#3 Deeptech Analysed - Discover the future of urban living at Smart City Expo
What's happening this week? 19th November 2022
Discover the future of urban living at Smart City Expo World Congress
By Karol Djanashvili, Deeptech Expert
What is going on?
This week one of the world’s leading events returned to Barcelona. From Tuesday to Thursday the Smart City Expo World Congress gathered hundreds of people together with the objective to learn and invest in cities’ empowerment and urban innovation.The event identifies opportunities and promotes social participation and innovation. The event has a 3 day program with worldwide experts, an exposition with hundreds of global companies and organizations working on smart solutions. Part of our team had the pleasure to be there and participate in the discussions that took place. Eden Djanashvili, founder of Deeptech Community and program manager at EIT Urban Mobility next to Xavier Estarán, Entrepreneurship Manager at UPC (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya) and Venture Partner at Scale Lab Andorra.
What does it mean?
Cities like India, Israel, Spain, Korea, Germany, Catalunya, Austria, Portugal, etc. Cities are looking to innovate. Big amounts of investment are getting noticed to develop cities infrastructures, energy, buildings and land usage (e.g. water) to become smarter cities. However, not only cities are looking into these exponential transformations, but also companies like Dassault Systemes, Dell Technologies, Amazon Web Services, Deloitte, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Cisco Systems, Mercedes Benz were also among the exhibitors and speakers during this three days event. Tackling topics, during this three days event, such as circular economy in the mobility arena, 5G Connectivity, IOT role in the future of cities, a new driving transportation, hydrogen and autonomous vehicles.
A special space, Puzzle X, was dedicated to topics related to Deeptech with a focus on semiconductors, quantum, metaverse, space, sustainability and biotech. This only highlights the new wave of emerging technologies knocking into our doors. The importance to understand and innovate in all possible industries.
Why does it matter?
💸For markets: pouring money into Deeptech!
Three main actors: governemnt, companies and innovators are looking to create the next Cities 3.0. What does it mean? Investment are underway. New ventures are being built and looking to create impact in society through integrating Deeptech in the market. The majority of private investment so far has been concentrated in the transport and mobility sectors. This investment is usually directly in tech start-ups or through venture capital funds. Cities can influence the pace and type of smart development by creating an environment—through regulation, subsidies, etc—that supports private-sector development. However, the uniqueness of each city and its belonging to a cultural area make some solutions found not always scalable and appropriate from another city. One can see that in regards of GPRD legal measures in Europe vs US or Artificial Intelligence use in China to give grades to citizens.
🧑🏿🤝🧑🏻For society: more intelligent cities?
Smart cities add digital intelligence to the urban world and use it for public management to achieve a higher quality of life. Deeptech helps manage cities that have complex systems, provide new services that weren’t possible to provide without the technology (e.g. Uber) and, make governance better so cities are more responsive for citizens. Thus, it enables the intelligence of cities at three main levels (For those tech geeks or system engineers you might be familiar with these levels from the OSI model):
At the base are the transmission and infrastructure technologies that support the smart city framework,
In the middle are the data collection and service application technologies.
At the top are storage and analytic technologies.
🔮What’s next? Deeptech 4 Smart cities!
Photonic technologies currently have a great impact on smart cities, in terms of smart lighting, sensorization and communication technologies. 5G is enabling the infrastructure for the IoT that, thanks to devices such as connected sensors, lights and meters, can collect and analyze data in real time for the better functioning of smart cities.
The digital infrastructure of smart cities is based on cloud technologies, which store and analyze the data collected by those connected devices that are in the smart city. The safe storage of this information is essential, as well as the processing of the data to convert it into useful information when making decisions. And this is where the Blockchain, which can verify identities and authorize access, is a technology that is secure enough to ensure the operation of smart cities.
Not only a sustainable choice, LED lighting can enhance the care of environment but also reduce costs by saving energy and improving operational efficiency. DeepTech technology may be a solution to solve urban stream congestion. Multimodal transport is a major stake of urban space area. LiDAR, which stands for light detection and ranging, is a promising technology for autonomous driving. Future vehicle interiors will feature innovative human-machine interfaces that involve gesture recognition, augmented reality and advanced infotainment solutions, all using OLED displays
Sooner other Deeptech will break into cities and transform them into smart ones such as Quantum Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Microelectronics and Biotechnology.