More than half of the world’s population already lives in cities, a share projected to reach 66% by 2050, according to a white paper published by Dimonoff founding president Bernard Têtu. As urban growth and climate change put mounting pressure on municipal infrastructure, more cities are turning to smart city technology, with street lighting typically serving as the first system deployed.
The white paper sets out to demystify a fragmented market by identifying five categories of vendors: hardware device vendors, controls and sensors vendors, software vendors and integrators, network connectivity vendors, and all-in-one vertical system vendors that combine several of these roles.
It then organizes selection criteria into three groups. Core features cover the functionality most systems share, such as remote control, energy monitoring, fixture performance tracking, adaptive lighting and the ability to activate additional sensors. Interoperability and openness are described as the key to any smart city system, since they prevent vendors from locking cities into a single hardware, network or software ecosystem. Future readiness rounds out the criteria, reflecting the scale and permanence of infrastructure investment and the need for systems that can support technologies not yet on the market.
The paper closes with a comparative checklist meant to help municipalities evaluate vendors and prepare requests for proposals around openness and scalability.