Blockchain and distributed ledgers
The white paper Blockchain and distributed ledgers, produced by ILNAS and ANEC, tries to shed light in a variety of aspects related to blockchain technology and its impacts on economics and businesses. The main questions arising in this report refer to: existing features, differences and similarities in major blockchain platforms; the ways in which will blockchain affect different economic sectors; emerging benefits of adopting blockchain within a given business; recent developments in blockchain technical standardization; and, existing sets of standards that are relevant to this technology.
This book presents a series of information technologies that provide better living conditions in the cities of tomorrow. It brings together research findings from 27 countries across the globe, from academia, industry and government. It addresses a number of crucial topics in state of the arts of technologies and solutions related to smart cities, including big data and cloud computing, collaborative platforms, communication infrastructures, smart health, sustainable development and energy management.
E-Estonia is the most ambitious project in technological statecraft today, for it includes all members of the government, and alters citizens’ daily lives. The normal services that government is involved with—legislation, voting, education, justice, health care, banking, taxes, policing, and so on—have been digitally linked across one platform, wiring up the nation. Nathan Heller writes in New Yorker Magazine about Estonian government’s achievement to be virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure.
The working paper “Connected Urban Growth: Public-Private Collaborations for Transforming Urban Mobility” presents a working definition of the term new mobility services, which encompasses a broad set of emerging operating models and technologies that are intended to improve the performance of urban transportation systems. It also presents the first global survey of new mobility services, and identifies emerging trends and opportunities for decision-makers in both the public and private sectors.
The Open Access Journal Urban Planning has published a special issue related to the topic of smart cities, and more specifically related to the aspect of infrastructure and information. It contains one editorial and three articles that present different smart cities solutions implemented in real-case scenarios. The editors of the special issue are Soora Rasouli, Harry Timmermans and Dujuan Yang.