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Faster, Stronger Smart Cities with Location Intelligence
CARTO, a platform to build powerful Location Intelligence apps, published a post summarising the opportunities that the Location Intelligence technologies and solutions offer to Smart Cities. From disaster relief and health services to traffic optimisation and more, Location Intelligence is making cities not just smarter, but stronger and faster. As distinctly spatial entities, cities uniquely benefit from a deeper understanding of ‘where’.
As cities are going through a digital transformation, and become better connected, these processes generate, collect and handle a vast amount of data. This article takes a brief look at the way in which current initiatives collect and share data, as well as handle privacy concerns.
The H2020 project 
NESTA just published its annual predictions for 2019. One of them refers to one of the global races which might be on to build ‘City Brains’. According the post the concept of a “smart city” has been around for several decades, often associated with hype, grandiose failures, and an overemphasis on hardware rather than people. NESTA points out that various technologies are now coming of age which bring the vision of a smart city closer to fruition. China is described to be in the forefront, investing heavily in sensors and infrastructures, and its ET City Brain project shows just how far the country’s thinking has progressed.
Battery powered e-bikes and e-scooters have been becoming increasingly popular worldwide, from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, and major companies like Ford, GM and Uber and jumping on the trend. Smart Cities, eager to become cleaner, reduce traffic, and improve urban life, can find some potential in such vehicles, but their smart and efficient use depends on several factors.
The article “The future of waste management in smart and sustainable cities: A review and concept paper” was recently published in the journal of Waste Management. It builds on an integrative review of the literature, including IoT-enabled waste management practices. This study offers insights into the potential of smart cities and connected communities in facilitating waste management efforts. 
Since a crucial part of Smart City technologies and solutions is based on the collection and interpretation of vast amounts of data, achieving this while protecting data privacy, which is an increasing concern, has become a major challenge.