Industrial and Business Systems for Smart Cities

Abstract

To truly develop Smart Cities a combination of multi-media, human factors, and user-centered systems methodology and design principles will have to be applied. Large capital projects and development of Smart Cities could turn to the use of cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security solutions, which could change the outcomes of economic investments and employment opportunities. In addition, the 'Internet of Things', the interconnection of sensors, devices, and everyday objects, requires a standard platform and 'battle-tested' framework for the next generation of Smart Cities. Improved productivity, asset health, profitability, quality, employee safety, and environmental impact are the desired outcomes. Capitalizing on technology to deliver positive results and preventing 'black swan' events or accidents is a complex puzzle. Legacy infrastructure adopting new technologies, gaps in the workforce, regulatory guidelines, safety performance criteria, unexpected risks, and political challenges can add to the complexity and difficulty. We are finding ourselves in a dilemma where detailed specifications, changes and relationships among key elements in the market are needed but still are ambiguous, changing, and untraceable. In order to be successful, critical best practices in process, requirements, engineering, and risk modeling using interdisciplinary engineering practices could enable successful and rapid transformation. In response to these increasing challenges; governments, academics and industry are increasingly leveraging the systems and software engineering best practices developed in fail-safe industries such as nuclear power, aerospace, defense and capital intensive heavy industries, to aid in optimally balancing competing interests and dealing with increased complexity to deliver results. The presentation will introduce "Systems Thinking", "Continuous Engineering" and "Internet of Things" concepts and technologies to describe how they can be successfully leveraged in the transformation to Smart Cities. This presentation shows the need and importance of combining different points of view coming from different disciplines. This way of thinking is crucial to many areas, going beyond the Web and will in time lead to a new genre of computational social sciences that transcend specific applications. Systems Thinking or Systems Engineering differs from downstream engineering disciplines in that the outcomes for downstream engineering are implementations, while the outcomes for systems engineering are specification and governance. Systems engineering is a hybrid engineering discipline focused on the characterization of system properties, such as requirements, design, analysis, and process governance. The primary activities of systems engineering include: Identification of customer needs, Promoting engineering collaboration, Continuous validation and verification, Strategic knowledge reuse, and Systems governance throughout the life cycle. The Systems Thinking process described provides an integrated set of state-of-the-art best practices for engineering complex systems. These best practices have matured in industries concerned with the design, construction and operation of complex, safety critical systems in highly regulated environments, yet are applicable in almost any system today. These best practices may be most productively implemented with a robust technology platform to improve quality, improve overall system safety, lower development and delivery costs, and improve delivery predictability through the creation of reusable assets such as processes, requirements, inspection lists, models, patterns, and test. The approach and platform to be presented is arguably applicable for Smart Cities and has been tested in other safety critical industries, including aerospace, defense, nuclear, automotive and medical projects, products and programs.