From 15 to 17 November 2016, Barcelona will be hosting the sixth edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress, a world meeting point for public administrations in all fields, but especially local ones and companies that work in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to urban services.
Smart cities are in fashion: local governments all around the world are striving to be positioned as such, i.e. cities that use ICT to become more efficient, sustainable and participative. The organicist view of smart cities considers the urban space to be a system of systems: the city is conceived as a flow of data that needs to be monitored and optimised with new technological instruments. For example, the use of sensors on waste containers to show whether they are full or empty would help to plan waste collection rounds better: there is no need for trucks to stop at each container but only at those that are full, thereby saving energy and costs. The same idea can be applied to public lighting: sensors are used to turn on the lights when pedestrians are near and depending on the amount of daylight, rather than coming on automatically every day at the same time. They could also be used in the flow of public transport on the surface, through controlling traffic lights.Llegeix més »
If you have started to read this article, then you must be someone who’s concerned about the future of our country in a world at the height of the digital revolution. A revolution that compel us to innovate continuously, and not only in order to improve but, most of all, to stay competitive in a world where distances are no longer measured in kilometres or hours, but in megabits. In a digital society, competitiveness will be measured by the capacity to access knowledge in a collaborative manner.
