SIC invites the world’s Smart City expert to share his experience
Guy Pross, the leading expert and a voice of smart urbanism, visited on the 17th of August Central Bohemian Innovation Centre in order to share his knowledge about implementing smart solutions in cities around the world.
“Smart Cities are expected to generate 60% of the world’s GDP by 2025,“ says Guy and points out the importance of paying attention to building city infrastructure in a sophisticated way. “Many times we can observe that city governments try to solve symptoms, rather than problems, but we have to think about cities in the same way we think about a complex platform for companies, suppliers and organisations,“ adds Guy. The future “smart” city is not about implementing the biggest amount of technologies, but rather cares about quality of life as well as comfortable and ecological living. This is around creating unique projects driven by residents – for example developing more green spaces in cities – such as public parklets replacing parking spots (Sydney), use of bicycles as the main vehicle for commuting (Amsterdam), supporting urban farming projects at schools (NYC), building a network for Mobility as a Service (Helsinki) and sharing data with residents via open data.
“Central Bohemian Region may be facing many infrastructure issues, challenges with education, city budgets, energy and more, however, it is important to start the discussion about how the actions of cities are more focused on resident needs and how the region starts moving towards a “smart regional” strategy so that cities can better work to support their resident needs, create smart living and improve quality of life,” says the SIC Director Rut Bízková. The first opportunity arises on the conference 26th of October in Dolní Břežany.
Guy Pross
With over 15 years of public sector experience in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East, Guy Pross is a business executive in the venture and technology start up space and a founder of 31 º North, a TLV based advisory firm, where he works with 500 companies, cities and governments to integrate technology into their organizations. His areas of expertise include Automotive-tech, Mobility Solutions and Smart Cities. Prior to this he was an executive at Better Place Australia, the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce and Accor SA.
