IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

After the national IoT plan, a digital transformation strategy and discussions around a 5G policy, the Brazilian government has launched a new smart cities program.

An old program, launched in 2012 and called Cidades Digitais, aimed mostly to interconnect city-managed buildings with a fiber optic ring.

Over 200 localities have received infrastructure and related initiatives under this program, which is being terminated.

Brazil ranked seven on the World Bank list assessing the current state of digital transformation in the public service across 198 economies. The result was released by the federal government on Thursday, Agencia Brasilreports.

According to the bank’s GovTech Maturity Index 2020, the country stood ahead of all other nations in the American continent, including the US and Canada.

For the first time since surveys on internet access began, more than half of the rural population in Brazil is now connected to the internet.

The milestone represents opportunities for companies providing connection and services over the internet, such as OTTs, platforms for e-government, and e-commerce facilitations.

In 2017, ArchDaily Brazil reported that Smart City Laguna would become the first “smart city” in Brazil. With its inauguration scheduled for that same year, the venture opened with 1,800 units in its first phase, and in its final phase, 7,065 units divided between residential, commercial and technological uses.

Located in the Croatá district of São Gonçalo do Amarante, the first Brazilian smart city occupies 815 acres directly connected to the federal highway BR-22, which crosses the states of Ceará, Piauí, and Maranhão, starting in Fortaleza towards Marabá, in Pará. Its location has economic reasons: the proximity to Pecém Harbor, in Fortaleza, the Pecém Steel Company (CSP) and the Transnordestina Railroad make Croatá a strategic hub that has been recently occupied by technological companies, becoming a “digital belt” a little over 50 kilometers from the state’s capital.

The digital divide between urban and rural schools in Brazil, captured in different studies throughout the years, has not changed. In fact, this gap might have even increased.

According to the latest ICT Education study, carried out by the research arm of Brazil’s internet steering committee CGI, just 34% of the schools in rural areas had a computer connected to the internet at the end of 2018.

Curitiba, the capital of Paraná, will be the first city to start a project to develop a series of solutions for 5G testing, with a focus on smart cities and improving peoples' lives

During Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022, TIM Brasil and Huawei announced that they have signed a collaboration agreement (MoU) to develop "5G City", with the aim to realize a smart city through 5G networks, predict the evolution of technology, monitor networks, and improve user experience. The first pilot city will be the capital of Paraná, Curitiba. The agreement is for two years and can be extended. The first test is expected to be finalized by December 2023.

"You may or may not like the city, but you can never say you have ever seen anything like it before." This is how Oscar Niemeyer, the creator together with the urban planner, Lúcio Costa, defined Brasilia.

Located on the region called the Central Planalto in Brazil, on the shores of the Lake Paranoá and between the parallels 15 and 20 -as St John Bosco predicted, when a revelation had told him that the future civilisation would settle there-, Brasilia** is the only city built in the 20^th^ century to be declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO.

Researchers at the New Cities Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Paris that seeks to tackle the most intractable issues facing the world’s fastest-growing cities, joined by a small team of health-care workers from Rio de Janeiro, recently concluded an 18-month trial in one of the poorest parts of the city, the favela of Santa Marta, a community of 8,000. Santa Marta was chosen for its unique geography and its remoteness—the rows of shanty homes appear to tumble down this hillside community where, until recently, there was no sewage, running water, or electricity to the upper reaches of this slum community, and access to even basic health care for the sick and elderly almost always involves an arduous slog downhill and up again.

Curitiba received this Thursday (27/10) the trophy of one of the seven Smartest Communities in the World, according to the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) Award, being, for the second consecutive year, the only city in South America selected for the Top 7. The award was presented during the IFC Global Summit 2022, at the Ohio State House, seat of the Ohio State Government (Ohio, USA).

“I say and repeat that innovation is only valid if it is an instrument of social transformation and equal opportunities. Based on this, we have built, in recent years, a work carried out by many hands that today is crowned in this worldwide recognition of, once again, being among the seven Smartest Communities in the world. We form an intelligent, creative, resilient ecosystem, with humanity, sustainability and the use of technology in favor of citizens”, celebrated Mayor Rafael Greca.

Curitiba will test a technology smart grid first 5G by the end of the first quarter of 2022. It will be the only capital and city with more than 500 thousand inhabitants in Brazil to participate in the process.

The capital of Paraná was chosen to be part of the Conecta 5G pilot project, launched on Thursday night (16) by the Ministry of Communications and the Brazilian Agency for Industrial Development (ABDI).

The capital of Paraná state in southern Brazil was voted "Most Intelligent City in the World" last year at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. Its mayor Rafael Greca explains why his town keeps racking up the accolades.

Q: What makes Curitiba stand out from other cities?

Our history of innovation dates back to the 1870s, when the Rebouças brothers, Brazil’s first black engineers, did some great projects in our region.

Initiative in Brazil’s second largest city leverages $10m commitment by the Climate Pledge to accelerate deployment of zero-tailpipe-emission electric trucks.

The Climate Pledge, in collaboration with C40 Cities, has launched the Laneshift initiative for zero-tailpipe-emission freight vehicles in Rio de Janeiro.

In Rio, the road transport sector is the second largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), accounting for 36 per cent of the total. To reduce GHGs, Rio’s local authorities, including the Municipal Department of Transport and the Traffic Engineering Company (CET-Rio), are working in collaboration with C40 Cities and inviting transport logistic companies to focus on reducing emissions in the city’s Low Emission District. This central freight hub in downtown Rio accounts for nearly half of transportation GHG emissions in the city.

In a ceremony held at the Colonial Plaza Hotel on the 4th, the city of Pindamonhangaba received new Smart City certificates from the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT). The recognition attests to the municipality's compliance with the ABNT NBR ISO 37122 and ABNT NBR ISO 37123 standards.

During the event, certificates were awarded for the analysis and audit of 122 indicators, divided into 61 for smart cities and 61 for resilient cities. With this achievement, Pindamonhangaba obtained Gold certification in the ABNT NBR ISO 37122 standard and Platinum in the ABNT NBR ISO 37123 standard, the highest level in the certification process.

Cities are undergoing rapid transformation around the world, driven by technological innovation and the search for more efficient and sustainable solutions. Among the terms increasingly found in urban vocabulary is the concept of “smart cityor “smart city.” But after all, what really defines a smart city And what are its characteristics?

One smart city It is much more than a city with an advanced technological infrastructure. It is an integrated urban ecosystem Information and communication technology (Information and communication technology) and physical devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT)The Internet of things) to improve the efficiency of city operations and services, while striving to communicate more effectively with citizens.

Brasilien setzt unter der Präsidentschaft Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvas auf Open Source Software. Der neu ernannte Chef des nationalen IT-Institutes ITI, Sergio Amadeu, will alle Regierungsstellen ermutigen, auf Linux und Co. umzusteigen. "Wir haben im Bereich der Bundesregierung einige Open-Source-Inseln. Wir wollen aber einen ganzen Kontinent schaffen", sagte Amadeu. Demnächst sollen die mehr als 400.000 elektronischen Wahlmaschinen auf Open Source umgestellt werden, berichtet AustralianIT.

Das kurz vor seinem Erlass stehende Dekret soll Ministerien dazu verpflichten, grundsätzlich OSS einzusetzen. Lediglich im Falle, dass Ministerien nachweisen können, dass der Einsatz von proprietärer Software notwendig ist, sollen die Ämter von diesem Grundsatz abrücken können. Gegenwärtig wird OSS nur in 7 von 22 Ministerien eingesetzt, das geplante Dekret soll dieser Situation begegnen.

"Mehr und mehr ist von freier Software die Rede, besonders im öffentlichen Bereich und in den Unternehmen, aber immer weniger von Windows", so die Manager. Beide Firmen sehen dies als eine unmittelbare Reaktion auf die derzeitige Politik der Regierung, Ministerien und öffentliche Verwaltungen auf den Einsatz von freier und quelloffener Software zu verpflichten. Ermutigt durch diesen sichtbaren Trend hat Novell gestern Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) in Brasilien auf den Markt geworfen. Darin sind die wesentlichen Office-Komponenten wie Textverarbeitung, Internet-Tools und weitere Programme enthalten.