We need to build data capability in South Africa
On New Year’s Eve in 2016, a fire engulfed part of the Address Downtown hotel in Dubai, close to where revellers had gathered to watch a spectacular fireworks display. The incident was picked up by Pacific Controls, a data centre for buildings and infrastructure projects that had tied with the Dubai Civil Defence for real-time monitoring of buildings in the United Arab Emirates for any emergency alarms. In peak traffic, the blaze was put out in a couple of hours, and no fatalities were recorded.
The Pacific Controls company can monitor any alarm, from those for fires to those in elevators. A message is immediately sent to a command centre and a team is deployed. The system taps into the network of telecommunications company Etisalat, which provides a real-time tracker of any crises. Their track record is impressive. This is part of Dubai’s drive towards a smart city, which has seen the city push for real-time data for services across different departments. Data is stored on a cloud service, which is either a physical or virtual server. This is then controlled by a cloud-computing provider, such as Pacific Controls.
EU: Coronavirus may speed up the implementation of online public services, but this is not digitalisation
A quick primer on what is, and what is not, digitalisation (in, at least, my humble opinion).
Across emerging Europe, governments are responding to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic by racing to implement digital solutions to help citizens reduce their day-to-day activity and levels of person-to-person contact. In many, if not all, cases, the digital solutions which are introduced over the coming weeks and months will remain in place long after the pandemic has become a subject for historians. It is therefore imperative that governments get them right.
US: New York state to select five smart city testbeds
Empire State Development is partnering with the Israel Innovation Authority to find solutions that will improve public service delivery and citizens’ quality of life.
Five cities in New York State will be chosen as smart city testbeds with funding support of up to $2 million.
The smart cities programme has been launched by New York State’s economic development organisation, Empire State Development, in collaboration with the Israel Innovation Authority.
News Keep it simple and short: The key to Estonia’s digital society
I laughed.
On March 9, Romania’s tax authority ANAF announced that in order to help combat the spread of the coronavirus Covid-19, it was recommending taxpayers avoid its offices and that they should file any returns or correspondence online.
Good luck with that.
KR: Seoul: A city based on data
The South Korean capital believes the analysis of urban patterns forms the bedrock of smart infrastructure and services. SmartCitiesWorld explores how it has been using data more intelligently since 2011.
When Park Won Soon took office as the Mayor of Seoul in 2011, he declared that he would build a city where the “citizens are the Mayor”. Eight years later, he has made strides to achieve this ambition: digital platforms allow ‘citizen innovators’ to co-create their future city and vote regularly on policies.