Lee-Lean Shu, CEO, GSI Technology. Cities are changing in ways most people are only now starting to notice. To put it simply, they’re getting a lot smarter. Sure, we’ve heard about smart cities for over a decade, but those early promises and predictions of a fully connected urban life have never really come to fruition. Now, however, things are starting to come into focus. But before we get there, let’s take a step back. The first wave of IoT-powered “smart” products to hit the market were tailored for the home: things like smart locks, smart bulbs, smart thermostats and smart smoke detectors. Sure, as individual products they were pretty cool. But the overarching benefits of greater efficiency, safety and cost savings never materialized. That’s probably why the bigger vision of a fully integrated smart home never really caught on. Sure, you could build your own integrations with Amazon Alexa, Google Home and a pile of compatible third-party devices, but that was limited to DIY hobbyists and high-end installations. As a result, the smart home never went mainstream. Commercial building service providers did a bit better. Integrators connected lighting, HVAC and power systems, but even that was a narrower win than the industry once imagined. So what’s different now? The answer is edge convergence. The sensors, low-cost microcontrollers and ubiquitous connectivity that excited everyone about IoT in the first place have now been joined by cloud-based AI and cheap remote cameras. Put all those pieces together with AI and you get a level of automation that simply wasn’t economical a decade ago. “Smart cities” can now use cloud-based AI to spot patterns in real time, and that capability is being put to work on public safety. The Huge Payoff Of Smarter Cities This evolution has quietly produced a market that’s already