Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC), the international event on cities and smart urban solutions organised by Fira de Barcelona, will bring together the urban innovation ecosystem to outline a plan for a more sustainable and liveable urbanised planet.
From November 15th to 17th and under the theme Cities Inspired by People, over 800 exhibitors, from 700 cities and regions and 400 speakers will gather in Barcelona to push together transformation of metropolises worldwide and share knowledge and experiences.
The event will gather international experts and companies to tackle the challenges involved in urban transformation. To cover the many fields involved, the congress programme will be structured in eight themes: Enabling Technologies, Energy & Environment, Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress, Governance, Living & Inclusion, Economy, Infrastructure & Buildings, and Safety & Security.
Cities from the five continents will send delegations to SCEWC including Amsterdam, Atlanta, Barcelona, Berlin, Boston, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Doha, Frankfurt, Kiev, New York, Paris, Quito, Reykjavik, Rio de Janeiro, Roma, Seoul, Stockholm, Sydney, Tel Aviv, Tokyo, and Vienna. Likewise, many countries will showcase their latest projects and solutions, among them Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United States.
The Director of SCEWC, Ugo Valenti, stated that: “Becoming once again the capital of smart cities is a huge honour for Smart City Expo. Welcoming over 700 cities and a significant number of mayors and ministers from different countries strengthens our role as key element in the global urban innovation agenda. Barcelona and the event are more than just the place where the leading organisations in the industry meet with clients once a year, they have become a driver of innovation and change in the urban landscape. And being able to help transform the world into a better place and achieve a more sustainable and liveable planet has been our goal since day one.”
Tools to reshape the urban landscape
Urban solutions are critical element of the smart city ecosystem, and the 800 exhibiting companies will showcase their latest products and technologies and how they can help local governments redesign their cities. Among these are Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Dell & Nvidia, Deloitte, EDF, FCC Environment, Fiware, Honeywell, Microsoft, Moventia, Smart Ports: Piers of the Future and Sorigué.
The over 400 experts taking part in the Congress will make SCEWC the leading global platform for urban knowledge capable of covering every angle of the transformation of cities. Among this edition’s keynote speakers feature architect Elizabeth Diller, gangsta gardener Ron Finley and mathematician Hannah Fry.
Diller has studied how to shape behaviour through public urban space and is responsible of widely acclaimed projects such as the New York High Line, and the Hudson Docks new art centre The Shed.
Ron Finley has been spearheading a green revolution in Los Angeles where guerrilla gardening has transformed the dirt patches in South Central LA into gardens where neighbours are not only growing vegetables but also healthier communities.
Hannah Fry teaches Mathematics of Cities at the University College London. And has been able to decode the patterns of a wide range of social activities ranging from shopping and transport to urban crime, riots, and terrorism.
The future of mobility
Among the most critical issues that cities face all over the world is the challenge to balance an increasingly urbanised and densely populated planet with the need of all its inhabitant to move.
That is the main focus of Tomorrow.Mobility World Congress and event co-organised by Fira de Barcelona and the EIT Urban Mobility, an initiative of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, a body of the European Union. On its second edition Tomorrow.Mobility will promote the design and adoption of new sustainable urban mobility models.
The sessions featured in the conference program cover topics such as putting Public Transportation as a global priority in a context of rising energy prices, using low-emission-zones, electrification and micromobility to achieve carbon neutrality as soon as possible, and safely developing Urban Air Mobility (UAM).
Among the more than 80 experts taking part at the discussion are Kelly Larson, Leading Road Safety & Drowning Prevention work at Bloomberg Philanthropies; Karen Vancluysen, Secretary General at POLIS; Marco te Brömmelstroet, Professor in Urban Mobility Futures, University of Amsterdam; and Thomas Geier, Research and Policy Officer at European Metropolitan Transport Authorities.
PUZZLE X and cutting-edge technologies
The second edition of PUZZLE X, an event focusing on frontier technologies, will grasp the potential of bleeding-edge tech to build a prosperous future for humanity. To achieve that goal, the event will bring together visionaries, industry leaders, innovators, and governments to discuss how these technologies can enable a better and more sustainable future.
The conferences will be structured in eight themes: Quantum World; Matterverse to Metaverse; 5G and Sentient Cities; Semiconductor: the new Wave; Transcending Biology; Architecting Tomorrow; Exotic Computing; and Sustainable Future.
Among the experts who will speak at PUZZLE X features Aubrey de Grey, co-founder of the Metuselah Foundation, who will discuss how technology might end aging and extend life indefinitely. In addition, the event’s stage will also host presentations including a live demo by Australian company Cortical Labs who have been growing synthetic brain cells and combining them with silicon chips to create mini-brains with the ability to learn new routines live and even play videogames.
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