Smart City: Research highlights

All around the world, urbanization is a growing trend. As more and more people get together, smart systems and their integration need to be developed, not only to provide the services that people need but also to do so efficiently with minimum impact on the environment. It can be said that efficient ICT, one part of which is the Internet of Things, is a common dominator: tying together services, residency, mobility, infrastructure and energy. It is a global challenge to reduce environmental impact and the carbon footprint. At the same time, societal development needs to be addressed and the focus put on people's well-being. Pressure is growing to reduce our environmental impact, and there is a parallel compelling need for business to remain globally competitive. Sustainable transformation of cities is only possible when it is done in a smart way. Smart city design, operation and management need to be done at system level. Sub-optimization of individual components will not lead to optimal performance of the system. Multi-target optimization is not an easy task, but it becomes necessary as different components and systems are interlinked and interconnected - irrespective of where they are physically located. Traditional sector-based industries and value chains are also changing, and completely new business models are starting to emerge. Radical innovations and paradigm shifts are changing our whole city systems.