To ensure a sustainable development of futuristic smart city anywhere in the country, government at all levels have been urged to invest massively in data infrastructure necessary to deliver services.
According to experts in built environment, it is impossible to have smart cities without huge investments in geospatial data.
Leading the call, Rector, Federal School of Survey, Oyo, Dr. Dupe Nihinlola, stated that smart city required substantial funding for its creation and maintenance, adding that its function was within computing infrastructure and collection of large quantity of data to create an environment for efficiency and conservation.
As a result of huge investment required for data infrastructure, Nihinlola, who spoke with New Telegraph on the side-line of the Annual General Meeting of Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS) in Lagos, argued that only forward thinking leadership would ponder smart city.
Nihinlola, an associate professor and surveyor, pointed out that smart cities would continue to evolve as citizens keep migrating to urban areas and forcing existing infrastructure to expand.
She urged surveyors to step up their games through continuous professional development and maintain a good inter-relationship with government in the drive to promote smart cities.
Besides, she wants surveyors to collaborate with other allied professionals, noting that the boundary of professions had collapsed.
She defined a smart city as “a municipality that uses information and communication technologies to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare.”
She said that public agencies in many developed economies and developing countries had launched a variety of smart city initiatives to build up e-governance, aiming to enhance service delivery, increase management efficiency, and improve quality of life of their citizen.
Smart cities, according to her, can be identified along six main axes of dimensions namely: a smart economy, a smart environment, smart mobility, smart people, smart living, and smart governance.
According to Nihinlola, there are over 1000 smart cities in the world that have been launched or under construction, adding that Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea were the leading regions of smart cities.
She emphasised that surveying profession had advanced with new methods and equipment, adding that the ability to perform advanced measurements and establish positional location information was critical in providing the database necessary for smart city services.
She said: “From the perspective of geomatics, a smart city is the full integration of a digital city, internet and cloud computing technology. A digital city provides a 3D geospatial framework for cities, while the Internet of things embedded in the ubiquitous sensor network realises the real-time sensing, measuring, and data transmitting of still or moving objects.
“Cloud computing, performing like a human brain, is responsible for massive and complex calculations, data mining, and analysis; and it then helps in the automatic discovery of patterns, rules, and knowledge and provides remote monitoring, control, and feedback to the real world for intelligent city management and public services.”
Lagos State Surveyor General, Olutomi Sangowawa, said the state government was in the process of putting data infrastructure in place to make the Geographic Information System (GNS) operational.
Sangowawa said that government had spent millions of dollars on data infrastructure to decentralise information and get reliable data everywhere.
He hinted that the state authorities had launched two Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) and secured approval for their usage.
Besides, he said that government had acquired drones.
According to him, Lagos is a small city but the most economically viable, adding that the state was going digital to achieve its aim of making Lagos a smart city.
He stated that Geographic Information System was an important technology that will enhance survey practice in state and designed to capture, store, manage as well as analyse data would become operational by March 2020.
Sangowawa disclosed that March 2020, GIS would be operational in Lagos, adding that government had already deployed five CORS stations, which are in the process of testing.
“We are going to have CORS stations roaming, streaming data for everyone to use,” he said.
Chairman of NIS, Lagos State Branch, Adeshina Adeleke, said Lagos State had always taken the lead in innovation and technology with a population estimate of between 18 and 25 million.
Adeshina however noted that Lagos was not an easy place to manage, saying the enormous pressure on social amenities means that government had to continuously seek innovative ways to manage and run the state.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Dayo Ayeyemi
Quelle/Source: New Telegraph Newspaper, 24.12.2019
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