TITLE:

Smart Cities – Technologies, Drivers and Major Challenges

ABSTRACT:

Urban living is commencing to take a central role in the direction humanity evolves. Today, more than 1 in 2 is living in urban environments with related efforts to facilitated viable living conditions becoming tremendous. Urged by these observations, city halls and political decision makers have become very alert, calling for urgent solutions to the growing problems. Quickly advancing ICT technologies may just be the answer, which has triggered global ICT players to have launched various smart city initiatives. This corroborates that suitable technologies are a cornerstone to a sustainable development of a city. This is facilitated by means of smart services that use networked sensors and actuators deployed in the city, allowing the authorities to monitor the environment in real-time, to react immediately and just in time if needed and to establish automated control processes with less or even without human intervention. These services, on the other hand, rely heavily on appropriate technologies, be they in the field or in the cloud.

This keynote thus focuses on ICT technologies, allowing for Smart City rollouts, deployments and growth, such as machine-to-machine, green and license-exempt technologies, architecture designs and smart city control platforms, etc. Part of the gamut of technologies have been researched and developed for years already, others are new. However, their composition and application in the area of smart cities is unprecedented and accounts for the tremendous upsurge in work in this area, which is mainly attributed to the unique timing between the undeniable need for making cities more efficient, and an enormous set of ICT technologies having become available and affordable. This keynote will also discuss some of the most burning issues which remain to be tackled, pertaining to technologies, their integration and interaction, architectures, applications, services, privacy, to name a few.

BIOGRAPHY:

Mischa Dohler is now heading the Intelligent Energy [IQe] group at CTTC in Barcelona [http://www.cttc.es/home/mdohler], with focus on Smart Grids and Green Radios, where he and his group work on wireless sensor, machine-to-machine, femto, cooperative, cognitive and docitive networks. He is also CTO of Worldsensing [www.worldsensing.com], which under his leadership has grown very quickly into a market leader with its smart city product portfolio, notably its FastPrk product; it has been labeled by prestigious Pike Research as one of the 17 companies actively shaping the Smart City eco system and has received major press coverage, such as in the Wall Street Journal, BBC and various TV programs.

Prior to this, from June 2005 to February 2008, he has been Senior Research Expert in the R&D division of France Telecom, France. From September 2003 to June 2005, he has been lecturer at King's College London, UK. At that time, he has also been London Technology Network Business Fellow receiving appropriate Anglo-Saxon business training, as well as Student Representative of the IEEE UKRI Section and member of the Student Activity Committee of IEEE Region 8 (Europe, Africa, Middle-East and Russia).

He obtained his PhD in Telecommunications from King's College London, UK, in 2003, his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from Dresden University of Technology, Germany, in 2000, and his MSc degree in Telecommunications from King's College London, UK, in 1999. Prior to Telecommunications, he studied Physics in Moscow. He has won various competitions in Mathematics and Physics, and participated in the 3rd round of the International Physics Olympics for Germany.

In the framework of the Mobile VCE, he has pioneered research on distributed cooperative space-time encoded communication systems, dating back to December 1999. He has published 138 technical journal and conference papers at a citation h-index of 24 and citation g-index of 51, holds 13 patents, authored, co-edited and contributed to 19 books, has given 25 international short-courses, and participated in standardization activities. He has been TPC member and co-chair of various conferences, such as technical chair of IEEE PIMRC 2008 held in Cannes, France. He is EiC of ETT and is/has been holding various editorial positions for numerous IEEE and non-IEEE journals. He is Senior Member of the IEEE. He is fluent in 6 languages.