Travelling to work, meeting friends for a catch up or just doing some shopping are often taken for granted by people with no known disabilities. For the visually impaired, these seemingly simple things can be a serious challenge.
But imagine a city equipped with technology that enables the visually impaired to recognise people, places or even bank notes, helping them to live more independently whether indoors or in a public place. That's the promise of so-called smart cities, which use things like internet-connected devices and artificial intelligence to improve services and the quality of life for their residents.
Weiterlesen: Smart cities could give the visually impaired a new outlook on urban life
Good ideas are pouring in which are set to improve the city. Usually these are combined with the availability of digital information that is passed on very promptly so residents can move around their city or town more easily. Physically or digitally. Think about, for example, the online services for citizens’ affairs. Passport application? This can be done by applying for it digitally. Rubbish bin full? Then a sensor tells the municipality to send a truck to empty it. Is there a lot of traffic because of an event in a stadium? Then the traffic department can control the traffic lights in advance in such a way that the cars are able to move around more quickly. Is there a traffic jam somewhere? Sensors in the road surface tell the traffic department that the speed on adjoining roads must be reduced in order to prevent them from clogging up as well.
Parsons Transportation Planning Director Hamid Iravani says planners should focus on what has always worked for their cities
Modern Times, a 1936 Charlie Chaplin film, shows its star being fed his lunch by an automated machine. The result is a comical yet effective way of conveying the message that automation only makes a system smarter when the foundation of that system is already smart. Conversely, if the basic framework is inefficient, automation exacerbates the inefficiencies.
The concept of the “Internet of things” refers to the spread of Internet connectivity to everyday devices: phones, tablets, alarm clocks, cars, thermostats. And in the Internet of things, you — a human being — are a thing. You’re surrounded by sensors that try to infer facts about you, and you’re surrounded by actuators that make things happen to chivvy you along or stop you from proceeding. The intelligence, judgment, self-knowledge and sentiment that are unique to human experience — and impossible to simulate in the statistical inference systems we call “artificial intelligence” — are jettisoned by the system as unquantifiable irrelevancies. The system doesn’t ask you how you feel or what you want: it tries to guess based on what you’re doing.
A smart city of the sort that Sidewalk Labs proposes turns this surveillance-and-inference system into a pervasive straitjacket that wraps around everyone who sets foot on the public street. Indeed, the smart city might even be making observations about you while you’re in your home, from the sensors in your mattress to the sensors in your toilet.
Weiterlesen: A smart city should serve its users, not mine their data
The internet of things (IoT) is key to smart cities in order to make them more intelligent, efficient and sustainable. However, digital security investments in smart cities are struggling to keep pace, leaving the potential for future vulnerabilities to the IoT ecosystem, according to a new report from ABI Research.
Smart city security spending coming from financial, information and communication technologies (ICT) and defense industries will account for 56% of the projected $135 billion in total cybersecurity critical infrastructure in 2024, ABI Research forecasts. The remaining 44% of the spending will be split between energy, healthcare, public security, transport, and water and waste sectors. This spending will leave IoT woefully underfunded and vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Weiterlesen: Digital security for the internet of things in smart cities severely lagging