Working Group Alpbach on the “Digital City of Tomorrow”
Together with Michael Mürling, I organised a workshop on behalf of Forschung Austria at the Alpbach Technology Forum. It’s theme was “Digital Cities of Tomorrow“.
The workshop was motivated by the fact that we are living in the age of cities: estimations suggest that by the year 2050 over 70 % of the world’s population will be living in cities (BTW: in many countries in Europe we had the moment of urbanisation already in the 1950s). There are many open issues and research questions related to this development, from urban development, transportation and economic development to social services, healthcare, energy, public safety, education and more.
In general the participants (30 overall) agreed that overall the objectives towards smart cities are driven by factors such as sustainability, energy efficiency, high quality of life, safety & security, etc. and that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will (only) serve as enabling technology. Amongst the services that ICT could offer several aspects were mentioned:
- visualization as a communication tool between different parties
- geographic information systems for handling spatio-temporal data
- semantic interoperability of the various data sources to allow a standardized processing
- open data policies enabling communities to create low-cost services
- real-time systems for managing and monitoring huge data volumes in a near real-time manner
- simulation and prediction to enable decisions by stakeholders in a timely manner
- as well as the possibility for new business models enabled by digitized processes.
At the same time the participants pointed out the need to address the vulnerability of connected services e.g. smart meters and to consider the privacy of customers and to take into account the threats post by decentralized autonomous systems.
As a conclusion there was a consensus that technology-only approaches towards smarter cities will not be sufficient to realize these cities. As a basis a holistic approach is needed, considering the different cultures, the willingness to experiment – especially at the level of decision makers -, the constraints in public funding and most prominently the interaction with the citizens (e.g. crowd intelligence, inclusion of local knowledge, open innovation, modern lifestyles of digital natives).
Further details at www.forschungaustria.ac.at
Add comment August 26th, 2011
