By Harsh Thapar

I have now worked for more than a decade designing urban spaces and buildings which I believe and hope to be Smart solutions to the problems that reached my desk. Recently I have been pushed to consider this word ‘Smart’ a bit more carefully. This has happened unconsciously as I started hearing, SMART, all too often in Europe ( Smart Phone, Smart Car, Smart TV, Smart Watch etc etc) and now its all across the Indian media in context of the 100 new Smart Cities, recently announced by the new Indian government.

As I am a decently smart guy I didn’t spend too long on google to find out some definitions of SMART. Personally they were quite revealing to me.

People

a) The Oxford dictionary suggests that in normal common use the adjective, Smart,  refers to a person who is tidy, neat or well dressed. Fashionable, stylish and chic are easily used synonyms.

Certainly as a noun, Smart explains the intelligence of a person. Interestingly it is used to express: being keen, sharp or brisk. So the word Smart has always had a connotation of something that has rapid response.

Actually now that I think of life, perhaps more so in a big city, SMARTNESS in above sense is a very distinct and perhaps desirable pursuit and this is not a recent development.

Objectives

b) Interestingly the earliest use of SMART in business circles comes from Management by Objective theory by Peter Drucker ( 1950’s) and perhaps first use was by George T. Doran (in an article in 1981). He wrote about objectives for teams should be -SMART, a mnemonic acronym, giving criteria to guide in the setting of objectives. Note, this is well before our recent wave of Smart Technology.

S.M.A.R.T stands for objectives being Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-related.  If objectives of any group are SMART, then they are relevant and agreed by the people. They are therefore better understood and hence more easily attainable.

Technology

c) In relation to digital world I came across the reference to S.M.A.R.T as an acronym for Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology. This definition introduces the element of sensing/monitoring, big data collection and then data crunching to optimise a system for a visibly better performance.

This resonates very well with prevalent business case understanding of smart buildings and cities. It does, kind of, take away the lime light of Smartness from people, people’s objectives and shines it on digital systems and networks that have a self regulatory inbuilt intelligence.

In context of rapidly built Smart buildings and Cities for a developing country like India, which has a distinct cultural, economic and social context, I do feel that all the three definitions (perhaps in the above order) should be kept in mind.

It is the Smartness of PEOPLE and their Smart OBJECTIVES which will make any Smart TECHNOLOGY worthwhile and successful.

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Author: Harsh Thapar

Architect. Environmental Designer. Sustainability Expert

London

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/harshthapar