Internet of Things (IoT) and the Internet of Everything (IoE) are touted as technologies that are necessary to run Smart Cities.

They include use of  sensors, beacons, telematics, fitness trackers, mobile apps, global positioning devices, etc that become ‘connected’ devices to gather massive amounts of data.

They become useful when the data go through analytics that make better decisions by civic authorities based on citizen’s feedback.

In Smart Cities appropriate decisions can be taken by analysing the data gathered from traffic, repair and maintenance of roads, car parking, pipe leakage etc.

Transitioning from ‘connected’  to ‘smart’ takes a lot of upfront work, but at the end   all of this connected data is only valuable if local authorities use  it to make better decisions.

Market research firm  Gartner forecasts that globally 20.8 billion connected things will be in use by 2020, with an astounding 1 million devices coming online each hour.

Everything from computers, smartphones, appliances, nodes, gateways and home security systems to cars are expected to be connected, inter-operating and sharing data in ways few of us can fathom today.

For its part, India is expected to fully participate in this movement with the number of connected devices expected to increase from around 200 million to over 2.7 billion by 2020, according to the IoT policy draft from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

India is heavily investing to create a $15 billion IoT market by 2020 with the aim of   devoting at least half of overall IoT investment into industrial, commercial applications and machine to machine (M2M) applications.

Initial applications will focus on four key areas: Smart Cities; agriculture; healthcare; and manufacturing. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India envisions developing 100 smart cities, an effort that observers say could require public-private investment of more than US$150 billion during the next several years.