Seeing as how the urban population is growing at an accelerated rate, the Smart City projects suggest an integral approach regarding the basic systems needed in order for a city to function – energy, transportation, water supply, health, security etc. – so as to ensure a proper functioning of the main infrastructure, reduced spending and consumption of resources and proper usage of said resources.
While many specialists avoid classifying these priorities, energy remains one of the key components. This not only because a high number of inhabitants translates into high energy consumption (not just individual consumers), but also due to the time-related issues regarding production, transportation, and distribution systems which automatically disable other critical services. Each aspect of urban life – be it infrastructure, information systems, or social networks – depend on the electric energy distribution networks. However, considering the growing number of city inhabitants, as well as service availability and quality requests, traditional energy delivery means cannot cope with the new demands.
Thus one can understand how over a third of Smart City initiatives started in Europe and North America favor the development of Smart Grid-type projects. Although such projects are no longer a novelty, they bring constant improvements and innovations as time passes; still pilot-projects are difficult to spread, seeing as how they require incorporation of utilities in an undivided architechtural structure, as well as fulfilling specific standards and requests.
The future of Romanian cities will be discussed on the 21st and 22nd of October, in a unique event – Smart Cities of Romania – under the patronage of the City Council of Bucharest and The Ministry of Transportation. Local initiatives of smart city concepts, while havind a slow start, show a steady increase and can be found not only in the public speech, but also in projects regarding the digitization of administration or infrastructure modernization. As an aswer to the need of up-to-date information on this multidisciplinary subject, ITS Events Management, along with the Romanian Asociation for Security Technics, the Romanian National Committee of the Global Energy Council, and the Romanian Organization for Establishment of Intelligent Transportation Systems have put together the ”Smart Cities of Romania” conference, the first major national conference destined for smart cities. Along with presentations of famous Romanian and foreign suppliers, the conference brings forth an expozition where solutions and projects may be presented and evaluated. Our main partner is the multinational company ZTE, and main supporters include Huawei, Luxten Greenlight, NEC, Siemens, and Teamnet. The conference will be held at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, the place where education, research, and inovation meet.
More details here: http://www.romaniasmartcities.ro/en/