Chapter 14
What Can the South Learn from the
North Regarding the Implementation
of IoT Solutions in Cities? The Case
of Seoul-Born Smart Transportation
Card Implementation in Bogota
Maxime Audouin and Matthias Finger
14.1 Introduction
Over the past decade, the urban population of the Global South has been growing at an average rate of 1.2 million people per week (UN Habitat 2013), bringing
developing countries to center stage on issues relating to urban development. Due to
continuous urbanization and growth, cities have become increasingly complex environments (McHale and al. 2015; Hillier 2009), calling for the development of innovative solutions to ensure service delivery and well-being of their citizens. Collecting
and processing the data produced by the operation of urban infrastructure systems,
such as transportation, telecommunication, water, waste, or energy, can actually be
seen as one of those solutions. Creating an interconnected network (Internet) of
physical components from urban infrastructure systems (Things), that is to say the
Internet of Things (IoT) (Dijkman and al. 2015), is indeed viewed as an efficient way
to deal with much of the complexity associated with urban systems (Zanella et al.
2014), and for enhancing development. As a matter of fact, IoT solutions appear as
having the potential to support the development of solutions contributing to make
cities more resilient, sustainable, safe, and inclusive (SDG 11) and more generally
to environmental sustainability (MDG 7).
However, most of IoT solutions usually originate from developed countries, part
of what is often referred to as the “Global-North”, and one might wonder their
degree of transferability to the “Global-South”. This chapter thus seeks to explore
the conditions required to reproduce IoT “success stories” from the North to the South
by answering the following question: what can the South learn from the North
regarding the implementation of successful Internet of Things (IoT) solutions?
M. Audouin (B) · M. Finger
Chair Management of Network Industries (MIR), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: maxime.audouin@epfl.ch
M. Finger
e-mail: matthias.finger@epfl.ch
© The Author(s) 2018
S. Hostettler et al. (eds.), Technologies for Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91068-0_14
165
What Can the South Learn from the
North Regarding the Implementation
of IoT Solutions in Cities? The Case
of Seoul-Born Smart Transportation
Card Implementation in Bogota
Maxime Audouin and Matthias Finger
14.1 Introduction
Over the past decade, the urban population of the Global South has been growing at an average rate of 1.2 million people per week (UN Habitat 2013), bringing
developing countries to center stage on issues relating to urban development. Due to
continuous urbanization and growth, cities have become increasingly complex environments (McHale and al. 2015; Hillier 2009), calling for the development of innovative solutions to ensure service delivery and well-being of their citizens. Collecting
and processing the data produced by the operation of urban infrastructure systems,
such as transportation, telecommunication, water, waste, or energy, can actually be
seen as one of those solutions. Creating an interconnected network (Internet) of
physical components from urban infrastructure systems (Things), that is to say the
Internet of Things (IoT) (Dijkman and al. 2015), is indeed viewed as an efficient way
to deal with much of the complexity associated with urban systems (Zanella et al.
2014), and for enhancing development. As a matter of fact, IoT solutions appear as
having the potential to support the development of solutions contributing to make
cities more resilient, sustainable, safe, and inclusive (SDG 11) and more generally
to environmental sustainability (MDG 7).
However, most of IoT solutions usually originate from developed countries, part
of what is often referred to as the “Global-North”, and one might wonder their
degree of transferability to the “Global-South”. This chapter thus seeks to explore
the conditions required to reproduce IoT “success stories” from the North to the South
by answering the following question: what can the South learn from the North
regarding the implementation of successful Internet of Things (IoT) solutions?
M. Audouin (B) · M. Finger
Chair Management of Network Industries (MIR), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
e-mail: maxime.audouin@epfl.ch
M. Finger
e-mail: matthias.finger@epfl.ch
© The Author(s) 2018
S. Hostettler et al. (eds.), Technologies for Development,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91068-0_14
165