For the last several weeks, we have looked at what our future jobsites, offices, and homes might look like in a post-pandemic world. Today, let’s broaden our scope to look at the smart city of the future.
Even in spite of the pandemic, reports predict growth for our smart cities. Reportlinker.com forecasts the global smart city platforms market will reach $258.2 billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 9.8% between 2020 and 2027.
Let’s take a look at a recent example. Stanford researchers are using the Korean smart city of Songdo as a living laboratory. The new center will provide a testbed to help academic and corporate researchers develop and deploy a new generation of physical structures and electronic technologies as prototypes for the urban environments of the 21st Century.
Researchers from a variety of academic disciplines and fields will focus initially on four key areas:
- Improving how data is collected, stored, and visualized to improve smart-city technology implementation;
- Using data to improve wellness and quality-of-life for populations in and around urban areas;
- Synthesizing and integrating sensor data to help enable companies based in smart cities to accelerate innovation and boost profitability;
- Developing ways for municipalities to invest in new technologies so that they are more competitive in a global economy and financially sustainable.
Michael Lepech, faculty director of the center and an associate professor of civil & environmental engineering, said the center was inspired by a 2015 strategic planning initiative at the School of Engineering known as SoE-Future. Initiated by then-dean, Stanford University Provost Persis Drell, and led by an inclusive committee of faculty, staff, and students, the school identified grand global challenges in which engineers could make a significant world-changing impact over the coming decades. Among them was how engineering can ensure that humanity flourishes in the cities of the future.
The city of the future is a topic Peggy Smedley recently explored in depth on her podcast—The Peggy Smedley Show. If you would like to dig in deeper to trends in our cities, take a listen to a few of those episodes.
The bottomline is our cities are changing—and technology will be at the heart of them, driving decisionmaking and helping towns hum along in a way that is secure and convenient.
This concludes our series on what life and work will look like after the COVID-19 pandemic. If you would like a better idea of what digital transformation, process, the workforce, corporate culture, and more will look like in the years ahead, read through some of the blogs in the past two months and share your thoughts on social. As the world opens back up, we are all in this together.
Original Article: https://constructech.com/our-future-cities/
