Future Proofing Cities

Siemens Digitalisation Initiatives offers views and solutions on how technology can be used to prepare cities to be resilient, efficient and more sustainable.

For the first time in human history more than 50% of the human population live in cities; this figure is said to increase to 60% by 2030. In simple terms, by 2030, one in every three people will live in cities with at least half a million inhabitants.

Urbanisation is real and there needs to be the serious discussion in making cities sustainable for its inhabitants and at the same time, support its surroundings.

At the recently concluded, World Cities Summit 2018 held in Singapore, over 130 mayors and city leaders gathered to share learnings and to address challenges and innovations for future-ready cities.

Interactions at this global platform provided opportunities for city leaders, industry experts and leading academics to explore how cities can be more liveable and sustainable through better urban governance, planning, building resilience and leveraging on innovations.

In addition to combining good governance and engagement with its citizens, urban planners need to consider how cities can become more inclusive, creative and sustainable offering a high quality of life. Citizen involvement and proper communication with stakeholders is crucial in shaping people-centric cities.

Beyond urban infrastructure, citizen engagement should be integrated for all plans and ground-up processes should be incorporated into day-to-day operations.

From intelligent buildings to smart grids, the complex intricacies of managing a city’s infrastructure requires connecting them all, amassing phenomenal amounts of data and state of the art systems to process and analyse them.