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Despite the rapid progress of Smart City solutions, 2018 was a year of Smart City skepticism, caused by a number of incidents with safety and data privacy. This, however, does not reduce the vast potential of the Smart City concept. It simply means that more care should be taken in 2019.
This report presents a European view of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based on independent research and analysis by the European Commission Joint Research Centre to inform the debate at the European level. Shedding light on the opportunities as well as challenges emerging from the recent developments in AI, this report attempts to outline the way towards building a human-centred, diverse, and socially driven AI.
The Smart City is a concept which is getting widely popular in the last few years, becoming almost a catchphrase, and definitions have existed for around a decade now. Despite this, it seems that most citizens are not aware of the term, although they do have a good understanding of specific initiatives which are part of the concept.
Written by AbdouMaliq Simone and Edgar Pieterse, this book attempts to address the relationship between urban theory and practice in Asia and Africa. It is argued that we need to look at the neighborhood or district level to get the essence of urban lives. This book reads like a collection of authors’ thoughts on urban change over the past several decades. It reflects their concern for social justice in African and Asian cities, which is ever challenged by the commodification and technologization of urban spaces.
The Smart City concept is constantly growing in popularity as more and more solutions and features move from design to implementation stage and have an actual impact. A glance at ten of the “best” (according to Business Matters) existing smart cities from around the world can demonstrate the ways in which technological solutions are improving citizens’ lives.
The H2020 project NEWBITS (New Business Models for ITS) supporting the initiatives and actions of the Directorate General MOVE, upon invitation of the Projects’ Officer Mr. Georgios Tzamalis, had the opportunity to present NEWBITS research results to eleven members of different departments of DG-MOVE at a lunchtime conference in Brussels on 30th of November 2018.
Smart City projects are moving from planning to implementation, with projects gaining traction, delivering concrete results, and knowledge and good practices spreading. As dozens of Smart City projects are underway around the world, ranging from relatively minor interventions to brand new cities built from scratch, it is worth taking a look at the current state of play in the field.