by Tony Mwai, IBM East Africa
What makes a city? The answer, of course, is all three. A city is an interconnected system of systems. A dynamic work in progress, with progress as its watchword. A tripod that relies on strong support for and among each of its pillars, to become a smarter city for all. Smarter cities drive sustainable economic growth and prosperity for their citizens.
Their leaders have the tools to analyze data for better decisions, anticipate problems to resolve them proactively and coordinate resources to operate effectively. As demands grow and budgets tighten, solutions also have to be smarter, and address the city as a whole. By collecting and analyzing the extensive data generated every second of every day, tools such as the IBM Intelligent Operations Center coordinate and share data in a single view creating the big picture for the decision makers and responders who support the smarter city.
Nairobi has risen from humble beginnings, What is now a bustling city if over 3 million people was established in 1899 as a simple supply depot along the railway from Mombasa to Kampala. Today the city is growing faster than ever as it develops into a regional economic center with the potential to become Africa’s next major business hub. At the same time, its rapid growth has created significant challenges, piling increasing pressure on he city’s infrastructure that must be addresses for the city to be more competitive.
Transportation
A team from IBM assigned to Nairobi provided a cohesive framework and roadmap to the city to improve the flow of road traffic and increase revenues from the transportation sector. The recommendations complement Nairobi’s considerable ongoing investment in underlying roadway infrastructure. They include making traffic information more readily available to citizens, motorists, police, policymakers and planners so that better transportation decisions can be made in the near and far term.
The blueprint also includes suggestions for using available technologies, including mobile phones, sensors and closed-circuit television, to more automatically pinpoint traffic issues.
In the recommended plan, parking and licensing would also be digitized and automated — streamlining bureaucratic processes and increasing citizen satisfaction. The plan prescribes enhanced collaboration between various transport bodies.
Despite impressive investments in building road networks, inefficiencies within the city’s transport sector cost Nairobi an estimated Sh50 million per day, negating revenues and commercial benefits from otherwise significant road infrastructure, and limiting the region’s economic growth. According to the Kenyan Ministry of Information and Communications, the government has made immense investments in infrastructure over the last 10 years but we are challenged by the fact that many departments within government are working in isolation and not collaborating. They are now taking the view to fast-tracking them to help maintain Nairobi’s position as a key regional economic hub.
Recommendations include the creation of a cross-departmental Smarter Transportation Authority that would harness initiatives taking place across government agencies under a single unit. This would allow for faster rollout of decongestion plans, enhancing revenue collection for government agencies and tightening enforcement of traffic rules. In addition, the development of a Smarter Transportation Platform with an intelligent operations command center, leveraging existing and new closed-circuit television networks that show vehicle, traffic and roadway conditions as events unfold, is advised.
Policing
Enabling stakeholders such as citizens and police to view these video feeds online would lead to a decrease in traffic congestion by allowing commuters to plan their trips accordingly and police to allocate manpower more efficiently.
Another suggestion was to integrate data from multiple sources, including mobile phone signals generated from citizens stuck in traffic jams, to pin-point traffic hot-spots. Analytics software could then be used to predict future flow issues, pushing the information needed to re-direct traffic to the intelligent operations center.
The team also suggested digitizing parking for the speed and ease of finding parking spaces, to minimize congestion and to reduce environmental impact as well as using mobile devices to empower traffic police to monitor and manage traffic offenders through an intelligent enforcement solution.
Mobile technology
Findings showed that one area of innovation in which Kenya is leading the way is in mobile technologies. The country has become a pioneer in mPayment and money transfer systems – such as the M-PESA system managed by Safaricom. With a mobile penetration rate of over 70 percent, mobile technologies are seen to present a strong platform for potential solutions to Nairobi’s urban challenges.
Digitization and centralization of public records is also seen as an essential tool in order to ‘know the city’ and make it easier for city authorities to identify rends, risks, opportunities and areas for improvement.
This overall development drive for Nairobi also follows on the back of the Smarter Cites Challenge, in which Nairobi beat 140 other cities around the world to become one of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge winners.