Is the pandemic highlighting just how powerful (and invasive) smart city technology will be?
- Data-powered ‘smart cities’ provide rich insights into social trends
- Insights from surveillance tech and sensors are being used to track the impact of the coronavirus
- Of course, this carries some big implications on privacy
Smart cities rely on the collective intelligence derived from the technologies embedded into the framework and services of its future-forward metropolis
Weiterlesen: Exploring the privacy gray areas in smart city technologies
Quantela’s Coronavirus Emergency Response platform also includes an app that enables citizens to contribute to as well as access critical information.
Smart city platform provider Quantela has launched a command-and-control centre for crisis management during the coronavirus outbreak.
The Coronavirus Emergency Response (CoVER) platform is designed to enable cities around the world to boost their ability to monitor, predict and respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. It includes an app that enables citizens to contribute to as well as access critical information.
In 1950, 746 Million people lived in cities but just one hundred years later in 2050, this is anticipated to surpass 6 Billion – some 66% of the world’s population. In this increasingly urban, data-driven and hybrid world that integrates the physical and the virtual, the concept of ‘smartness’ comes to the fore. The vision of a ‘smart city’ has been in existence for many years but it is only recently that advances in technology have enabled tangible progress towards its real-world actualization. I believe this is also critical to the successful implementation of the United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGS).
So, what does a smart city mean to you?
Hard times breed innovation and ingenuity. Take 19th century London, where a series of cholera outbreaks taught the city to send its poop downstream. Today, COVID-19 could catalyze a wave of smart city upgrades as governments turn to digital infrastructure to guard against future crises.&
Cities moving from containment to recovery offer a glimpse of what could come. In Wuhan, China, factory operators register workers’ temperature daily. Returning employees are working alongside more robots than when they left. And to get on a train, residents display app-based “health codes” ranking them by infection risk levels.
How cities are turning to collective intelligence to enable smarter approaches to COVID-19.
Density - it’s part of what makes cities bustling cosmopolitan hubs for transnational commerce and mobility. It is also what makes them particularly vulnerable to the risks of outbreaks such as COVID-19, with some experts arguing it will force a significant rethink of urban planning if we are to achieve long-term survival in a pandemic world.