- More than 26 cities globally will be smart cities in 2025 with more than 50 percent being in Europe and North America

MOSCOW, Feb. 26, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The continuous increase in the number of people living in urban areas is leading to a growing overpopulation problem in modern cities. This also causes social, political, energy and environmental instability. The so-called smart city concept has been developed to address all upcoming challenges by implementing modern infrastructure enabling "smart" and "intelligent" solutions and technologies in the cities of today.

Frost & Sullivan Sales Manager Maxim Perevezentsev recently gave a lecture outlining a Strategic Opportunity Analysis of the Global "Smart City" Market until 2025 at the Open University Skolkovo (OpUS) Winter School. Mr. Perevezentsev presented the company's vision on the future development of urban areas, including a stakeholder analysis providing information on the total addressable smart city market size and smart city business models as well as funding mechanisms.

According to Frost & Sullivan smart cities are anticipated to create huge business opportunities across different industries with a total market value of $1.565 trillion by 2020. A smart city concept in this context encompasses a number of smart products which are characterized by an intelligent sensing technology that is increasingly being integrated with Internet technologies, thereby allowing the product to react to and communicate with the changing environment around it. This leads to optimal operations and improvement in efficiency.

"Frost & Sullivan's visionary research group has identified and analyzed one of the significant Mega Trends, entitled "Smart is the New Green"."Smart" as a value proposition has increasingly been replacing "Green" concepts," Mr. Perevezentsev noted. The 'smart city' seen as a complex concept includes several basic parameters such as: smart energy, smart buildings, smart mobility, smart healthcare, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart governance and smart education, and a smart citizen.

Smart energy for example is a future trend that ensures efficient, intelligent power consumption and management within an urban community. Global cities will only function through the installation of both a smart grid and a form of energy storage. The impact of energy storage in a smart city is expected to be felt most strongly in the US and Europe, followed by the APAC region.

Smart technology is another important parameter for the smart city development. Technologies such as smart metering, wireless sensor networks, open platforms, high-speed broadband and cloud computing are key building blocks of the smart city infrastructure. The deployment of new technologies for the creation of smart cities is gaining a strong momentum in Europe; this is accentuated by the numerous pilot projects running at regional, country and EU level.

Citizens' mobility and traffic conditions are usually the biggest problems in today's modern urban cities. Mobility projects including Intelligent Transport Systems (eco-navigation traffic signal control systems, parking guidance and information systems, efficient passing of intersections), charging infrastructure for electric vehicles, and traffic and travel Web-based services will help to improve traffic situation. Growing demands in environmentally friendly solutions will further benefit electric vehicles in the long term.

"Frost & Sullivan believes that the smart city concept is the future of every modern urbanized city. Every smart city has a unique number of features and characteristics as well as unique business opportunities. Companies in the smart city space will not only partner and converge among themselves to offer 'smart' capabilities but will also start converging with different participants in the ecosystem. This will open multiple growth opportunities across all industries," Mr. Perevezentsev concluded.

If you would like to receive the slide deck of Mr. Perevezentsev presentation or speak to him directly, please contact Julia Nikishkina, Corporate Communications, at jula.nikishkina@frost.com.

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Contact:
Julia Nikishkina
Corporate Communications – Europe
P: +7 (499) 213 0156
E: julia.nikishkina@frost.com
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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan