City life and collective settlements go back a long way than most of us think. The concept that comes to mind when we say city now is the gigantic ecosystems in which tens of thousands or even millions of people are sheltered, adorned with countless-storey buildings reaching out to the sky and with vehicle traffic at all times. However, when we look only a century ago, we see that the cities of that period were more primitive in every aspect compared to today. As we go back in time, we realize that the solutions produced for transportation and accommodation needs were shaped according to the social, cultural and technical structure of the period. The Romans had to build roads that were strong enough to endure, because these roads were vital for ruling their huge empire. Throughout history, kings have surrounded their cities with walls because it was their biggest security measure for invaders from outside. The states on the Silk Road built caravanserais for merchants to accommodate and ensured that trade took place as quickly as possible. As can be seen from these examples, transport and housing needs have always been present, and better ideas were constantly raised to meet these needs.
The cities we live in today, along with many solutions to facilitate our daily life, bring along problems that humanity has not encountered before. Problems such as traffic and finding parking are important problems that emerged with the widespread use of motor vehicles and we spend a significant part of our daily lives, although we have only started to feel their existence in the last century. We have a know-how and technical infrastructure that we have never had before to satisfy such needs. Smart cities, the cities of the future, come into our lives to develop modern solutions to our modern problems.
Smart Cities And Smart Solutions
Before talking about what smart cities can add to our lives, it would be more correct to talk about what the smart city concept means. In fact, the concept of smart city does not have a universally accepted lexical meaning. It is a concept that has similar but different meanings from person to person, from region to region and from country to country. However, we can define smart city systems as a set of systems that basically optimize a city ecosystem in physical, social and economic areas. This definition is a broad generalization due to the nature of the smart city concept. Some technologies that smart cities use to remove all this workload are gradually entering our lives. Internet of Things technology is one of the terms we hear frequently when it comes to smart cities. From the garbage management of cities to the autonomization of public buildings, from noise monitoring to smart car parking, the Internet of things can be used in many areas.
The internet of things is not the only technology that has a say in the digitalization of cities. Image recognition technology is also among the technologies frequently used by smart cities. Thanks to this technology, smart cities can regulate the flow of traffic autonomously, automatically notify the necessary authorities in possible emergencies, observe sudden changes in weather conditions, shorten the time to search for parking spaces by marking the appropriate parking areas, and produce solutions to future problems that may arise with the development of such technology. Image recognition technology acts as an eye for a smart city. Unlike a normal camera system, this technology, which has the potential to minimize human control according to the task, is inevitable for many sectors in the future.
There is no optimization problem that smart cities cannot overcome today with the internet of things and image recognition technology. These systems, which can play a major role in every conceivable area of daily life, have already been implemented in some modern cities. Cities such as Singapore, Barcelona and New York use these two technologies together to make life easier for city dwellers. As the city grows, the cost of digitalization increases. Therefore, it is important to start a digitalization process in a smaller city or in a certain part of the targeted city. Another important pillar of digitalization is the people living in that city. In order for any city to become smarter today, city dwellers must be included in the system in some way. This process can realistically progress only with smartphone applications and active participation of users. After all, if a smart city cannot communicate with the people living in the city, what it can do to help them is extremely limited. Giving the user the feedback they want and being able to do this in real time should be a must in a smart city.
The Future Of Image Recognition Technology
Image recognition, especially deep learning supported image recognition, is a technology that has a bright future in every field. The image recognition supported by deep learning, which is used to analyze a huge database optimally and is similar in theory to the thinking algorithm of the human brain, will solidify its place as a technology used in every field from smart cities to medicine in the future. As parkpilot, our aim to use this technology is to show the empty spaces in the parking lot in real time in the parkpilot mobile application, thanks to image recognition technology and ideal camera angles in any parking lot we serve. In this way, the user can see the closest empty parking lot, the general information and the price tariff of this parking lot, and the owner of the parking lot can quickly access all the information of the parking lot via the phone application. Our goal is to alleviate the workload of parking lot staff and to solve the traffic problems caused by cars looking for parking lots, which every person living in big cities may encounter frequently.
The heavy traffic problem, especially seen in big metropolises, is not a problem that can be solved with more roads, underpasses and bridges. In order to eliminate this type of problem, solutions containing high technology should be produced and the digitalization of cities should be accelerated. People's quality of life can be improved with proper urban planning and smart city solutions in areas with high human density. A traffic flow managed by image recognition and the Internet of Things will always be more efficient than a traffic flow that is left alone and makes their lives difficult rather than serving drivers. Every step taken to shorten the daily transportation time of people is a step taken to increase efficiency in business life. If we take into account that smart cities have smart public transportation systems, we will better understand the importance of image recognition systems in terms of both security and system optimization.
The smart city concept, which seems to be too distant to us today, can quickly enter our daily life if it is studied enough like everything else. The internet of things, which will bring great changes especially in the field of transportation, and image recognition technology, which is an eye that can interpret data for computers, are innovations that have the potential to benefit our lives in every field. These innovations need to be rapidly integrated into the systems we already have. Only in this way can smart cities become widespread and people's lives in every field can be easier. If we neglect these systems, we will start the 4th Industrial Revolution one step behind and it will be much more burdensome to close the gap in the future.