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International Conference Smart Cities: Opportunities & Challenges
The United Nations estimated that 70% of the people in the world would be living in urban areas by 2050 (88% in developed countries and 67% in developing countries). In India, the level of urbanization is expected to increase to 40.76% in 2030 from 31.2% in 2011. Cities are growing both in numbers and in size thus creating unprecedented demand for resources such as energy and water along with services like education, healthcare, transport, communication and sanitation. Cities are also driving the economic growth. Presently, the urban sector in India contributes around 70-75% to the GDP. This dependency of national economy on the urban sector will get stronger with increase in rate of urbanization and will open new opportunities. Cities today, enjoy more economical, political and technological power than ever before but are facing a number of challenges and threats to their sustainability.
To address these challenges to sustainable growth what we require are “Smart Cities”.
A number of definitions of the term “smart city” exist, but there is still no consensus on what a smart city is, since several synonyms of the word “smart” are often used interchangeably such as “intelligent” or “digital” or “innovating” or “knowledge”. This conference shall focus on how a “Smart Cities” can contribute towards improved governance and efficient management of infrastructure such as water, energy, transportation and housing for sustainable development, economic growth, and better quality of life for its citizens.