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The Top Smart City Events Around the World

Written by Maria Gorini | Nov 29, 2017 11:00:00 PM

Smart Cities are on the rise and with increased research and development come more conferences and opportunities to share information and learn from best practices worldwide. At any given time there are thousands of events focused on new technologies and successes happening in developing smart cities. Here are some of the top smart city events going on now!

Smart City Expo World Congress

The Smart City Expo World Congress just took place in Barcelona on November 14-16 this year. The event was a major success with over 18,500 attendees, 420 speakers, 700 cities and 120 countries represented. This year's event hosted the World Smart City Awards, which seek to reward pioneering projects, ideas and strategies that enable urban development around the globe. This year saw an unprecedented number of competitive entries.

The Award for Circular Economy went to Amsterdam for their Circular Innovation Program which integrates local production of sustainable seasonal food, local production of electricity, fuel use reduction and an improvement in recycling chain waste cycle. The Mobility Award went to SEAT Barcelona, with its emphasis on safe mobility. SEAT presented its Leon Cristobal, the safest car in the brand’s history. The Award for Best Innovative Idea went to the Chicago for its Marketplace.city aimed at helping government innovators make cities smarter. Best Project went to the Food Care Program of Buenos Aires.

The overall award for Smart City of the year however went to Dubai. In particular, the Dubai Blockchain Initiative, making Dubai the first smart city operating on Blockchain. The project will make blockchain applicable in all government services thus supporting the creation of a blockchain industry empowering startups and businesses in Dubai.

Award finalists included the Weifang Smart City Development Office of Weifant, China for their Innovative Smart Social Wellbeing, a project which aims to improve residents’ living experience and city governance through technologies like WeiV, VPai, NB-IoT, Big Data, Cloud Computing and Mobile Internet, and Lyon Métropole of Lyon, France, with their strategy focused on providing alternatives to individual cars through data and technology. This project uses smart grids to leverage energy transition, innovative digital services in education and healthcare, and the promotion of citizen participation and innovation.

Smart Cities and Communities: Connecting Citizens

This event took place in London on November 9, and tackled tough issues including housing shortages, pollution, sustainability, healthcare, infrastructure, and an overall sense of creating increased opportunities. The event had a keynote address from Stefan Webb, Head of Projects for Future Cities Catapult that looked at “Digitizing the Planning System.” The event then looked at Smart Policy Making and Urban Planning, before moving on the focus on Smart Citizens: More Connected Cities through Human Centered Design. The day ended with a panel on Smart Healthcare, Technology and Open Data.

Upcoming related events include Smart Cities and Communities: Creating Sustainable, Efficient and Liveable Places, which will take place on March 22, 2018 at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester.

ICON-SONICS 2017

This International Conference on Smart Cities, Automation and Intelligent Computing Systems was hold on November 8-10 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The Conference was organized by Universitas Multimedia Nusantara and technologically sponsored by the IEEE Indonesia section. The conference focus was on both theory and applications mainly covering smart cities, automation and intelligent computing systems.

Main speakers included Prof. Dr.-Ing. Norbert Schwesinger, Technische Universität München, Germany who spoke on Energy Harvesting as One Perspective Power Supply for Smart Sensors and Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Alexander Ferrein, FH Aachen, Germany speaking on Challenges for Intra-logistic Robots in the RoboCup Logistics League and beyond. Selected presented paper will be invited for publication in:

1. International Journal on Smart Sensing and Intelligent Systems (Indexed by SCOPUS, SJR 0.29)
2. International Journal on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (Indexed by SCOPUS, SJR 0.18)
3. Internetworking Indonesia Journal (Indexed by SCOPUS, SJR 0.14)

Upcoming Smart City Event

On Friday, January 5, 2018 Mumbai will host the International Conference on Smart City and Emerging Technologies. This Conference seeks to harbor technological innovation and excellence by encouraging youth to professionally contribute for the benefit of humanity. It also aims to interconnect the technical community, globally for their research on Smart City.

The Consumer Technology Association will host its annual conference on January 9 - 12 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It will host companies like Hulu and Turner as keynote participants. The event will have a dedicated sports zone, digital health labs, vehicle technology, and will be giving out innovative awards similar to the Barcelona conference. It will be good to keep an eye on early next year.

Interested in hearing about more about the top smart city events around the world? The Bismart team will be attending lots of events throughout the year! Come see the events we are currently scheduled to attend.