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Smart Cities International: Newcastle Lights, Nairobi Maps, California Recycled H2O

Guangzhou, China
Guangzhou, China
Emily Liedel
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JOURNALISTIC EXCELLENCE·TRANSLATED INTELLIGENCE
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April 16, 2015


Driverless cars seem to be ready to hit the road, but are our cities' roads ready for them? The kind of system that works well for managing the ways humans interact — whether they are inside of vehicles, on foot or on a bicycle — might not work as well when the vehicles are no longer controlled by humans.


In addition to other smart city news, this week we’re looking at how the British city of Newcastle is preparing for driverless cars. We’ll also check in with a new Kenyan mapping project that allows bus passengers to navigate the system better.


— Emily Liedel

IN VIENNA, FROM RESIDENTS TO CITIZENS

A city can only be so smart without smart citizens — at least according to a new initiative in Vienna called “Smart Citizens Lab.” The project’s website, smartcitizens.at, aims to create a platform for other initiatives, businesses, organizations and apps that are related to the everyday concerns of “Life,” “Resources,” and “Mobility,” Oekonews.at reports (German). The website helps citizens answer questions like “how can I save energy without spending more money?” or “How can I reduce my ecological footprint?”

VERBATIM

“A smart city is a city with ultra-connected citizens, who can also, if they are asked to, share their opinions and participate in this grand transformation,” Vincent Giret, a journalist with Le Mondespeaking on France Info radio said about the role of smart cities in strengthening civic action and mitigating global warming.

ALWAYS GREEN

Newcastle, England, has just installed 20 traffic lights with a sensor called Compass4D, which allows the lights to communicate with vehicles that have been equipped with a transmitter. When the vehicle approaches the light, it turns green. Right now, the city is trying out the technology in ambulances, but it could soon be used for taxis and freight trucks, The Telegraph reports. Does this mean you’ll be able to buy a "green light" switch soon? No, but the smart traffic lights are considered the first step towards driverless vehicles. In the future, cargo trucks might be outfitted with the traffic switch and allowed to drive themselves through a series of green lights through town.

PARTNER CONTENT

Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Lab, will be talking at June's "Smart City Event in Amsterdam" about the positive effects that the collection of Big Data can have in promoting behavioral change. He offers this example: "In our Trash Track project in Seattle, we added tags to trash and then followed trash as it moves through the city’s sanitation system. We discovered many things … and one of the things we learned in the Trash Track project is that just sharing information can promote behavioral change. People involved in the project would be able to follow their trash and this prompted many of them to change their habits. One person told us, “I used to drink water in plastic bottles and throw them away and think that they would disappear but now I know it is not true anymore. They just go a few miles from home to a landfill. So I stopped drinking water in plastic bottles.”

Read more here: Smart City Event 2015, Amsterdam

ELECTRIC DELIVERIES

A group of students and researchers in Jena, Germany have developed a simulator for an electric truck, which drivers are invited to test-drive — all without moving an inch, OstThüringer Zeitung reports (German). The "test" involves driving at as even a pace as possible, which is best for the battery, while also getting to the destination on time and delivering an ice-cream cake to the city center. Drivers have to keep an eye on the battery life, in addition to everything else on the road. Experts say battery life is the biggest challenge to overcome in bringing electric vehicles to the delivery world.


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Geopolitics

"No F**king Future!" FSB Verifies Leaked Audio Of Putin Pals Bashing War

What does Russia's ruling class really think of Putin? A leaked audio recording of Russian producer Iosif Prigozhin and Russian billionaire ex-senator Farhad Akhmedov criticizing Putin has been verified by Russian intel service FSB, offering a peak into the anger toward the Kremlin's war.

Photo of Music producer Iosif Prigozhin

Music producer Iosif Prigozhin attending a party after a concert by opera stars ahead of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, at the GUM Department Store.

Roman Anin

A leaked recording in which influential Russians close to President Vladimir Putin trash the leader and his handling of the war in Ukraine has been confirmed as authentic. This rare window into the opaque world of Russian oligarchs confirms the suspicion that the country's wealthy and powerful have grave concerns about the Kremlin

In the expletive-laden conversation, successful Russian music producer Iosif Prigozhin and billionaire and former Senator Farhad Akhmedov, strong public supporters of the war, can be heard describing Russian leaders as "f**king criminals" who have "f**ked up everything."

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The recording which first appeared on social media on March 7, but it wasn't until Sunday when a high-level source in the Russian intelligence services had confirmed to independent Russian media Vazhnyye Istorii (Important Stories) that that the recording was real.

"The recording of the conversation between Prigozhin and Akhmedov is authentic. The FSB leadership held a meeting the other day and ordered their subordinates to take action,” commented a FSB source.

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