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Month: November 2017

People-Centered Urban Design Focus-Smart City Week 2017 Bangladesh

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Dhaka, 13 November 2017- To build the home-grown vision of people-centric smart cities for all with a theme of ‘Smart City Smart People’ – a ‘Smart City Week 2017′, from 29 november to 05 December has been organized by UNDP Bangladesh, Access to Information (a2i) Programme at the Prime Minister’s Office and urban sector stakeholders. The week will be inaugurated through a three day (29-05 Dec) ‘Smart City Innovation Hub’ at Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novo Theatre.

Having focus on building people-centered cities by not only investing in technology and infrastructures alone but also engaging smart people who care, respect and pay values to the society – the Smart City Week will be a part of ‘Smart City Campaign’. Apart from the three-day “Smart City Innovation Hub” and a range of events like hackathon, roundtable discussion, photo exhibition, kite festival, citizen’s forum, “City Day”, children’s art competition and many more are put under the week’s slogan ‘co-creating cities’….

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Inclusivity and Accessibility: A Smart Business Decision

Quinte West Chamber of Commerce » Inclusivity and Accessibility: A Smart Business Decision

If there were an untapped multi-billion-dollar market, would you want to know about it? Would you want to know if you were inadvertently blocking those consumers from doing business with you? And would you try to get ahead of your competitors by courting them?

That market is Canadians living with disabilities. It’s no niche market: one in five Canadians has a disability. And they represent purchasing power worth a whopping $55 billion annually.

Now, factor in the following:

– More than one in three seniors has a disability; and….

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Policy #6: Road design leads to real Complete Streets | Smart Growth America

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This post is part of Complete Streets month at Smart Growth America; we will be sharing a series of blog posts that cover and explain each of the 10 revised policy elements in some detail.

Complete Streets implementation relies on using the best and latest state-of-the-practice design standards and guidelines to maximize design flexibility. Creating meaningful change on the ground both at the project level and in the creation of complete, multimodal transportation networks requires jurisdictions to create or update their existing design guidelines and standards to advance the objectives of the Complete Streets policy. Road design is key to truly make streets safer and accessible for all people regardless of age, race, ethnicity, ability, income, or how they choose to travel….

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Microsoft using AI to empower people living with disabilities

Microsoft using AI to empower people living with disabilities

“Accessibility by design” is an important concept for Microsoft, and one that underpins many of its artificial intelligence-powered products, including Seeing AI.

Announced on Wednesday among a series of other AI tools, Seeing AI is a free mobile application designed to support people with visual impairments by narrating the world around them. The app — which is an ongoing research project bringing together deep learning and Microsoft Cognitive Services — can read documents, making sense of structural elements such as headings, paragraphs, and lists, as well as identify a product using its barcode….

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Take A Deep Dive Into #SmartCity Innovation and Inclusion

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The Smart Cities Library™ is a premier online resource that helps private/public organizations build/refine #accessible & #inclusive #smartcities that ensure no citizen is left behind or excluded

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URBAN-X | Top 10 key takeaways from Smart City World Congress in Barcelona #SCEW17

URBAN-X | Top 10 key takeaways from Smart City World Congress in Barcelona

e may have reached peak ‘smart city’. This trend depends on the continued densification of global urban areas and the exponential penetration of the internet into industries that were previously isolated from digitization. To see the peak in person, it’s best to get a glimpse at the Smart Cities World Congress in Barcelona; an event that brings together 17,000 people from around the world including 600 municipal leaders and over 500 international exhibitors.

At Urban-X, we see a new model for engineering the city as a service emerging; one in which top-down planning meets with bottoms-up participation and design that integrates people, businesses, buildings and other infrastructure. Open data and platforms that encourage creativity and economic vitality are a defining characteristic of the cities we want to live in.

The key to facing the climate crisis, security vulnerabilities and rapid urbanization is real citizen engagement and collaboration between the public and private sector. Startups have an important role to play, but the true economic potential of this space won’t be fully unlocked until we get good policy change and business model innovation from large companies.

Here are ten key takeaways from the Smart City World Congress in Barcelona that inform our path forward:

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10 Lessons in More Engaging Citizen Engagement | Smart Cities Dive

Crowdsourcing with a diverse set of citizens in a urban center

s more people choose to live in cities, local governments find themselves facing increasingly complex issues in city-making. Demands for affordable housing and public transit, tensions around gentrification and density, even connecting the dots between city planning and climate change, are just some of the more high-profile critical conversations our cities need. Solutions can come from many places, but smart cities realize that engaging the broad public in the city-making process leads to better answers and a deeper public ownership of our future.

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Smart City Citizen Engagement Programs – iProximity

Smart City Citizen Engagement Programs – iProximity

Often a City will begin their Smart City Initiatives with large infrastructure projects such as smart lighting, smart water meters, security, etc. but many of these programs have no direct influence on local citizens, visitors or help local businesses. Directly engaging citizens with information programs and helping local businesses to grow through smart programs have shown to have positive impacts on adoption and acceptance of Smart City projects.

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European Union: SMARTCities 2018

SMART Cities 2018 – LCR4.0

When: Thursday 1st February 2018 Where: Stamford Bridge, London  Across the UK we are seeing more and more examples of smart city transformation. Key ‘smart’ sectors utilised by such Cities include transport, energy, health care, water and waste. Against the current background of economic, social, security and technological changes caused by the globalization and the integration process, cities in the…

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London wants to become the World’s smartest City – METACITIES

London wants to become the World’s smartest City – METACITIES

London’s ambitious Plan

The capital of Great Britain is the biggest city in Europe and with more than 200,000 people working in London’s technology sector the city has many resources they can use to make London more sustainable, effective and liveable. To meet current and future challenges the Smart London Plan was created. First published by the government on their official website in December 2013, it was updated in March 2016. Its intention is to show how the creative power of data and technology can be used to make the city of London function better and solve real-world problems. The idea behind the plan is to generate data that supports the city and its transport, social, economic and environmental systems. The Smart London Plan encourages Londoners to actively participate in shaping the cityscape of their capital and hence the future of London. Although the Smart London Plan focuses on London, the ideas presented in this plan can serve as inspiration for cities worldwide and help those cities become smarter as well.

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Smart City Living Labs: An Intersection of Innovation and Community Building | Wilson Center

Living Labs: An Intersection of Scientific Innovation | Wilson Center

Here in the Science and Technology Innovation Program, we cover a lot of broad subjects under our little umbrella. We specialize in exploring the convergence of disparate technologies to illustrate how they can be interwoven – whether that be from serious games, biogenomics, citizen science or the Internet of Things (IoT). From outside, our multi-dimension may seem disorienting, but in reality our different programs present a multi-faceted understanding of science innovation. One way to see how these sundry approaches work together is through the phenomena of a “living lab;” a research concept with the ultimate goal of linking the scientific community to citizens with a desire to get involved.

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21 Features of the Future Sustainable #SmartCity | Smart Cities Dive

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21 Features of the Future Sustainable City We already have many of the ideas and inventions that are needed to make cities truly sustainable, but there is a considerable delay in implementation caused by entrenched thinking and lack of training amongst those in administrative positions. Other ingredients that will arrive from left field are presently in development but will need…

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The Top Smart Cities in Each Region of the World | IoT Institute

The Top Smart Cities in Each Region of the World | IoT Institute

For a city to live up to its potential, investing in gee-whiz technology is not enough, say researchers at IESE Business School in Spain. A true smart city must score well in terms of sustainability, connectivity, innovation, as well as social cohesion, explains the most recent IESE Cities in Motion Index. Here, we present the top city in each of the regions described in IESE’s research.

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Smart cities will evolve through citizen engagement

Screenshot-2017-11-16 Smart cities will evolve through citizen engagement

Helping everyone to participate

This growth in citizen participation is forcing governments to address issues of technological inequality and accessibility. For example, in Israel, the Negev hub for innovation will help to connect disparate Jewish and Arab communities located in this desert region. The hub will provide them with the technology needed for improved access to government services and programmes and enhance residents’ quality of life. In addition, an increase in on and offline collaborative methods such as Decidim, Barcelona’s new voting system and Stockholm’s Open Lab will give people from all backgrounds a greater opportunity to shape city policy and programmes, as well as identifying better and innovative ways of doing things.

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The Data Digest: Citizen Engagement Will Put Smart Cities On The Map

The Data Digest: Citizen Engagement Will Put Smart Cities On The Map

“It takes a village” – but when it comes to building smart cities, it takes far more than that. Developing smart cities requires strategic partnerships, creative business models, change management – and according to my latest report, co-authored with my colleague Jennifer Belissent – citizen buy-in. In order for smart city technology to take hold, governments must incorporate citizens’ perspectives into their strategy long before giving their plans the green light.

Gathering citizen perspectives on so nascent a concept is a classic challenge; however, current attitudes and behaviors signal citizen readiness for smart cities. For instance, as US and UK online adults become aware of smart city solutions, they grow deeply intrigued. And, according to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® survey and behavioral tracking data, online adults’ current device activities lend themselves to participating as engaged digital citizens:

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The Case for Citizen Engagement in a #SmartCity

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Last year we have done some research with the consultants Frost and Sullivan on Smart Cities and Citizen Engagement. As part of this project, many municipal decision-makers in Europe were interviewed about which services were the focus of their data-centric projects.

We found that the top four services (with over 75% of respondents mentioning them) were: Traffic management and Parking; Energy efficiency; Access to public data; and Citizen engagement. So two of the goals here are about decentralizing, crowdsourcing and prioritizing the relationship and the participation of citizens. This “engagement dimension”, we believe, is the necessary foundation for attaining major gains in managing traffic, energy, waste, etc.

The same research showed decision-makers in European cities are now understanding the power of collaboration, engagement with citizens. They mention – at the top –  employing tactics such as “open innovation” (hackathons, etc); Citizen reporting and uploads; Open source software; Public analytics dashboards, etc

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CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT FOR SMART CITY DEVELOPMENT

CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT FOR SMART CITY DEVELOPMENT

Technology provides a new dimension to urban development, which has often been overlooked by government, businesses and municipal bodies- the engagement and participation of citizens. As cities grow, they tend to cluster into districts with each having its own identity, cultural dimension, and character. These factors play a big part in the provision and appreciation of infrastructure and services. For example, if the majority of citizens in a city district oppose the development of overhead electricity transmission lines for safety or aesthetic reasons, and reach consensus on a solution to share a private land with the government to construct underground electricity cables, then it makes perfect sense to take those perceptions and consensus into account….

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Chicago implements CIVIQ smart city solution to boost citizen engagement

Chicago implements CIVIQ smart city solution to boost citizen engagement

Chicago is implementing CIVIQ Smartscapes’ smart city solution in a bid to boost the information available for citizens and raise the level of engagement between the city and its residents.

The project forms part of a wider AT&T Smart Cities spotlight city pilot and will see CIVIQ installing interactive devices in downtown Chicago along with ‘high-speed’ public Wi-Fi. The devices will also come equipped with applications such as wayfinding, interactive information about transportation services and safety alerts, while residents will be able to notify officials about issues around the city too.

“We are excited to take this technological leap and put Chicago at the forefront of smart cities throughout the country,” said Brenna Berman, chief information officer for the City of Chicago….

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Why Citizen Engagement is heart of Barcelona’s Smart journey

Citizens are truly first: Why Citizen Engagement is heart of Barcelona’s Smart journey | SITEC

Barcelona is acclaimed as one of the leading Smart Cities in the world, with studies such as those by Juniper Research, as well as the Hong Kong government, corroborating this statement. However, it begs the question – how did Barcelona manage to do this, and can their methods be replicated in other cities or locales, such as Malaysia?

In pursuit of these answers, the SITEC Media team managed to catch Maria Sisternas, CEO of Mediaurban, a Barcelona-based content creation agency that specialises in urban and smart technology solutions to answer these questions.
According to Sisternas, Barcelona believes strongly in citizen engagement, as well as cooperation between the private and public sector — the city is investing a large amount of money towards finding out what their citizens think about their projects….

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