Future Cities SIB Council (SIB-FC)

Live in a Healthy Place to get more time and more life. Become time-rich.”
 – Dr. Hirschhorn, “Sprawl Kills”

Keywords:

Urban planning, architecture, density, sprawl, mobility, sustainable communities, energy efficiency, smart houses, passive houses

Scope:

The scope of this SIB is to bring together experts from computer science, architects, civil engineers, urban planners, geographic information science, intelligent transportation systems, computer graphics, cognitive science, local governments, in order to collaborate for finding ways in which information technology can be used to improve our living environment.

Key-Challenges:

• Demographic shift and urbanization
• Geosensor networks, local vs. global operations and analysis in the network;
• Urban Mobility;
• City Planning
• Uncertain information distributed among moving travelers/vehicles and the infrastructure;
• Coordinated and collaborative transport across modes of traveling;
• Information regarding transfers to alternate modes of transportation;
• Data mining techniques for travel information, energy conservation and environmental impact and inference of behavior;

Mission:

Due to increasing demand for services cities face more congestion, high consumption of energy, pollutant emissions, and – above all – accidents. This SIB will investigate ways in which information technology can be used to address the major problems for the cities: housing, transportation, urban planning, nature protection, health and well-being .

Description:

The demographic shift where more than 50% of the world’s population lives in cities is a fact. In Europe the figures are quite high: 72 % in 2007 and up to 84 % in 2050. Indicators show that cities will continue to grow. The impacts of the rise of cities both large and small can be considered either a vast problem or a massive potential.

• Cities are in the heart of local public private partnerships
• Political commitment is a basic requirement
• Cities are living ‘Laboratories’ for learning and evaluating

How will the future cities look like? The most significant change will come in the form of transportation. For more than 50 years planners have designed cites to move cars, not people. Proper planning of the built environment is essential to the management of demographic change and the potential key to coping with global warming. The environmental impacts of building currently constitute one of the greatest challenges to cities around the world.

Innovative solutions for intelligent Transportation systems, communication networks, water and energy supplies, sewage and sanitation handling are those that will make the cities livable.

This SIB will not only pose R&D problems, but provide crucial incentives and directions shaping this entire field. Also researchers from industry will be invited that help to give a more applied view on the field. In order to stimulate this, special sessions will be dedicated to open research questions and project ideas. In addition, there will be focus groups on selected topics. This will enable exploration of both the necessary depth of a special topic and at the same time allow for the presentation of an adequate breadth of topics. Researchers and practitioners from companies will also discuss and exchanges their ideas.

Some of these advanced strategies are investigated in the FCT SIB and realized in close cooperation with industry.

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Conferences: http://futurecities.eu/

Useful links:

CIVITAS: http://www.civitas-initiative.org/main.phtml?lan=en

ELTIS: http://www.eltis.org/Vorlage.phtml?sprache=en

COVENANT OF MAYORS: http://www.eumayors.eu/