This document discusses building smart cities through citizen engagement and avoiding common pitfalls. It highlights the need for citizen-centric smart city services and outlines REDtone IOT's strategy. Some key points include: engaging citizens through crowdsourcing apps can help identify issues and improve services; gamification may incentivize participation; both citizens and local authorities need buy-in for engagement to work; and outsourcing integrated smart city platforms can help avoid challenges of developing solutions in-house. The overall message is that technology should make citizens' lives better by giving them tools to provide input and receive responsive services from their local leaders.

1. BUILDING SMART CITIES THROUGH THE
EYES OF CITIZENS AND AVOIDING CITIZEN
ENGAGEMENT PITFALLS
Dr. Mazlan Abbas
CEO - REDtone IOT, MALAYSIA
Email: mazlan.abbas@redtone.com

2. AGENDA
• We’ve heard a lot about the promise of Smart Cities, but where are
we now and what is holding us back?
• Highlighting the need for truly customer-centric Smart City services
• A look at REDtone IOT’s strategy and journey so far

3. SMART CITY HURDLES

4. Flashy apps and
websites get a lot of
attention for
reaching people,
but by themselves,
they are not citizen
engagement.

5. TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENABLE IOT
Cheap sensors
(50% cheaper)
Cheap bandwidth
(40x cheaper)
Cheap processing &
smarter
(60x cheaper)
Ubiquitous wireless coverage
(free wifi)
Big data
(unstructured
data)
IPv6
Smartphones
(personal gateway)
For the Past 10 Years
People (Non-Tech)
(More sophisticated)

6. DELIVERING THE WHOLE IOT PUZZLE
Internet
Biometric
Ultrasonic
Temp
Humidity
Pressure
Motion
Position
Light
Image
Motor
Switch
Lighting
Valve
Sensors
Actuators
IOT
Middleware
Analytics
Applications
WiFi
2G/3G/4G
LoRa
SigFox

7. SMART CITY
INTRODUCTION TO

8. BUILDING 3 TYPES OF CITIES
ROI-driven
Carbon-driven
Vanity-driven

9. CITIZEN-FOCUSED • BUILDING TRUST
Citizen-Centric Data-Driven Decision
Smart Tools Responsive
Cost Effective
Accountable
Transparent
Collaborative

10. SMART
#bettercitybetterworld
CITY
BETTER CITY • BETTER WORLD
Build cities through the eyes of the CITIZENS

11. VISION OF THE CITY OF THE FUTURE
Open source and
open data
Make
visible the
invisible
Sensing the city Provide tools for
the citizens to
interpret and
change the
workings of the
city
Technology may help mitigate the “black hole” problem.

12. CITIZEN
ENGAGEMENT
CROWDSENSING VIA

16. AdHoc
Chaotic
VIRAL
SMS
Whatsapp
Facebook
Twitter
Radio TV
CAPACITY TO HEAR AND RESPOND
Traditional channels
(web portals, emails,
phone calls etc)and
method unable to
handle effectively
CITIZENS CITY AUTHORITIES
“Black hole” issue

17. We Build Cities Based on Citizen-Centric Approach
CROWDSENSING
Get citizens input via their
smartphones
LIVEABLECITIES
Citizens have a
better quality of life
BUILDNEXT
SMARTCITY
SOLUTION
LeverageinnovativeIOT
solutionstosolvethe
painpointsofcities
inhabitants
RANK& DECIDE
Authorities decide and
justify their next plan
of action
CITY
INDICATOR
Citizens will see how
their cities perform
REDtone IOT APPROACH
BUILDING THE NEXT SMART CITY SOLUTIONS
IDENTIIFY&SOLVE
Identify locations of issues
and City Authorities respond
accordingly

18. CITIACT
APP FOR ACTION,
NOT TALKING

19. CRIMEAREAS FLASHFLOODS
NOISELEVEL ROADQUALITY
Determineyourcity’scharacter
GAININGINSIGHTS•OPTIMISINGRESOURCES

22. BUILD YOUR
NEXT SMART CITY SOLUTIONS?
HOW-TO

23. TOP CITIACT PAIN POINTS

24. SMART VANDALISM MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Local Councils
Illegal Posters
Will be useless
Illegal Posters with
Telephone Numbers
Phone Numbers
Blocked
Regulators

25. SMART WASTE MANAGEMENT
TIMELY SCHEDULE
ALERT
“I’M FULL”
UNATTENDED
GARBAGE
RIGHT ROUTES

26. SMART PARKING
Smart Parking
With Sensors
Location of
Parking
Availability
Parking
Utilization
Tiered Pricing
Parking

27. TWEETING POTHOLES

28. ROADSENSE YOUR POTHOLES

29. AVOID CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
PITFALLS
How-to
[Original article - https://iotworld.co/2016/08/01/tips-for-city-authorities-how-to-avoid-citizen-engagement-pitfalls/ ]

30. TIP (1) – BUY-IN FROM BOTH SEGMENTS
• It requires the active participation of both
parties. It’s like “chicken or egg” question.
Who starts first?
• Residents felt that their complaints would go
down the deaf ears of the local councils –
just like going down the black hole.
• The local authorities that are sensitive to the
citizens feel that the citizens need to channel
their grouses into a proper channel rather
than letting their anger on social media and
become terribly viral.

31. TIP (2) – PUBLICITY
• If you ask 100 or 1000 people on the streets
whether they have heard such application.
We can almost guarantee you that none
have heard that.
• It’s easier to get a ridiculous publicity
message across the WhatsApp rather than
something which is more useful
• ”Engagement fatigue”
– Staff intensive
– Time consuming
– Little return of Municipal investment

32. TIP (3) – FINDING THE RIGHT CONCERNED
CITIZENS
• Who are these people? What type of individuals
that are concerned about the cleanliness or safety
of the surrounding.
• The NATO and the SELFIES – the non-concerned
citizens

33. TIP (4) – GAMIFICATION IF NECESSARY
• People wants an incentive to participate in
crowdsourcing initiative. Either get
themselves paid in monetary or prizes.
• The other way is to gamify the app in such a
way that gives some form of status within the
community app. Give them points and
elevate them into a different status or higher
rank on the leadership board.
• Launch contest with prizes for being the most
active users.

34. TIP (5) – PRESSURE GROUPS
• No administrators of the cities would love to
receive complaints every day. Nobody likes
to handle hundreds or thousands of
complaints each day throughout the whole
year. But if they did not manage and close
the complaints, how could they solve all the
problems which are already in the queue?
• Why need to be in a reactive mode when
local councils can be proactive?
• Sometimes, city authorities need a little push
or “pressure” from the people.

35. TIP (6) – SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS
• The most popular official channels by
local councils are either through
phone, fax, web portal or email. But
technology has rapidly changed the
landscape of communications with
the advent of smartphones, mobile
Internet, and Social Media.
• Allow the citizens to communicate on
their favorite social media channels.
“One App to Bind
Them All”

36. TIP (7) – IN-HOUSE VS OUTSOURCE
• It’s NOT only the front-end but also the
backend system.
• Thus, a lot of cities who thought that they
could just develop the mobile app (i.e. the
front-end) in-house did not realize what they
are going to end up.
• Nearly all local council IT departments are
not set up as a product development house.
The budget given to them are only enough
to operate, manage and maintain the IT
system but not to become innovative and
develop their application.

37. TIP (8) – PRODUCT ROADMAP
• Handling a continuous development and
future enhancement of the backend system
requires a sustainable IT support resources.
• New technology emerges and thus it must
quickly be adapted with the current process
workflow.
• Developing and supporting this in-house will
probably give the IT department of the local
council a horrible nightmare that they will
always regret.

38. TIP (9) – SMART CITY VISION
• Citizen engagement is only one of the single
component in a Smart City. They are many
applications which require integration to a
smart city platform; thus, it cannot be
developed in silo manner.
• Remember that IOT also requires input from
physical sensors (other than the sensors from
the smartphones).
• A real Smart City need an integrated
platform that collects and aggregates
various sources of data (structured or
unstructured) to discover the insights of the
city and make cities a better and sustainable
place to live.

39. TIP (10) – IT’S NOT AN IT JOB!
• Of course, any IT company can develop the
mobile app.
• However, IOT requires different skills that
encompass embedded programming,
understanding different communications
protocols, cloud services, and big data
analytics.
Smart Parking Smart Waste
Management
Smart Street
Light
Smart
Transportatio
n
Open Data Parking Garbage
Collection
Lighting
Public
Transport
Smartphone
Users
SMART
CITY
HUB
Social Media
IOT
APPLICATIONS
SENSOR
DATA
CitiAct

40. A city isn't smart because it uses
technology. A city is smart because it uses
technology to make its citizens' lives better.

42. IoT eBooks
1) IoT Notes – Great to use for your IoT
lectures!
2) Your IoT Journey – Compilation of best Blog
articles on IoT

43. THANK YOU
@REDtoneIOT
REDtoneIOT
• EMAIL: mazlan.abbas@redtone.com
• TWITTER: @mazlan_abbas
• FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/drmazlanabbas
• LINKEDIN: my.linkedin.com/in/mazlan/
• SLIDESHARE: www.slideshare.net/mazlan1
• ABOUT ME: about.me/mazlan.abbas
• BLOG: iotworld.co