$1.5 billion to support cities’ green development plans including transit systems,
planning integration, low-energy zones, waste management, and food security
(Climateactionprogramme 2016). Cities from 11 countries including Brazil,
China, India, Malaysia, and South Africa joined this platform.
13.3.4.2 Key Technologies for Modern Smart Cities
Although Smart Cities do not necessarily rely on a high degree of digitalization to be
“smart” regarding Sustainable Development, most publications promoting Smart
Cities refer to highly digitized cities equipped with cutting-edge technology. This
kind of cities is associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, “. . .a world in
which virtual and physical systems of manufacturing globally cooperate with each
other in a flexible way” (Schwab 2017), going far beyond the use of connected smart
machines and systems, involving pathbreaking waves of development in fields of
expertise reaching from renewables to quantum computing and from gene sequencing to nanotechnology – basically characterized by “. . .the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains. . .”
(Schwab 2017). So, Smart Cities are supposed to apply special technologies which
will be defined and explained in the following:
• Algorithms, i.e., “. . .a set of mathematical instructions or rules that . . . will help to
calculate an answer to a problem” (Cambridge Dictionary 2018a, b) to keep
Smart Cities running in an optimized way (Daly 2018).
• Artificial intelligence (AI), “. . .the ability of a digital computer or computercontrolled robot to perform tasks. . .associated with intelligent beings. . .”
(Copeland 2018).
• Autonomous vehicle: A vehicle which “. . .can drive itself from a starting point to
a predetermined destination in ‘autopilot’ mode . . .” (Gartner.com 2018).
• Big Data, characterized by the “3Vs” (Rouse and Bigelow 2016): “. . .the extreme
volume of data, the wide variety of data types and the velocity at which the data
must be processed. . .” (Rouse and Bigelow 2016).
• Blockchain, “. . .a digital database containing information (such as records of
financial transactions) that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large
decentralized, publicly accessible network. . .” (Iansiti and Lakhani 2018).
• CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance: CCTV is “...a system of television
cameras filming in shops and public places so that people can watch and protect
those places” (Cambridge Dictionary 2018c). Meanwhile, more and more digital
“network cameras” transmitting over Ethernet or Wi-Fi are used (PCmag 2018).
• Cloud computing is “. . .the delivery of hosted services over the internet. . .,”
enabling “...companies to consume a compute resource, such as a virtual machine
(VM), storage or an application, as a utility. . .rather than having to build and
maintain computing infrastructures in house” (Rouse and Bigelow 2018). Google
Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and IBM are the leading
public cloud service providers (Rouse and Bigelow 2018).
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planning integration, low-energy zones, waste management, and food security
(Climateactionprogramme 2016). Cities from 11 countries including Brazil,
China, India, Malaysia, and South Africa joined this platform.
13.3.4.2 Key Technologies for Modern Smart Cities
Although Smart Cities do not necessarily rely on a high degree of digitalization to be
“smart” regarding Sustainable Development, most publications promoting Smart
Cities refer to highly digitized cities equipped with cutting-edge technology. This
kind of cities is associated with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, “. . .a world in
which virtual and physical systems of manufacturing globally cooperate with each
other in a flexible way” (Schwab 2017), going far beyond the use of connected smart
machines and systems, involving pathbreaking waves of development in fields of
expertise reaching from renewables to quantum computing and from gene sequencing to nanotechnology – basically characterized by “. . .the fusion of these technologies and their interaction across the physical, digital and biological domains. . .”
(Schwab 2017). So, Smart Cities are supposed to apply special technologies which
will be defined and explained in the following:
• Algorithms, i.e., “. . .a set of mathematical instructions or rules that . . . will help to
calculate an answer to a problem” (Cambridge Dictionary 2018a, b) to keep
Smart Cities running in an optimized way (Daly 2018).
• Artificial intelligence (AI), “. . .the ability of a digital computer or computercontrolled robot to perform tasks. . .associated with intelligent beings. . .”
(Copeland 2018).
• Autonomous vehicle: A vehicle which “. . .can drive itself from a starting point to
a predetermined destination in ‘autopilot’ mode . . .” (Gartner.com 2018).
• Big Data, characterized by the “3Vs” (Rouse and Bigelow 2016): “. . .the extreme
volume of data, the wide variety of data types and the velocity at which the data
must be processed. . .” (Rouse and Bigelow 2016).
• Blockchain, “. . .a digital database containing information (such as records of
financial transactions) that can be simultaneously used and shared within a large
decentralized, publicly accessible network. . .” (Iansiti and Lakhani 2018).
• CCTV (closed-circuit television) surveillance: CCTV is “...a system of television
cameras filming in shops and public places so that people can watch and protect
those places” (Cambridge Dictionary 2018c). Meanwhile, more and more digital
“network cameras” transmitting over Ethernet or Wi-Fi are used (PCmag 2018).
• Cloud computing is “. . .the delivery of hosted services over the internet. . .,”
enabling “...companies to consume a compute resource, such as a virtual machine
(VM), storage or an application, as a utility. . .rather than having to build and
maintain computing infrastructures in house” (Rouse and Bigelow 2018). Google
Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and IBM are the leading
public cloud service providers (Rouse and Bigelow 2018).
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