Yeah, it’s open, but… Image by @donghuangmingde from Pexels
What would you do in the kitchen with four basic ingredients? What do you think a great chef would do with them? No less than 90% of you would have done a less elaborate dish than that of the great chef, given that cooking is an art that demands knowledge, time and experience. Next question, what would you do with the data from an open data portal? What do you think an expert data analyst would do with them? Continue reading
ICT technologies are very useful tools for the construction of the 21st century city, however by themselves do not provide the desired “intelligence”. Image by Henry Marsh under CC0 License at Pexels
The Council of Vilagarrina (*), fully aware of the importance of the environment and with the clear intention of becoming a smarter city, has recently acquired three cutting-edge digital environment stations to control the quality of the air in three differents points of interest of the municipality. A consulting company has developed the whole solution, that implements an advanced wireless communications system between the stations and the municipal data center, as well as an internal web application in which city officials can consult the stored data. Finally, the developed solution implements a web service that allows to show in the City Council’s website the latest data acquired by each one of the stations. This solution, that makes use of the last technologies at each stage of the technological chain, is a clear example of how technology itself does not provide intelligence to the management of a urban space. Welcome to the gadget city!
It is important and very interesting to have this information, but it must be treated and analysed so that it can provide the desired “intelligence”. At this point the question is, what steps should follow the Council of Vilagarrina to move towards the Smart City? Continue reading
Free public Wi-Fi at Pompidou center in Paris to cover the need for connectivity of the citizens. Image by Dave Jimison at flickr
Among the basic services that any municipality must provide to its citizens there are the provision of drinking water and sewage, the street lighting and electricity, the waste management or the guarantee for mobility.
The irruption of ICT technologies about 20 years ago gave people immediate access to information and more recently, thanks to wireless data transmission technologies, ubiquitous access to it. Nowadays ICT technologies have reach a level of maturity that makes of them another utility, an essential, basic service today we could not give up. Continue reading
With the growth of urban population cities must grow and face new challenges caused by the growth process itself. Image by Christian Kadluba at Flickr
If you follow the topic of the smart cities you may have read and/or heard to a disgusting extent that “more than the half of the world population lives in cities”, and that it is expected that by 2050 the world urban population reaches the 66%. These are astonishing data, at least the first time you hear about them, taken from the population statistics by the UN, but do not themselves justify the adoption of the concept of smart city. There are notable differences among the different global areas, so that in Europe, which is a reference in the smart cities field, the rate of population is close to 80%, while in developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia, the phenomenon of massive migration from rural to urban areas is currently taking place. Continue reading
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, in fact any idea, no matter how complex it is, can be easily conveyed with just a single image. Surely anyone of us did visual schemes in our student days to learn the concepts of any subject. Images go beyond languages, for instance, a red octagon on a street or road would make us stop immediately, regardless the text written into it. There are even commercial brands that exploit the power of images and replace their trademark name by their logo, which becomes a worldwide recognized symbol which identifies them universally.
The huge quantity of concepts involved in the smart city can result in a mesh. Image generated at WorldClouds.com
In this post I would like to share with you an image for the concept of smart city, my own vision based on the knowledge I have gained on this field, and which has allowed me to order in certain way the thematic complexity behind the construction and management of the 21st century city. Continue reading
Many of the 21st century cities have been using for several years the label “smart city” to define themselves, introducing themselves as cutting-edge cities that firmly bet for the use of ICT technologies to improve their management and the relationship with their citizens. Among all the meanings of the adjective smart, usually there has been taken the one of “intelligence” but, can be considered a city as intelligent? Continue reading
The concentration of population in urban areas is a worldwide phenomenon that is currently growing. That’s the reason why the 21st century cities are characterized by being more efficient and more effective in their relationship with their citizens as well as in the use they do of those resources they have and those they manage, furthermore they are also characterized by their increasing awareness about environmental issues and their implication to do their bit to solve them. Continue reading
The Bit City 