Smart Cities or Smart Cities are projects in which a certain urban space is the scene of intensive experiences of IoT context-sensitive information and communication technologies, urban management and social action driven by solutions and intelligent systems such as ITS - Intelligent Traffic System. These projects therefore aggregate three main areas:
- Internet of Things (objects with advanced communication skills)
- Big Data (processing and analysis of large amounts of information)
- Algorithmic governance (management and planning based on actions built by algorithms applied to urban life).
The main goal is to create conditions for sustainability, improve the living conditions of populations and foster the creation of a creative economy by management based on data analysis.
Cities have never been so crowded. 200 years ago, only London, Tokyo and Beijing had more than one million inhabitants. Today there are 442 metropolis that hit the seven digits. More than half of the world's population already lives in urban centers and, according to UN estimates, by 2030, this percentage should rise to 70%. With so many crowded people, problems arise - traffic, pollution, homelessness and access to health - but also innovations - and they are increasingly hi-tech.
The concept of smart cities is defined by the use of technology to improve urban infrastructure and make urban centers more efficient and better living. The idea has gained momentum in the last five years and was driven by zero-building smart cities such as Songdo in South Korea and Masdar in Dubai.
Big technology companies, educational institutions and governments are betting on the concept. The classification of cities in relation to the level of technology adopted receives four nomenclaturas.Tais nomenclatures take into account both the level of technology adopted and the extent of it in the city. The following four nomenclatures are detailed:
- Digital City (or even digital community, information city or e-city): refers to a connected community that combines broadband communications infrastructure, a flexible service-oriented computing infrastructure based on open standards, and innovative services that meet the needs of governments and their employees, citizens and businesses. The use of open standards is considered as an important issue for interoperability between the various information and computing systems, since the data of a person or service can be used in different areas without the need for new information in the system.
- Intelligent City: in this, cities are defined as territories that bring innovation systems and ICTs within the same locality, combining the creativity of talented individuals that make up the city's population, learning enhancing institutions and spaces of innovation, usually virtual, which facilitate the management of knowledge. The combination of people's creativity involves the collective intelligence strategy, where trends are identified and standardized, using people's experiences in order to collaborate collectively.
- Smart City: In this paradigm the use of ICTs aims to make the infrastructure components and essential services of a city smarter, more interconnected and efficient. This concept has already been implemented in some cities, such as Brisbane, Malta, Dubai and Kochi. One of the main goals of these cities is to improve people's quality of life, according to different points of view, such as the level of access to information, consultation of relevant resources available, as well as the current state of such resources.
- Ubiquitous City: in this scenario the city is fully equipped with networks through which city authorities can monitor what is happening in the city, such as traffic monitoring, crime prevention and fire prevention. You can access any network service regardless of where you are, even though your position is relevant. In addition to different systems sharing the same information, the number of devices is significantly higher than in other classifications. This classification causes different opinions between experts and users regarding their use. Some are quite in favor, others argue that these systems invade users' privacy and make vulnerable systems relatively vulnerable.
