And things like smart metering, in particular, can provide them with tangible benefits".
It also includes a lot of schemes sometimes called "smart management" – using remotely controlled speed and diversion signs, ramp metering, and rapid response traffic management officers on patrol, to keep traffic at an ideal flow rate, open hardshoulder lanes to vehicles if necessary, and clear blockages as quickly as possible.
"The amount of data that a large corporate user can get from its estate is significant," says Marc Borrett, CEO of Reactive Technologies, "especially if you go down to minute-by-minute metering.
If spectrum is priced efficiently in an increasingly dynamic wireless world, the necessary overhead in network management and metering is likely to be quite costly.
But the top-down approach may have surprising advantages: in the establishment of the necessary standards to ensure that things can talk to things; in the construction of smart public infrastructure; and in the introduction of toll roads and other forms of metering.
Italy (surprisingly, perhaps) is a pioneer, at least in smart metering.
Within this market, there are three different strata of technologies, known as "stacks".The first stack is called "advanced metering infrastructure", or AMI.
An alternative "interconnector", bypassing Gazprom's metering station, has been proposed, and priced at just €20m.
For domestic and industrial consumers, it requires metering and a charge based on consumption by volume.
Through a smart metering system, at any given moment a citizen of Masdar will be aware of how much energy, water and carbon he or she is consuming compared with the average citizen.Down townThere is, though, more to this picture of ecotopia than meets the eye.
It will be a long, costly business to introduce the individual metering and billing systems needed to allocate charges fairly.
