The annual World Cities Summit is the place to be for city leaders, managers, and urban planners as it sets the agenda for the conversations that will drive change in our cities in the years and decades ahead. This year’s event, recently concluded in Singapore, explored developing livable and sustainable cities by embracing innovation and collaboration. Building on this theme to further look into the future of our cities, IDC, in partnership with Dassault Systèmes, has published a new e-book “Visualizing Smart Cities for a Resilient Future.”

Cities are going through a period of profound change, with rapidly increasing populations and spiking demand for services and control of resources. With digital technologies and connected devices becoming more pervasive, cities willing to embrace new approaches have major opportunities to develop long-term plans for social, economic and environmental changes to meet the needs and desires of citizens.

The e-book provides four key findings:

• The rise in connected devices enables cities to take a holistic approach to addressing citizen issues from the municipal to the neighborhood level
• Data collected from devices can be used to create rich, virtual 3D views of cities and the way in which systems interact
• Combining data from physical sources with virtual worlds allows city planners to predict and visualize changes to systems arising from the introduction of smart city products
• The collection and combination of data enables cities to predict results, reducing negative outcomes and waste

The e-book examines what city leaders and other players – from universities, regional bodies, national governments, private sector enterprises and utilities – must do to seize the opportunities ahead.  It looks at how cities must harness data to become smart, including getting the data to all key players and using it to virtually model scenarios to gain real-time visibility into current situations or the impacts of planned programs.  It examines the critical need for adopting digital platforms to manage information and best take advantage of emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, 3D printing, etc.

Download the complete e-book!