Smart city tech can save several lives that would’ve been lost in road accidents with the help of IoT-based accident detection tools.
Approximately 1.3 million people die annually due to road traffic crashes. According to WHO, the injuries caused by such accidents are the leading cause of death in young adults aged 5-29 years. Generally, such accidents are caused due to reasons such as visibility issues, a lack of coordination and communication between multiple vehicles and poor traffic management.
The idea of the smart city is not new, but with 5G network service available nationwide, it creates more opportunities for cities to innovate and roll out new, or better, services for citizens.
“The blending of the Internet of Things and 5G connectivity has the potential to not only improve the reliability of services, but also the cost structure, as cities become more efficient,” said Mark McDiarmid, Senior Vice President of Radio Network Engineering and Development for T-Mobile.
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The smart city is a significant opportunity to ensure the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities. Improving the quality of life and increasing the well-being of all citizens is one of the main goals of developing smart cities. The accessibility of urban public spaces determines people's living conditions, and technology provides new opportunities for autonomy for an increasing number of inhabitants with disabilities. A community is not "smart" if it is not inclusive and accessible.
Goal No. 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 is to build sustainable cities and communities. According to the United Nations, by 2050, more than 6.4 billion people will live in urban areas, nearly two-thirds of the world's population. Moreover, the world's population is aging, and with age comes a higher level of ill health, impairment and disability. Making our cities smarter, more accessible and inclusive will become increasingly important over the coming decades.
Weiterlesen: Smart, Sustainable Cities Must Include People With Disabilities
It's hard to imagine that the term "smart cities" has been circulating for what feels like close to 20 years. During that time, much of the world has digitally transformed. Technology continues to evolve exponentially. The capabilities of technology solutions have expanded beyond almost belief.
Smart cities should be defined by the ability to use data — and data-driven processes — to improve the quality of life for citizens and, ultimately, ensure a city's sustainability (within itself and the context of the world with which it resides). The ultimate goal is equity — to bring this opportunity to the masses so no individual or community is underserved.
Smart city projects have already seen a lot of criticism for being too technology driven. Writer and urbanist Adam Greenfield, for example, explains the unprecedented dominance of technology businesses – or commercial actors, as he calls them – such as Microsoft, Cisco and Siemens in shaping the future of our cities with the following analogy: “It is as if the foundational works of twentieth-century urbanist thought had been collectively authored by United States Steel, General Motors, the Otis Elevator Company and Bell Telephone rather than [Swiss-French architect and urban planner] Le Corbusier and [American-Canadian journalist, theorist and activist] Jane Jacobs.”
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