The Future of Smart Cities

by Startacus Admin

In the future, cities need to get smarter.

The number of people living in urban areas is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years, with the UN predicting that by the year 2020 66% of the World’s population will be city dwellers.

This has the potential to cause huge problems for the global community not just with regards to the environment, but in a whole range of social issues including living conditions, crime, and civil unrest.

But with these challenges comes also potential- the potential for innovative solutions to help improve the lives of urban dwellers and making sure that ever growing cities are also ever more sustainable ones.


The Future of Smart Cities Conference.

These issues will be the central focus of the upcoming ‘Future of Smart Cities Conference’ by the University of Salford taking place at the Etihad stadium in Manchester on April 19th. It will be a thought-leading exploration of how digital and telecommunications technologies can be harnessed to accelerate progress within key elements of urban life including economic growth, improvements to infrastructure, emissions reductions, and the prevention of crime.

Across the day-long conference there will be insightful keynote speeches, networking opportunities, and engaging seminars all centred around the hot topic of how cities can be improved and made ‘smart’ through the use of technological innovation.

Given the Government's planned development of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ centred on Manchester, the city is the perfect location for this exploration to take place. High-level speakers from across government and industry will be in attendance to present their views on how smart technology can improve cities and help bring the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ plans to fruition.

Some of the key topics under discussion will include economic benefits which come with smarter cities, how smart technology can be used to improve infrastructure, limit negative environmental impacts, and prevent criminal activity.

Speakers

Some of the speakers taking part and the topics they will be discussing include.

• Professor Hisham Elkadi, Dean, School of the Built Environment- Welcome Address
• Dan Byles, Chairman, SmarterUK- Potential of Smart City Technology for the Northern Powerhouse
• Jerry Dixon, Project Lead - CityVerve, OCF Managing and Extracting Intelligence from Data to Support Smart Services
• Nick Chrissos, Head of Innovation Technology, UK and Ireland at Cisco Systems- IT Infrastructure for Powering Smart Cities
• Simon Ho, Senior Innovation Officer, Transport for Greater Manchester and Founding Board Member of the Northern Robotics Network Smart Transport
• Ilan Lieberman, Director, UHSM Academy- Smart Technologies in Health & Wellbeing
• Tacis Gavoyannis, Head of Business Transformation, Siemens PLC- Smart Technologies for Creating Energy Efficient Cities
• Professor Huang Qiang, Chairman, CTBGC Board, Smart Cities – An International Perspective

Tickets

Sounds like the kind of thing that you should be involved in?

Pop over here to find out more and nab yourself a ticket!

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Published on: 4th March 2016