TOP 25 SMART CITY TECHNOLOGY CEO’S OF 2020

Smart city is a futuristic concept with almost everything automated. By automating the mundane tasks  you can have humans concentrate on creative tasks. Also automation will eliminate human errors. Centralised systems would help in controlling the operations at any part of the city from one place. For example, you get a notification when there’s fire at your garage and extinguishing it is just one click away. But with all the cool things associated with the idea, comes it’s fair share of security risks. IoT has given birth to a super connected technological landscape. In this scenario, a smart city is as secure as its weakest link. Because hacking into the weakest node of the network can pave the way to access even the most secure devices. Would Smart Cities come with the power of fighting these threats or this concept will vanish as a mere fiction? Let’s find out.

A Blockchain is a trusted distributed database system across a large network of users. This allows parties to cooperate to ease processes and transactions. Blockchain makes transactions more anonymous while maintaining security. In simpler terms, a blockchain is a database made up of blocks of information. Each block represents a certain process or transaction that has been made on this network of users. It is shared across a closed private network. The data is stored in blocks that are chained together. Once a block is added to the network, it becomes available for anyone to view. However, it cannot be modified. Now you know why Blockchain is transparent and secure. Though Blockchain is generally used as an encrypted digital ledger, it has other applications as well. Leveraging blockchain into the smart city infrastructure can addresses operational inefficiencies.

Imagine a city has everything that it takes to be called as a smart city; the basic amenities, physical infrastructure, well-planned governance institution and all. Can the city be still termed as a smart city? A city needs a better social engagement. It indicates a development planning of social infrastructure. People’s participation creates a wider scope for smart city development process. Let’s take a closer look at the sectors that create the threshold of social infrastructure; without which no city can be developed as a smart city. Education – In order to improve the student’s level of education and understanding, the concept of smart classroom has become extremely important. Nowadays the classrooms are designed to provide adequate information and knowledge. It is built in such a way that students gather and finds it extremely interesting and engaging.

The idea of a smart city has become extremely important when it comes to the context of defining the strength, performance, facility, demography and urban economy. How a smart city would perform? In what ways we can identify a smart city? When it comes to understanding a city in terms of scientific growth and implementing important policies with the right quotient of strategies, it has a tremendous impact on the socio-economic growth of the place and worldwide. Several reports and research studies indicated there will be a continuous rise in the population living in the urban city. Under this circumstance, the present Government needs to tighten the loose ends. The first important aspects are to make all the resources easily available for the people to utilize. Not just basic resources, but when it comes to luxurious resources, the people living in the urban city have first access to it.

To develop an ideal city that will the future filled with opportunities, it requires a basic economic infrastructure. There are two fundamental goals that any smart city would try to achieve. The first fundamental goal is to create a high-quality living environment with the right investment and planning. And the second objective is to make sure that the development is sustainable based on all integrated models like economic, social, transport, energy, environmental, and more. An objective of a smart city is to provide a modern quality of life that would include the use of innovative technologies to provide cost-effective and environmentally friendly city-life support systems. The growth plan includes making your city the industrial cities with science, innovation, and technology parks, slowly gaining control over the accommodation, people, environment, economy, and mobility.

When all focus is on building your smart city, how can we negate the role of the development of physical infrastructure? The purpose of physical infrastructure towards the development of a smart city is essential and critical. It provides the base foundation upon which a smart city is developed. Due to an increase in population and pollution, our Earth is going through a series of environmental changes. Our world is open to countless challenges every day. To have a smart city, developing smart physical infrastructure is vital. It is fundamentally essential because technology should be intelligently used. Today, some of the critical information technology (IT) companies have provided solutions for a sustainable planet and city, and by far the technology plays an important role in achieving this. Smart physical infrastructure is making our world a better place to live.

The concept of the smart city differs from person to person. For some, a city flourishes with its institutional growth, and for some, an excellent infrastructural development is a definition of a progressive city. To understand the sustainability and transition of a smart city, we must first trace the organic growth in its socio-technical system, which means that there is a need for a noticeable change in the institutional-material structures of the smart city. – “Regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life” (Scott, 1995) The three prominent dimensions that need to be carefully considered to order to determine the development of a city as a smart city are as follows: Regulative – A city requires explicit regulatory processes, such as formal rules, laws, policies, protocols, and standards to constitute a developed city.

The Moscow local government is looking to implement an often-discussed idea: an e-voting system built on blockchain. While many issues have been raised (particularly in Ireland) surrounding e-voting and the potential for corruption or data security issues, the local government of Moscow is to plough ahead and test a new e-voting system built on blockchain. Since 2014, the Active Citizen project has enabled almost 2m Muscovites to influence city management decisions and urban planning, but now it plans to overhaul the older online system by trialling blockchain e-voting. Blockchain e-voting means a person’s vote would be timestamped with details of their last vote thanks to the encrypted algorithm, while an illegitimate one would be spotted more easily by a digital system, or even those within digital-savvy communities.

Our Start-up of the Week, Kogii, is developing an innovative and feature-rich smart bike light to improve real-time safety for cyclists. “Kogii is a smart light that uses integrated sensors to understand what makes a dangerous road dangerous for cyclists,” Kogii co-founder Karl Roe explained. “There have been many innovations in the cycling industry that improve real-time visibility and safety, but there is very little real-world data that allows us to learn about what makes one road more dangerous than another.” Kogii aims to change that, by collecting completely anonymous data about a cyclist’s surroundings as they cycle. The market:  “Initially, we’re going to target cyclists, particularly cyclists who are interested in technology,” said Roe. “Any cyclist that is looking to invest in a really good product is a potential customer.

We need to take a human-centred approach to smart cities, writes Christopher Clements of PwC. Smart cities often come with an intake of breath. The very mention can get some nervous people thinking Big Brother state and all actions and movements will be monitored, data will be wide open, and robots will roam the street – some may be genuine concerns. Some cities, such as Amsterdam, have made reducing traffic and street light usage as some of their main initiatives. The concept of ‘smart traffic management’ monitors traffic in real time, and travel time on roads is broadcast to allow motorists to decide the most efficient routes to take. Other cities, such as Barcelona, have also implemented traffic-reducing concepts. Another example is Santa Cruz, where local authorities analyse crime data to predict law-and-order requirements, ensuring police presence is available where it is required at any point.

Is your city spying on you? TechWatch editor Emily McDaid reports from the latest 4IRC debate, which focused on smart cities and surveillance. Below, we’ve recapped the smart cities event held on 12 June at Belfast’s Oh Yeah Music Centre. Host Eimear Maguire said: “Is your city helping you be an active citizen, or is it just watching your every move? “Some statistics about Belfast: there will be 70,000 more residents and 50,000 more people working in the city by 2030. “Citizen data should encourage movement for everyone in that city. However, it’s getting harder for people to move through a city as the population grows. “How is data being collected; how is it being used?” Speaker: Deirdre Ferguson, Senior Consultant, Smart Belfast, Belfast City Council, We lead a range of urban innovation projects.m Some statistics about the Belfast Agenda:

Japanese tech giant SoftBank will be working on some smart city IoT solutions in the Irish capital. Members of the SoftBank team had attended an announcement at Dublin City Hall, detailing the company’s arrival to Dublin City Council’s (DCC) smart city testbed. Vice-president of the global business strategy division at SoftBank, Hidebumi Kitahara, spoke at the launch: “The development of an innovative IoT platform is a key strategy for SoftBank and we are delighted to collaborate with Dublin, with its unique smart city testbed, supported by a cluster of technology companies and an open and collaborative approach from Dublin City Council.” Kitahara said he hoped the partnership would lead to the deployment of technologies to make the lives of citizens and companies easier and more productive. First European project for SoftBank: The partnership with Dublin is SoftBank’s first European IoT outreach project.

While much of the public narrative around data involves breaches and misuse of private information, a new EU report argues that it could be used in positive and empowering ways. EU Horizon 2020 project Decode aims to reinstate individual control over personal data while also figuring out ways for that information to be used for the common good. Last September, Decode outlined its aims, which would be completed over a three-year period along with European partner organisations such as Nesta. While data has the potential for personal and public benefits, this needs to be planned for immediately, according to the report. The world at large is becoming more aware of the possibilities and potential dangers that data can hold (Cambridge Analytica and GDPR being major catalysts) and governments should be taking responsibility in developing protective technology for citizens, particularly as smart cities continue to develop.

Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto—the entity formed by Canada, Ontario, and the city of Toronto—have shared an early peek of design plans for Sidewalk Toronto, the much-hyped waterfront revitalization project that’s been touted as “the world’s first neighborhood built from the internet up.” Unveiled this week at a roundtable for community feedback, a set of rendered sketches show what Sidewalk Toronto “could look like.” A landscape of high-rise timber structures—a sustainable alternative to the ubiquitous glass-and-steel tower—feature heavily in an area dense with recreational amenities, housing, offices, commercial storefronts, and plenty of public space. A network of smart city pavement is envisioned as a series of precast slab tiles, designed for flexibility. The modular arrangement would allow for faster maintenance and repair and also allow for varying seasonal arrangements.

TORONTO — Behind a cloak of shrubbery in a gritty Toronto neighborhood lies a brick duplex, the home of Bianca Wylie, a 39-year-old mother of two on a mission to upend big tech’s latest pet project: “smart” cities. In a living room office overflowing with books and baby toys, Wylie settles into an armchair and unspools the story of how she found herself up against the mother of all Internet companies. In October 2017, Sidewalk Labs, a Google-affiliated company looking to make urban life more streamlined, economical and green by infusing cities with sensors and data analytics, announced plans to build the world’s first neighborhood “from the Internet up” on 12 acres of the Toronto waterfront, an area known as Quayside. Sidewalk aims to, for example, build an “advanced microgrid” to power electric cars, design “mixed-use” spaces to bring down housing costs, employ “sensor-enabled waste separation” to aid recycling and use data to improve public services.

The City of Abbotsford is partnering with an international research group to try to boost innovation and attract more technologically oriented companies. The city has teamed up with the Intelligent Community Forum, which evaluates cities across the world on how “smart” they are. It’s hoped participating in the forum – which included a session Wednesday on smart infrastructure and attracting foreign investment – will help spur growth in Abbotsford. The Smart City Abbotsford will try to create a “how-to book” that evaluates which “smart” infrastructure, digital technologies and other indicators are necessary to compete in the global market. The goal is to create a “Smart Infrastructure Foreign Direct Investment Readiness Strategy.” The project is funded through a $50,000 grant from the federal government, along with matching funds from the city, the University of the Fraser Valley and Telus.