2 Reasons Why Adopting Smart Mobility Could Fail
Smart Mobility and Future Society
‘Smart Mobility’ is starting a new era. However, there sure is a transient phenomenon or even side effects. Even the term itself is yet to be fully established, hence it reminds the majority of people of electric wheels or scooters – which we will have them called ‘personal mobility’ here.
Personal mobility has brought out social controversies as well – whether to see it as an innovation or acceleration of traditional technology fade-away.
Actually, smart mobility is not only about personal device and business matters. It needs better and bigger debates in order to serve its purpose as a solution to serious social issues.
Social issues = city issues = traffic issues
UN expects 68% (currently it’s at 55%) of the world’s population to reside in major cities by 2050 (‘Revision of World Urbanization Prospects’, UN, 2018).
The actual meaning of having 7 out of 10 people living in a city really means the beginning of a social issue, which in this case can be a city issue. And the biggest issue of all city issues is traffic issues.
We must find a solution to overcome and to improve the quality of life, for everyone in the city.
It’s becoming easier to find problems and limitations of ‘Doughnut’ city plans already. For example, as one entire city’s radius has become bigger, getting from satellite city A to satellite city B became tremendously more difficult.
On the other hand, crater phenomenons at old urban centers also became very intense.
In addition to city structure reformation, the complexity and inefficiency of traffic management must also be solved.
The governments must adopt and amend policies in accordance with the expanding city and corporations must lead the upcoming developments and business projects.
Also, the civil society in the city must consider their own quality of life, environment, energy, etc. in order to stress the importance of the need to innovate – or the need to innovate in the right direction.
Governments, corporations, and civil societies – these all three must be well balanced and especially, social opinions must be reflected in decision-making processes.
Smart Mobility, A Technological Revolution
In order to solve all social issues = city issues = traffic issues, smart mobility could be the only solution.
A technological revolution arises when there is no way the existing technology can meet the needs of society. As smart mobility, to be precise, and the networked traffic environment, integration of the traffic system, and installation of new systems have always been this way.
First expressways, then autonomous driving roads, EV logistics roads – It’s time for the government to implement practical steps in order to consider the actual traffic efficiency and the environment.
Smart mobility can definitely be the best solution to traffic issues in future cities.
It needs a general revolution in different areas such as infrastructure, method, and means of use – which is expected to be solved soon with our current developments.
This is one of the most active industries across the world today, and we shall keep the following facts in mind.
- Safety and Fairness of Driving Data
The most important factor in smart mobility environment is data. Especially when data – driving data created by the driver and the car – is used as a primary source to realize comfortable and energy-efficient environments.
As we all are aware by now, driving data can be used for organizations or corporates as industrial materials.
As it gets more and more important, and collecting, organizing, and storing driving data is becoming a sensitive issue – since it can require very high-level security as private data.
Safety of driving data is almost regarded in the same light as car security.
As the number of application area grows, traffic policies and regulations which were restricted to the physical safety of cars are now being broadened to data-focused cybersecurity area.
As much as it’s related to humans’ lives, we believe that the term ‘automotive security’ must enjoy a higher status. It might actually be the most important security in the world!
The value of driving data has risen incomparably. All the data created in the smart mobility environment are profit-making industry materials.
However, driving data that are being used in various industries aren’t quite giving benefits to the actual data providers. This is caused by the lack of fair sharing of benefits and methods of refinement and transaction.
It’s only fair when the usage of data can lead to a fair distribution of benefits to the providers when companies are willing to purchase reliable data from the providers – something like Data Copyright Management System.
- Smartification of Legacy
As discussed, smart mobility is the most important technology that can resolve future social issues. However, smart mobility right now is stuck among unnecessary disputes. Some company can’t just create a platform and try to monopolize the market.
And we also can’t just destroy the old platform just because there is a new one. People are still living in and being affected by the existing ecosystem.
Even we take the morality out of this, the amount of energy being consumed at this very moment is still a waste. Therefore, we need to come up with a proper ‘smartification of legacy’ where we can survive after the storm has passed, the technological revolution storm.