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Mayor Rahm Emmanuel gave his CTO John Tolva a mission when he took office. "[He] told me, 'I want Chicago to be the Seoul, Korea of North America,'" said Tolva as quoted in a story in Crain's Chicago Business. And now Tolva has a roadmap to get him...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main
Category: Economic development, Citizen engagement, Computing resources, Connectivity, Data management, Policy and leadership
Smart grids and smart cities share many things, including a common mistake. Executives often think they can't get "smart" until they install a whole bunch of sensors. In fact, most grids and most cities already have mountains of data. For instance,...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main
Category: Public safety and security, Analytics, Citizen engagement, Data management, Policy and leadership
We've mentioned the Chattanooga success story before, but here's an article that highlights an important aspect -- how to pay for it. -- Jesse BerstWhen Chattanooga decided a few years ago that it wanted to become a world-class, 21st-century city,...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Energy, Connectivity, Policy and leadership
It's no secret that many (most?) smart city plans include the idea of a magnet area for technology businesses. Not content to merely make digital life better for all, many cities want to pull in more high-tech businesses. They typically do that by...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Connectivity, Policy and leadership
I've always had an admiration for architects and urban planners. (I almost pursued a degree in the field.) But I continue to read complaints that today's practitioners are missing the boat. In particular, they are failing to bake smart technologies...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Transportation, Policy and leadership
A Forbes post from Heather Clancy recaps the numbers that make smart water projects so economically compelling. They may help make the case for water modernization in your city. We've listed a few highlights below, or jump to the post for the full...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Water and wastewater, Instrumentation and control, Policy and leadership
Glasgow, Scotland competed with 29 other UK cities to win the Future Cities Demonstrator designation from the UK's Technology Strategy Board, along with roughly $38 million to help finance its ideas. What were the ideas that brought Glasgow to the...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Health and human services, Public safety and security, Transportation, Analytics, Examples and case studies
We've seen it before -- developing regions leapfrogging the developed world. South Korea, for instance, is the acknowledged world leader in broadband access after starting from way behind. And now we are seeing signs that India may become a leader...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Energy, Health and human services, Analytics, Instrumentation and control
Take a look at the remarkable progress of China's Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). China's Ministry of Commerce ranks SIP as the most competitive industrial park in the country. I think it's the most competitive in the world. I predict you will agree...
Article - 09/23/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Connectivity, Data management, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
You may realize that a smart grid is an essential part of a smart city. You may even have heard of smart meters, which measure the amount of power used by a customer and report back to the utility. But the meter is not the only part of the electric...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Instrumentation and control, Examples and case studies
We were interested to see this market research report that confirms many of the beliefs that led to the founding of the Smart Cities Council. For one thing: "smart cities are the way forward and will play an important role in the world’s future."...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Telecommunications, Connectivity, Research, publications and web sites
These two related techniques from Government Technology Magazine are not earthshaking in any way. But they do illustrate three important but often overlooked aspects of the smart cities movement.The first is the idea of employee productivity. With...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Computing resources, Policy and leadership, Security and privacy
The European Commission is spending 4 million euros to fund a three-year project to create a neighborhood-scale energy management platform. Described as a "service platform," the system will be piloted first in Seville, Spain followed by Lizzanello...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Citizen engagement, Instrumentation and control, Policy and leadership
San Francisco and the nearby Silicon Valley have already proven the value of attracting world-class software talent. Now the City of San Francisco wants that talent to turn its attention to smart city projects.One way to attract entrepreneurs is...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Citizen engagement, Policy and leadership
I had my consciousness raised a couple months back after several conversations with the research head of a major freight delivery company. He helped me understand how important freight logistics is to the business health of a city, and to its...
Article - 09/18/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Transportation, Analytics, Instrumentation and control, Policy and leadership
We recently warned you not to let your police department become a guinea pig for the unproven Google Glass technology. Now comes Government Technology magazine with a sneak preview of an upcoming trade show showcasing ideas that ARE ready for prime...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Analytics, Computing resources, Data management
You will want to skim this Economist article on smart cities for its warnings about what could go wrong; for its hints on the things that are stalling the market; for its anecdotes of cities doing it right; and for its optimistic conclusion that the...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Analytics, Citizen engagement, Data management, Policy and leadership
As this story from Riverside illustrates, it is hard to cost justify a citywide wireless network for the sole purpose of providing Internet access to cities. One solution -- albeit one that requires collaboration between different departments and...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Telecommunications, Connectivity, Policy and leadership
"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" goes the old joke. So is an earthquake. “The rebuilding of Christchurch following the 2011 earthquakes presents an extraordinary opportunity to fit the city with sensors and hardware, to collect data that will...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, Australia - New Zealand, North America
Category: Built environment, Health and human services, Water and wastewater, Citizen engagement, Instrumentation and control, Policy and leadership
In the process of researching our forthcoming Smart Cities Readiness Guide, we learned about the importance of high-speed fiber-optic networks. To quote this useful article from Governing Magazine, "a fiber-optic network can be 200 times faster than...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Telecommunications, Connectivity, Policy and leadership
The inaugural City Climate Leadership Awards have just been announced. To be strictly accurate, these awards don't rank the planet's 10 most sustainable cities. Rather, they measure sustainability in 10 narrow categories.But even though these cities...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Energy, Health and human services, Transportation, Policy and leadership
Property crime down 24%. Violent crime down 9%. Those reductions came as a result of the Vancouver PD's gradual adoption of analytics-led policing starting in 2008. Nor are such results unusual -- I hear similar numbers from police departments all...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Analytics, Data management
We explained how Christchurch New Zealand was taking advantage of a recent earthquake as an excuse to retrofit the city with sensors. But of course you don't want to wait for a natural disaster to motivate the troops. Here's a different option, also...
Article - 09/11/2013
Active Region(s): Main, Australia - New Zealand, North America
Category: Economic development, Telecommunications, Connectivity, Policy and leadership
Government Technology is reporting on an early version of Mutualink public safety software equipped to use Google Glass as its display. Buried in the article are all the reasons first responders may someday want to use Glass. And a bunch of reasons...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Here at the Smart Cities Council, we recommend that cities implement a citywide privacy program. The example below explains why. This UK city was just fined roughly $150,000 when a social services employee accidentally published sensitive...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Data management, Policy and leadership, Security and privacy
When you are "inside" an industry you often assume that everybody knows the current state of the art. In fact, public perception often lags 5 to 10 years behind. That's why articles like this one in Energy Manager Today can be so valuable -- they...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main
BNAmericas is out with a short item on a big Brazilian win for Microsoft's CityNext initiative. On the surface, it would seem that Microsoft merely sold the state of Mina Gerais a bunch of products, including Sharepoint, SQL Server, Hyper-V and...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Computing resources, Data management
By now, Rio de Janeiro's Operations Center has become world famous as a smart city exemplar. Indeed, we published a video case study of Rio's control center ourselves. Yet even though it has been widely covered, I think you'll want to take a look at...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Analytics, Computing resources, Policy and leadership
You will enjoy the video below and this post from ArchDaily, the world's most visited architecture site. They describe a "smart highway" project that won a prestigious design award. I walked away with two reminders. First, we already have plenty of...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Transportation, Analytics, Data management, Instrumentation and control, Examples and case studies