Trikala, in Greece’s agricultural heartland, is an unlikely candidate for a leading smart city – but innovations have improved lives despite the financial crisis.
“In the past, residents had to call the vice mayor just to change a broken street lamp,” says Sonia Sofou, a police officer turned civil servant. “Now you don’t need to know a politician to get something done.” The 37-year-old is hard at work in the control room of Trikala, Greece’s first smart city. On the wall, nine screens display colourful maps and graphs monitoring the availability of parking spaces, the status of traffic lights and water pipes, the location of rubbish trucks and the town hall’s monthly budget.
Sofou answers the phone, logging reports of uncollected rubbish and fallen tree branches into the small city’s e-complaint system. As she works, the information shows up on one of the screens above her.
Smart cities – usually defined as those that use technology to improve services, increase transparency and become more efficient – are proliferating around the world. Pioneered in Europe, they can now be found everywhere from India to Korea. With more than two-thirds of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050, finding ways to make cities work better for the people who live in them has become a priority. Major companies such as Intel, Cisco Systems and IBM are involved in researching new applications in this growing field. Read more...