Month: July 2012

Digital City Exchange at the 1st City Protocol workshop

1st City Protocol Workshop: Building together better cities 16-17 July 2012, Barcelona, Spain

By Orestis Tsinalis

The 1st City Protocol workshop was an event co-organised by the Barcelona City Council, Cisco, and GDF SUEZ with participants from 22 companies, 33 cities, 19 organisations, and 17 universities. Imperial College London was represented in the workshop by a team of researchers from the Digital City Exchange programme.

The City Protocol is a new initiative that aims to bring together stakeholders from the industry, city councils, non-governmental organisations, and the academia with the goal to create a common global-scale framework for collaboration and innovation in cities.

Towards a UK research roadmap for the Internet of Things

RCUK-TSB Internet of Things R&D roadmapping workshop 11-12 July 2012, Loughborough University

By Orestis Tsinalis

The Internet of Things (IoT) R&D roadmapping workshop was an event co-organised by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) and the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) that brought together participants from both academia and industry, with the objective of mapping “the current research landscape relevant to the Internet of Things, the research and R&D challenges for research institutions and businesses in the Internet of Things space, and the future skills needed and challenges to enable the UK to lead internationally in delivering and realising the IoT capability”.

The New Digital Tipping Point

The Digital Tipping Point: engaging customers through social media Sean Mahdi, Director, Pricewaterhouse Coopers 18.30-19.30 17 May 2012, Imperial College Business School Blog by Tao Feng

Sean Mahdi’s speech identified fundamental c hanges of the banking industry in the past decades. Building revenue heavily on financial leverage is no longer suitable due to increased regulatory intervention and industrial competition. A new business model is required to fully utilise digital technology to seize the opportunities among the customers, especially for those who have broadly interacted with the Internet.

In order to have a better understanding of this challe nge, research has been conducted by PwC with almost 3000 banking customers across the major markets.

Working together on smart cities

Ovum-DCE Smart Cities Europe 2012

The Lancaster, London 19-20 June 2012

You can find the Chirpstory for the event here.

In many ways the event revealed the broader problems with discussions around smart cities. There is the aspirational vision – cleaner, less-congested, less polluted and more prosperous cities – contrasted with the complex reality of current “smart” ICT projects, often mired in difficulties around business models, administrative jurisdiction, privacy and security issues and any number of other complex multi-stakeholder problems that crop-up when you try and integrate the physical and digital worlds; problems which go far beyond the scope of a simple technological fix.