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Smart cities need 'smart infrastructure' as well as 'smart people'

Evi Mariani (The Jakarta Post)
Sydney
Sat, November 5, 2016

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Smart cities need 'smart infrastructure' as well as 'smart people' Illustration of smart infrastructure for a smart city. (Courtesy of Adam Beck/File)

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speaker at the 2016 Huawei Asia Pacific Innovation Day in Sydney, Australia, talked about the importance of smart infrastructure to create smart cities while highlighting the importance of smart people behind it.

Adam Beck, founding Executive Director of Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand, said there were two different lenses through which people could see smart cities: the smart infrastructure lens and the smart people lens.

“The smart infrastructure lens, the smart things you see. Mobility, buildings, connectivity, a whole range of different systems and solutions ...,” he said during his presentation.

Meanwhile, his definition of smart infrastructure includes portable water monitoring; smart parking; city-wide free Wifi, including on public transit; and earthquake early detection systems.

“There’s also another lens we don’t often talk about, is through the smart people lens. There is this gentleman from a company called Soofa, which is developing internet-enabled park benches and kiosks and a whole range of other designs and solutions,” Beck said.

He said Soofa was a small startup, they had a great entrepreneurial spirit and a human-centered approach to building smart cities. “It provides a great opportunity for a citizen-focused solutions that are often dominated by large infrastructure conversation.”

Soofa Bench can accommodate three people and can charge their phones with solar power.

The smart city movement is a global agenda and “cities cannot compete globally without smart infrastructure,” Beck said.

Innovation Day is a flagship series focused on global innovation hosted by Huawei. Thus far, Huawei Innovation Day has been held in Stockholm, Milan and Munich.

The 2016 Innovation Day in Sydney presented 19 speakers from all over the world.

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