Smart Cities: Connected Public Spaces - 3rd Edition

This study investigates major application areas for connected public spaces including smart street lighting, smart parking, smart waste collection, air quality monitoring and smart city surveillance. By the end of 2023, the global installed base of individually controlled smart street lights amounted to 23.4 million units (excluding China). There were at the same time 1.3 million smart ground parking sensors installed worldwide (excluding China). The market for smart waste sensor technology is yet at an early stage, comprising some 1.3 million connected collection points globally (excluding China). The smart city surveillance equipment market was worth € 12.5 billion in 2023. The global installed base of air quality monitoring systems amounted to 154,000 units in 2023. Get up to date with the latest information about vendors, products and markets.

The smart cities market continues to gain momentum

The public spaces of a city - such as streets, squares and transportation hubs - have become more and more crowded and congested by traffic. Meanwhile, safety concerns are also heightened as the risk for criminal activities, traffic accidents and even terrorist attacks grows larger. Improvements in the management of the public spaces of cities therefore become important to ensure that growing challenges of energy consumption, environmental degradation and public safety are addressed in the best possible way. The advancement of IoT technologies has opened up entirely new possibilities for cities to efficiently manage assets, resources and services across multiple city verticals, and effectively given rise to the concept of smart cities. Five smart city verticals have emerged as particularly important for the management of public spaces - smart street lighting, smart parking, smart waste management, urban air quality monitoring and smart city surveillance.

Smart street lighting solutions enable remote monitoring, control and management of street lighting networks. By the end of 2023, the global installed base of individually controlled smart street lights amounted to 23.4 million units (excluding China). Growing at a CAGR of 21.9 percent, the number is expected to reach 63.0 million in 2028. Europe is the leading adopter, accounting for more than 40 percent of the installed base. North America was the second largest market while the Rest of World region currently constitutes the fastest growing market. At the end of 2023, the leading smart street lighting vendor was Dutch Signify with an installed base of 5.3 million lighting controls. Included in the top three are also US-based Itron and British Lucy Group with its brands Flashnet and Lucy Zodion.

Smart parking solutions based on connected parking occupancy detection sensors offer the possibility to provide real-time visibility of parking availability anywhere in a city. The dominant sensor types for such applications are in-ground and surface-mount sensors, collectively referred to as ground parking sensors. In 2023, there were 1.3 million smart ground parking sensors installed globally (excluding China). The number will grow to 3.2 million units by 2028. Europe accounted for around 49 percent of the installed sensors while the North American and Rest of World regions represented around 259,000 and 410,000 devices respectively. At the end of 2023, the leading vendors in the market were Frogparking, CivicSmart and Urbiotica.

The primary hardware needed for smart waste management applications is smart waste sensors that measure fill-levels in waste bins and containers throughout a city. These sensors may either be pre-integrated into bins and containers, for example as a smart bin offering, or retrofitted on existing collection points. The installed base of smart waste sensors reached 1.25 million units globally in 2023 (excluding China). The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22.8 percent to reach 3.50 million units in 2028. Europe constitutes the leading market, accounting for around 45 percent of the global installed base. At the end of 2023, the leading vendors of smart waste sensor technology were the US-based, RoadRunner, Waste Harmonics and BigBelly as well as Norwegian REEN.

Traditional air quality monitoring systems have been around for decades to enable regulatory monitoring operations and typically consist of highly advanced and expensive stations deployed only at one or a few locations in major cities. The last decade has however seen a growing adoption of increasingly cheap and small non-regulatory and networked air quality monitoring devices that can serve as useful complements to traditional regulatory monitoring networks. The global installed base of such devices amounted to 154,000 units in 2023 and the figure is expected to grow at a CAGR of 26.4 percent in the next five years. The market is still in a nascent stage. Europe, North America and China lead the adoption. Leading vendors include companies such as Aclima, Aeroqual, Airly, Breeze Technologies, Clarity Movement, Ecomesure, Envea, Environmental Instruments (AQMesh), Kunak Technologies, Libelium, Met One Instruments (Acoem), PurpleAir, Sailhero and Vaisala.

Smart city surveillance refers to the use of networked security technology to improve safety levels in urban areas. The market is dominated by fixed network surveillance infrastructure, but applications such as body-worn cameras and gunshot detection sensors have also emerged as important complements for city surveillance operations. The smart city surveillance equipment market was in 2023 worth € 12.5 billion, with Asia-Pacific and in particular China accounting for the majority. The market will grow at a CAGR of 16.8 percent to reach € 27.3 billion by 2028. Leading video surveillance vendors include the Chinese vendors Hikvision and Dahua Technology as well as Swedish Axis Communications, while the leading providers of urban gunshot detection and BWCs are SoundThinking and Axon respectively.

Highlights from the report:

• Insights from 70 new executive interviews with market leading companies
• 360-degree overview of the smart cities ecosystem
• In-depth analysis of smart street lighting, parking, waste collection, air quality monitoring and city surveillance
• New detailed profiles of 117 solution vendors
• Summary of industry trends in each market segment
• Market forecasts by region and technology lasting until 2028

The report answers the following questions:

• Who are the leading companies in the smart street lighting market?
• Which are the main types of parking space occupancy monitoring solutions?
• Who are the leading smart parking sensor vendors?
• What are some of the key considerations when deploying air quality monitors?
• Which are the main providers of low-cost air quality monitors?
• Who are the leading providers of smart waste sensor technology?
• How much is the smart city surveillance equipment market worth?

Who should read this report?

Smart Cities: Connected Public Spaces is the foremost source of information about the smart street lighting, smart parking, smart waste, air quality monitoring and smart city surveillance markets. Whether you are a sensor vendor, device vendor, government agency, city manager, utility, public service operator, telecom operator, investor or consultant, you will gain valuable insights from this in-depth research.