscribe to our Channel and be sure to hit the Bell notification so you get the latest episodes as soon as they become available other than that thanks again for watching and we'll see you next time

2023-01-02 17:55

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