Smart cities are the perfect amalgamation of technology and humans. Part of the IoT revolution, smart cities are urban areas loaded with sensors, intelligent urban systems and services and more.

To build a smart city, every single part of the city needs to be involved. This includes schools, hospitals, public places, power plants, transportation system, the list continues.

Benefits of smart cities include better management of resources of all sorts, from power to transport.

Analysts estimate that by the end of 2016, over 1.7 billion smart city ‘things’ will be connected. In 2017, that number is expected to grow by an extra one billion devices.

To build a smart city different technologies are required. The most important ones are around orchestration platforms to ensure that all the city’s assets come together and are easily managed without interfering with other assets.

In addition, there are also process automation systems, geographic information systems, M2M and wider connectivity, and supervisory control and data acquisition.