Smart City

City as a complex system with simple answers

[complex-systems-science]

In Praise of Automation The automation of activities can enable businesses to improve performance by reducing errors and improving quality and speed, and in some cases achieving outcomes that go beyond human capabilities. Automation also contributes to productivity, as it has done historically. Source: http://ift.tt/2ixiZUB

[complex-systems-science]

GIS Provides an Open Platform for Global Engagement on the Sustainable Development Goals At Esri, we believe that geographic information system (GIS) technology provides a critical framework for understanding, communicating, and organizing information about our world. Source: http://ift.tt/2iHqpB0

[iseeidea]

10 Drivers of Smart City Planning in 2015: Smart city maturity – cities will seek performance standards to benchmark and track their progress. Emerging economies – IDC expects smart city IT investment to grow significantly, driven by innovations in China, India and the Gulf states investment in high-tech infrastructure. Internet of Things – By 2018, researchers believe local government investment in IoT initiatives will represent more than 25 percent of all government external spending in the area. Resilience – Severe weather concerns will drive collaboration between public safety and sustainability programs, including a 30 percent hike in urban predictive IT investments by 2018. Sourcing innovation – IDC sees new tech procurement techniques generating a 25 percent growth in collaborative city operations over the next few years. Civic clouds – Nearly one-fourth of cities will be using shared cloud services for data management by 2018. Third platform architecture – Seventy percent of city CIOs will lack an information architecture strategy for cloud, analytics and connected devices in 2015. Data strategy – IDC predicts that 25 percent of mid-size cities should have “whole-of-city” data and analytic strategies rolled out in the next three years. Chief digital officers – The number of chief digital officers should grow fivefold in cities and counties by 2018. Civic tech – U.S. state and local governments will invest approximately $6.3 billion in civic engagement technologies in 2015.

BRIAN HEATON,  10 Drivers of Smart City Planning in 2015, Government Technology ( a division of e.Republic, Inc., USA)

[iseeidea]

The Farmscrapers Towers concept aims at articulating the Claude Bernard urban development zone and its linear forest with the new master plan of Aubervilliers. As urban articulation of ecological corridors: the three vegetable towers implanted on an urban forest in the shape of a huge manta ray.

This manta ray filtering the air of the tunnel pile up a mixed programming under the shape of vertical farms with floors of agriculture fields cultivated by their own inhabitants. The objective is to repatriate the countryside in the heart of the city and to reintegrate the food production locally.

Following the Climate Energy Plan of Paris aimed at reducing 75 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the 2050 Paris Smart City project is a research and development project about the integration of high-rise buildings with energy-plus houses, working together to produce all the energy for the area.

This study was carried out for Paris City Hall by Vincent Cal­lebaut Architectures agency with the engineers of Setec Bâtiment in the summer of 2014.

VINCENT CALLEBAUT ARCHITECTURES,  2050 PARIS SMART CITY, Green Building and Sustainable Strategies Magazine

[iseeidea]

The Times of India: What is a smart city 

A city equipped with basic infrastructure to give a decent quality of life, a clean and sustainable environment through application of smart solutions.

FYI: A crore (/ˈkrɔər/; abbreviated cr) is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to ten million (10,000,000; in scientific notation: 107). It is widely used in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Nepal, and is written in these regions as 1,00,00,000 with the local style of digit group separators. (Wikipedia) 

[iseeidea]

There is no longer much of an excuse to ignore many of the measurable properties of cities. Cities across the globe and through time are now knowable like never before, across many of their dimensions: social, economic, infrastructural and spatial.

Luís M. A. Bettencourt, The Kind of Problem a City Is, SFI WORKING PAPER: 2013-03-008  (pdf)

[iseeidea]

Thanks to Google Trends.

[iseeidea]

One take-home message of the conference [ “Re.Work Future Cities Summit” in London’s Docklands, 04-05 December 2014] seemed to be that whatever the smart city might be, it will be acceptable as long as it emerges from the ground up: what Hill [Dan Hill, Future Cities Catapult] calls “the bottom-up or citizen-led approach”. But of course, the things that enable that approach – a vast network of sensors amounting to millions of electronic ears, eyes and noses – also potentially enable the future city to be a vast arena of perfect and permanent surveillance by whomever has access to the data feeds.  One sceptical observer of many presentations at the Future Cities Summit, Jonathan Rez of the University of New South Wales, suggests that “a smarter way” to build cities “might be for architects and urban planners to have psychologists and ethnographers on the team.” That would certainly be one way to acquire a better understanding of what technologists call the “end user” – in this case, the citizen. After all, as one of the tribunes asks the crowd in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: “What is the city but the people?”

The truth about smart cities: ‘In the end, they will destroy democracy' | Cities | The Guardian

[iseeidea]

Arup estimates that the global market for smart urban systems for transport, energy, healthcare, water and waste will amount to around $400 Billion pa.

“SMART CITIES: Background paper, OCTOBER 2013″ and report for the UK’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) by Arup “The Smart City Market: Opportunities for the UK, OCTOBER 2013″

[iseeidea]

Amsterdam (AMS), Copenhagen (CPH), Genoa (GEO), Hamburg (HAM), Lyon (LYO) and Vienna (VIE) - the infographic shows what the challenges of each Transform City (EU-FP7 TRANSFORM project) in terms of Energy Usage. 

The graph is based on Transform Cities baseline reports prepared in 2013 as part of the Smart Energy Cities, KPI’s definitions, that you can see here -- 2013-Context-for-Smart-Energy-Cities.pdf

The report itself worth the reading.

[iseeidea]

Smart Cities Week 2015, Salzburg, 04.03.2015 - 06.03.2015. Programme-Highlights: The first day addresses the questions: “Which technologies are necessary for a successful Smart City-development?” and “Which projects support the sucess of a Smart City?”. Such topics as “Big Data in the Smart City” and “Drawbacks and Opportunities of Participation” will be discussed. Parallel workshops on specialist topics will take place.

Smart Cities Week 2015

If you are interested in Smart Cities and as well as in technologies, energy and transportation then this event could be in your schedule.

Oh, and by the way participation is free of charge.

[iseeidea]

The art of naming open data sets for smart cities.

It is interesting how confusing results from Google search could be.

There is city of Linz in Austria. It is nice and quite smart. Its local government works hard to provide new services to the local community. One service is open data about city. Well data sets do not provide simple answer on such question like "How is city of Linz doing?" but at least some information can be found.  

So knowing about that I searched for this site like: linz data sets. The very first result in Google for this search were: "LINZ Data Service". Looks promising. The only problem is that actually "LINZ" means "Land Information New Zealand" not the city in Austria.

I wonder if in New Zealand knows about another Linz.

Reference links: city of Linz in Austria /  Linz open data / LINZ Data Service

[iseeidea]

"Introduction to Metrics for Smart Cities" course from edX Once participants understand the importance of a Smart City and its classifications, they will learn to identify the impact of using metrics to measure its performance. A very important skill to develop is how to classify a metric and to identify its units or measure. The main focus of this course is to develop participants’ basic knowledge of a Smart City by being able to identify the parameters involved in its creation. Participants will also be able to define and establish the necessary metrics to measure the performance of a Smart City.

edX — Introduction to Metrics for Smart Cities — Develop a basic understanding of the elements of a Smart City and learn the impact of using metrics to measure its performance.

This course looks promising  and it starts on 23 March 2015.

[iseeidea]

Currently, 53 % of the world’s population resides in cities, a figure that is expected to rise to 70 % by 2050. Cities are cultural and economic centres which today generate 70 % of the global GDP. Investing in them may be a priority for many governments, but doing so sustainably and effectively can be a challenge – this where ISO 37120:2014 can help.

How does your city compare to others? New ISO standard to measure up (2014-05-14) - ISO  

ISO 37120:2014 "Sustainable development of communities -- Indicators for city services and quality of life". It would be really inserting to compare different cities purely on theirs KPI without any subjective feelings.  In the video they mentioned that 250 cities are already using ISO 37120:2014.