Argentina. The concept of City 4.0 comprises a geographical, cultural, political and administrative space in which the government and the community adopt the intelligent use of ICTs to enable innovation and sustainable development. This term was defined by Dr. Alejandro Prince, director of Prince Consulting, in the webinar given in conjunction with 5G Americas.
"City 4.0 is another phase of the cognitive revolution," said Prince, who is also a renowned international expert and speaker on the knowledge society and economy. "The Internet of Things, big data, AI (Artificial Intelligence), the cloud and blockchain, among other technologies, are used to turn more data into information, more information into knowledge and this into intelligence to solve problems and create civic value."
The adoption of ICT in the context of City 4.0 allows generating innovation opportunities for the future development of the individual and collective capacities of a community formed by Government, companies, civil society and academia. In addition to the technological component, Prince said, political consensus is required to carry out projects related to smart cities.
"Today, and although the subject has been talked about for two decades, it is 1% of Latin American cities that are intelligently using ICT to be Smart Cities. The barrier is not technology or economic, but the political will and consensus to do so," said the expert.
The specialist highlighted historical elements of technological development that lead to the provision of infrastructures and ecosystems present in the city of new solutions based on connectivity and digital services. In the context of a third industrial revolution focused on collaboration, the Internet figures as a central element involving human use, but also communications between machines in the context of the Internet of Things (IoT).
Connectivity appears as a central element that allows connecting communications between people, machines and between the entire technological ecosystem. The customization of devices and platforms allows to increase the use of IoT services, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and Big Data analytics. These digital solutions, enabled by network connectivity that includes mobile ones, will connect the city's infrastructure (such as transport and energy) with services that will make them more "smart".
This intelligence derives not from the application of technology itself, but from the ability to extract more information from these infrastructures, analyze it and generate value through process improvement, urban planning and services provided to society.
Prince stressed, during his presentation, the importance of technological development to allow, for example, the historical reduction in the price of technology production and forecasts of ICT appropriation. Thus, it is expected that by 2020 the number of connected devices per person will exceed 6.5, a situation that in turn drives the concept of smart cities due to the ability to communicate infrastructures and services with the end user through more devices and applications.
The recording of the webinar "Cities 4.0" can be viewed here.
