Up to now, the world still does not have a unified definition of Smart Cities. But basically, it is a city model that applies information technology and artificial intelligence to manage and improve urban living standards, improve the service quality of the city government, and use it effectively. energy and natural resources.

If comparing a Smart City as a human body, Artificial Intelligence will be the brain, Sensor systems are the senses and Digital Telecommunications Network is the nervous system.

In short, Smart City is a city model that applies the latest technology to improve the quality of the city in all aspects.

A few examples

In the simplest example, the system uses sensors to manage street lights, thereby greatly reducing energy consumption.

Some other common examples include:

Using sensors to monitor the situation of clean water leakage to prevent loss of water supply to the city.

Using equipment to monitor pollution levels in the air to promptly provide warning information to people, especially those susceptible to respiratory diseases, to promptly cope.

Use sensors to determine the number of vehicles in the parking lot, link parking lots in the area to coordinate parking, traffic as well as assist drivers.

Or it could be more complex examples, like police using video sensors to track suspects in crowds, facial recognition sensors for public transit riders to reduce management, ticketing, personnel costs, etc. efficient and convenient for the user.

Key elements of Smart City

The key elements needed to create an integrated smart city framework that have a two-way influence, interacting with each other, include:

• Management – organization: the government must be e-government, using modern information technology.

• Technology: Smart City’s critical infrastructure and services are managed by smart computing technology.

• Residential community: the main subjects of Smart City, are modern citizens, capable of participating in monitoring, even coordinating to support city management.

• Economy: smart economy, is the main driving force to build Smart City

• Information and communication technology infrastructure: affecting the quality of Smart City development

• Natural environment: the core of Smart City is the application of technology for sustainable development, effective natural resource management, as well as good resistance to agents that cause natural environmental change.

Among them, it has been proven that technology is a super factor that strongly influences all other factors.

Smart City – a preeminent model that combines technical and technological aspects with society and people

The rapid urbanization process often causes social disturbances, causing the government to face many problems such as resource scarcity, environmental pollution, traffic congestion, waste disposal, health care , poverty, infrastructure… Therefore, to overcome these challenges, the government must find smarter solutions.

Smart City is a strategic solution, taking advantage of technology to solve these social problems.

Smart City links technical infrastructure, information technology, social infrastructure to help the city manage and operate effectively and consistently in all areas. Technology is applied to organize, design, plan and deploy new solutions, helping to manage the city in a flexible and sustainable way, under the supervision of the people.

Smart City not only helps change in terms of infrastructure, urban form, but also has criteria to evaluate the comprehensive development of society and especially people in terms of knowledge, understanding, creativity, civilized.

Smart City is a city that always strives to be “smarter”, helping to find solutions to solve the most reasonable social needs, while constantly looking for more optimal solutions. Therefore, many cities around the world are excited about this model.

Concerns

​However, there have also been some warnings about the impacts and downsides of Smart City, such as:

This bias in the application of this strategy can lead to the abandonment of other promising urban development alternatives.

The extremely large amount of data collected raises concerns about information management and security. For example, facial recognition systems can be abused leading to privacy violations.

Infrastructure investment costs are large and need to be applied flexibly for each city, if applied inappropriately, it will have negative consequences.

Some people even think that the assessment of the Smart City model is vague, and the big technology “players” are trying to promote this model, seeking to entice city leaders and investors. enter, in order to make a lucrative market for them.

However, in general, Smart City is still highly appreciated by most experts, analysts, leaders and people. Smart City flow seems to be rolling with momentum and is still rushing to more and more cities around the world.