Did you know ?
- Cities cover less than one percent of the earth’s surface, yet 50 percent of the world’s population lives in Cities. This is estimated to increase to 60 percent by 2030.
- Cities consume 75 percent of the world’s energy and are responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2005, President Bill Clinton launched the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) as a non-partisan catalyst for action, bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
Connected Urban Development was born from Cisco’s commitment to the CGI to participate in helping reduce carbon emissions. It is a partnership with leading cities to help urban areas reduce their carbon emissions while enhancing the quality of urban life. The founding CUD cities are: San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Seoul. In 2008 four new cities have joined the program – Birmingham, Hamburg, Lisbon, and Madrid – beginning a new phase for CUD and opening new avenues for collaboration in promoting smart urban environments globally.
Connected Urban Development is based on 4 principles:
- ICT directly contributes both to energy usage and CO2 reduction. Industry efforts aimed at developing energy-efficient technology solutions can contribute to a sensible reduction of the environmental footprint in cities. But collaboration between government and industry, along with development of effective policy, are essential to a successful greening of ICT.
- Deploying broadband-based applications and services improves energy efficiencies. These can be clustered in four major areas: Connected and Sustainable Built Environment, Connected and Sustainable Mobility, Connected and Sustainable Work, and Connected and Sustainable Energy.
- Urban pervasive broadband infrastructure and continuous development of application and services clusters can enable radically innovative practices in the areas of urban form and planning, energy policy, new working practices, and new lifestyles. ICT pervasiveness and the emergence of Web 2.0 are having dramatic implications on the socioeconomic tissue of a city, as well as on its energy-efficiency policy.
- ICT and broadband connectivity have become enablers of combined, citywide urban policy, and of previously disconnected operational programs. Integration of data and processes across siloed government initiatives is becoming a reality. Mobility, Built Environment, and Energy-related efficiency initiatives can now be successfully combined into integrated urban development programs.
Datacraft, in partnership with Cisco and working with governments, has been building digital cities based on the framework of connected and sustainable urban development. An example is iCity in Malaysia, as the global premium intelligent hub. Download the case study to read more about iCity.
(adapted from ConnectedUrbanDevelopment.org)
Wong Wen Ming is CTO & Director, Sales, at Datacraft Asia, and leads the Group’s salesforce in delivering profitable growth and in ensuring positive client experience.
{ 1 comments }
