Concerns around funding are keeping many municipalities around the world from fully implementing their smart city projects, according to analyst firm IDC.
This, coupled with many city governments’ risk-adverse nature will account for smaller smart city projects in 2014, a report in the online technology publication ExpertIP said.
Only five per cent of cities around the world will be in the “smart” stage, according to Ruthbeaa Yesner Clarke, research director with IDC Government Insights during a recent webinar on IDC’s Top 10 Worldwide Smart Cities Prediction for 2014.
Furthermore, these cities will only be smart in one or two areas.
As much as 80 per cent of the cities worldwide wide will be in the first or ad hoc stage of smart city development and 15 per cent will be in the second or opportunistic stage.
IDC said global spending on the Internet of Things will reach US$265 billion this year. Smart cities will redirect 15 to 20 per cent of traditional IT spending to cheaper cloud technologies.
This is an area in which Canada appears to excel over other countries. For instance, IDC predicts that Canadian municipal expenditure on cloud solutions will be around 20 to 25 per cent topping the global average.