Smart City Markets

Both emerging-market and existing cities are opening up opportunities for Smart City initiatives. Each has different priorities and needs, although most city officials now are focused on the low hanging fruit of communicating with their citizens more effectively as a first step.

Smart Cities are being promoted and marketed primarily by large IT companies and academics today. The market is fast growing and provides a lucrative opportunity for those that adopt early.

Cloud-based products for Smart Cities are catching the wave faster than the incumbent products due to their low cost, easy scalability and the Big Data functions of these products. The leading companies that are focused on providing Smart City products and services include: IBM, Cisco, Siemens, Schneider Electric, General Electric

The AEC Market Opportunity: Key Points

• The path for Smart Cities comes from the use of BIM and Smart Buildings. BIM and Smart Buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a neighborhood, district and City, provides a city with relevant, authenticated data.   
• AEC firms that look beyond the individual building project and begin to position for capturing value (and revenues) at the data transaction level in a Smart City environment will capture greater market share and open up new opportunities for growth than their competition.

It's like writing a hit song in the music industry and retaining the publishing rights: AEC firms should not only be compensated for the “one-off” use of their data to deliver an individual building, but should retain the rights to their implemented data, so that when it is used for Smart City solutions, compensation continues.

Retain your publishing rights. Enjoy a continuous revenue stream.  CAD and BIM are still important, just in a different way, in the world of Smart Cities.