Industry association TM Forum has released its Smart City Operations Map, which includes smart city design and development tools to help cities integrate technology, operations and capital requirements. Already ten cities in China, including JI’Nan and Loudi, are using the map.
 
The forum’s smart city programme is a part of collaborative work focused on helping communications service providers (CSPs) and vendors transform their businesses to reap the rewards of a 5G economy. The map allows CSPs that have already invested in open architectures to benefit from seamless interoperability with city data and access critical markets to offer new products and services.
 
In addition to the map, the smart city programme also includes benchmarks, catalyst proof of concept projects, case studies and an IoT component suite for end-to-end IoT management.
 
Smart cities have complicated operations that leverage data and technology to make informed decisions to provide efficient management. The Smart City Operations Map is a tool for helping smart city operators, such as managers in city departments or third-party providers, understand how to integrate emerging technologies and innovation with existing information systems to improve the standard of living, and offer profitable services and economic opportunities for businesses.
 
Based on the forum’s eTom business process framework, the map describes smart city operations using a common language, and provides descriptions and definitions for business processes, sales and marketing, business fulfilment, assurance, and billing. This allows CSPs, vendors and other technology partners that have already built networks using eTom to work together in what is typically a complex and siloed environment.
 
The map also provides instructions for market strategy, customer management, products, services and resources. Finally, it caters for the unique features of cities by including sections on citizen engagement, communities, smart city operators and broader stakeholders.
 
For example, Inspur, a smart city operator and TM Forum member, is working with more than 100 cities in China to help them transform to smart cities. Ten of those cities, including JI’Nan and Loudi, have already implemented the map.
 
“TM Forum’s Smart City Operating Map has been a significant guide for the operation of Smart JI’Nan city,” said Jiang Zhenhua, chairman of Smart JI’Nan. “Based on eTom, this new map provides systematic view of smart city operations for JI’Nan managers and various stakeholders. It also helped Smart JI’Nan standardise the operation management system and business processes, integrate digital resources, and build a cooperative ecosystem so that we can provide quality-assured products and services to the public, businesses and government.”
 
Chen Dongfeng, executive president of the Inspur Group, added: “Today, most smart city projects are still in the initial stage and face issues such as lack of planning, data islands, unclear characteristics, insufficient effectiveness, lack of operations, lack of long-term sustainable mechanisms and so on. The Smart City Operations Map is a breakthrough. It not only helps smart cities avoid unnecessary and repetitive business processes, but also aims to innovate a new model of city management and service supply chain together with the whole digital ecosystem.”
 
TM Forum announced the map at its Digital Transformation Middle East event in Dubai this month. The Middle East event provides a glimpse into the topics to be featured at the forum’s flagship Digital Transformation World event in Copenhagen in June.
 
“Smart City initiatives around the world are striving to improve the liveability of cities as urbanisation becomes predominant for over half of the world’s population,” said Joann O’Brien, vice president of digital ecosystems at TM Forum. “However, the design and development of smart cities is still considered a massive feat and architects lack holistic tools to do the job. This new Smart City Operations Map provides a framework to solve challenges for both buyers and sellers to help make smart city initiatives a success.”
 
TM Forum is an association of more than 850 member companies that generate a combined US$2tn in revenue and serve five billion customers across 180 countries.