When a typical citizen thinks of a smart city, they think of a city that is fully connected like a smart home. A city that has lighting, train schedules, traffic lights, and everything integrated to make the citizen feel safe, on time, and provide maximum comfort. The truth is, the definition is different for every city and for every country. A true smart city starts with an ecofriendly environment that is sustainable, reliable, and builds technology on top of not being a drain on natural resources. This can include everything from renewable energy like solar to urban gardening on buildings and backyards. The goal is to make a city sustainable. Once the vision is understood, then technology plays a part. Whether this is enablement of driverless cars or train schedules depends on the city itself. If you consider all the possibilities, we then understand the number of potentially accessible devices, services, applications, and resources. While not all of these … [Read more...] about Smart cities and the threat within
Niua smart city
Why HPC Matters: Smart Cities
Driven by new digital technologies, cities around the world are getting smarter in their approaches to managing municipal services and interacting with citizens. And that’s a good thing, given projections that show we could add 2.5 billion people to the world’s already-burgeoning urban populations by 2050.[1] To keep our urban areas livable, workable and sustainable — three goals of the globally-focused Smart Cities Council — all cities need to become smart cities.[2]Smart cities leverage data from connected devices and powerful analytics tools to keep traffic flowing, protect public safety, reduce pollution, maintain public assets and improve the delivery of city services. Use cases for smart city technologies range from tracking the condition of roads and bridges and detecting water levels in flood-prone areas to optimizing the usage of street lights and giving citizens around-the-clock access to city services via mobile devices.Looking for a parking … [Read more...] about Why HPC Matters: Smart Cities
What it takes to become a smart city
This is part of our Road Trip 2017 summer series "The Smartest Stuff," about how innovators are thinking up new ways to make you — and the world around you — smarter. The city of the future is going to be cool, with smart tech that helps you live your life. But no one knows exactly what the fantastical city we've been dreaming about looks like, how it'll work and what it'll do. Take car companies, for example. When they dreamed up their ideal smart city, they imagined sensor networks in roads that told commuters the perfect time to head to work, allowed cars to self-drive to their destinations and even automatically park in a garage. Some of those innovations are already here. Apps for Apple's iPhone and mobile devices powered by Google's Android software can alert drivers when they should leave for an appointment and suggest the best route to get you where you're going. Meanwhile, tech companies like Uber, Alphabet and Apple and car makers including … [Read more...] about What it takes to become a smart city
These smart cities in Italy put Silicon Valley to shame
This is part of our Road Trip 2017 summer series "The Smartest Stuff," about how innovators are thinking up new ways to make you — and the world around you — smarter. A little after 2 p.m. on an impossibly muggy summer day in June, I squeeze my sweaty, 6-foot-1-inch body into the passenger seat of Antonio Puliafito's shiny black Maserati. As excited as I am about speeding along the Italian coast in a luxury convertible, Puliafito isn't showing off what his nifty '90s-era, 6-cylinder Italian sports car can do. He isn't even particularly interested in the ride, though we both relish the breeze after a punishing day in the heat. Puliafito wants me to look at his phone. On it is a map of the area we're navigating in the hilly city of Catania on Sicily, the island just off the toe of Italy's boot-shaped mainland. The city dates back nearly 2,800 years, when the Ionians settled there. Today, Catania is home to 313,000 people, in addition to industrial, chemical … [Read more...] about These smart cities in Italy put Silicon Valley to shame
Becoming a smart city takes more than sensors and buzzwords
Your city is dumb. The potholed streets, coin-operated parking meters, and drafty brick buildings many of us interact with every day haven’t changed much in a century. But it’s finally happening. From Oslo to San Diego, cities across the globe are installing technology to gather data in the hopes of saving money, becoming cleaner, reducing traffic, and improving urban life. In Digital Trends’ Smart Cities series, we’ll examine how smart cities deal with everything from energy management, to disaster preparedness, to public safety, and what it all means for you. What is a smart city? Not even the people building them seem to know yet. “Get 10 people in a room and ask what a smart city is, you’ll get 11 answers,” Bob Bennett, Kansas City, Missouri’s chief innovation officer, told Digital Trends. That might be true, but most involved in smart city projects agree on one thing: No one’s really there yet. “I think it’s … [Read more...] about Becoming a smart city takes more than sensors and buzzwords