Smart Cities Start with Smart Water

So, Where Is Your Utility on the Smart Water Continuum?

By Dave Hanes

What is a smart city?

According to Jesse Berst, founder and chairman of the Smart Cities Council, a coalition of organizations that seeks to accelerate the move to smart cities, “It’s just using digital technology to improve community life.”

According to the council’s Smart Cities Readiness Guide, in simplest terms, there are three parts to that job: collecting, communicating and “crunching.” First, a smart city collects information about itself through sensors, other devices and existing systems. Next, it communicates that data using wired or wireless networks. Third, it crunches, or analyzes, that data to understand what’s happening now and what’s likely to happen next, according to the guide.