Evolving Concept of Operations (CONOPs) Within the Global Safe City Industry, 2020

Understanding the Growth and Technology Strategies Influencing the Design, Acquisition, and Implementation of SmartSafe City Programs

In a city’s continued journey to progressing its municipality to a global smart city designation, a key tenet of Smart Cities is the establishment of SmartSafe City programs that can help centralize disaster response and public safety monitoring and response, and better coordinate public safety initiatives and goals. Many cities or law enforcement agencies have launched similar programs on a smaller scale or in limited neighborhoods within a city; however, the ability to scale these programs to serve broader public safety goals has continued to be a major challenge for cities both in the immediate and long terms. Cities struggle with scalability due to impacted program funding, outdated technologies, or a combination of both factors, which only continue to hinder a city’s progress in adopting broader initiatives. The success of many SmartSafe City programs also hinges on a delicate balance between technology products in use for public safety activities, strict processes in place to maintain ongoing operations or respond to and report detected events and threats, and the policies put in place regarding threat or incident reporting, data privacy, and compliance. Due to the significant differences in operational structure, political landscapes, digitalization progress, and public willingness to allow more robust public safety activities, cities are finding that a tailored approach to their concept of operations for SmartSafe City programs is the only way to come up with a solution that can work for them.

Research Scope

This research service includes information on the concept of operations variance across global cities that have been classified according to the publisher's internal SmartSafe City ranking criteria. Using this ranking structure, the publisher has classified the select top-100 cities across the world according to their level of development for their SmartSafe City programs. Additionally, this research looks into the range of concepts of operation structures for SmartSafe City Programs, classifying them according to 3 types of programs based on human resources, technical reliance, automation, and other factors. This study also focuses on the physical and digital threat landscape that is increasingly targeting city operations and public safety, as well as profiling relevant use cases of each type of SmartSafe City concept of operations model from across the globe. This service then focuses on technology and solutions that best fit the customer needs of each SmartSafe City program type, relevant growth opportunities for solution vendors, and the solution types and vendor landscape currently operational in the industry.

This research service also discusses how various technology solutions and the technical maturity of cities affects how they plan for future investments in their SmartSafe City programs. This service also identifies industry growth opportunities by city development type and provides a succinct conclusions section that highlights trends in the market.

Key Issues Addressed

• What are the types of concept of operations that influence how SmartSafe City programs are run globally?
• What are the similarities that exist between cities utilizing the various models?
• What security technologies and capability mix are required to build and achieve the goals of a broader SmartSafe City program?
• Which are the key stakeholders involved in a SmartSafe City program, its system design, purchase, and implementation?
• What are the critical pain points and threat vectors facing city operators, necessitating the use of more SmartSafe City solutions? How can they be overcome?
• What are the top Mega Trends of new technologies poised to disrupt or drive growth and investment in SmartSafe City solutions? Which vendors could bring about these solutions?
• What are the key capabilities that city operators continue to explore and look for potential investment opportunities?