Data Monetization and Revenue Generation Emerging as New Priorities for City Governments

In the wake of COVID-19, cities and municipalities increasingly find themselves cash-strapped, having overspent during the pandemic on various services such as policing and healthcare. At the same time, they need to finance the deployment of new technologies such as digital twins, robotics, and connected infrastructure to make their cities more resilient. According to global tech market advisory firm ABI Research, these new technologies are critical to preparing cities for a slew of new potential threats such as climate change-related catastrophes and cyber-attacks. 

“Cities can no longer just rely on traditional budgets based on taxpayer’s money,” says Dominique Bonte, Vice President End Markets at ABI Research. “The hunt for new revenue sources has begun. Next to some limited early initiatives related to advertising, cities are now also looking into monetizing the data generated from the connected assets they own or control.”  

This was illustrated recently by the North Texas Innovation Alliance (NTXIA), a consortium of technology suppliers and cities in North Texas, including Dallas, Arlington, Irving, Plano, Frisco, and Garland. The NTXIA announced it will explore and evaluate options to monetize data from connected assets such as buildings, lighting, and roads and the assets themselves by issuing a call for solutions via the govtech procurement platform Marketplace city. New business models such as private funding and revenue sharing options are also being considered for financing new smart mobility, fleet electrification, and circular economy approaches. One area of interest is related to curb pricing schemes to monetize increasingly valuable roadside real estate. 

“The arrival of 5G enabled edge cloud capabilities will further facilitate the sharing and monetization of mission-critical low latency data enabling remote and automated traffic management, driverless transportation, and emergency response management. It will drive the value of connected infrastructure and asset data to around US$2 billion by 2030 globally,” Bonte concludes.  

These findings are from ABI Research’s Smart Cities and Smart Spaces quarterly market update report. This report is part of the company’s Smart Cities and Smart Spaces research service, which includes research, data, and analyst insights. Depicted in a PowerPoint format, the Market Update provides a snapshot into current and future market opportunities and threats for a specific technology as well as focusing on a selected key market and associated trends.