Towards a Smarter City In the Local Context

Smart cities have gained widespread interests in the recent years. This has since brought about the launch of several Smart Cities Initiatives and many other similar programs across the various continents. However, the understanding of the subject can differ among different smart cities’ communities, particularly across the academia, industry, and government sectors. Likewise, the approach towards the realization of smart cities can vary from one city to the other, depending on their standpoints and perspectives. These are largely due to the subject matter at hand which can be rather broad and all-encompassing in nature, hence resulting in the wide heterogeneity in the treatment of the subject.

To meet the prevailing needs towards the “smartization” movement across the various sectors in the UAE, the central theme of this 2015 International Smart Cities Initiative Workshop (SCI’15) is thus set to address “Towards a Smarter City in the Local Context”. The purpose of this workshop is aimed to distil a smarter approach towards smart city, for the local UAE region, taking into account the academia, industry, and government considerations in order to attain overall win-win benefits of all the stakeholders involved. It is meant to provide a forum to complement the ICTRF event, by gathering like-minded communities together (for both practitioners and researchers) to network, share and discuss the practicalities and approaches in the step towards smart city that is not only customized but also relevant to the UAE context. This would also aid to encourage new ideas and foster cross-collaborations among the various communities, in a single coherent drive towards smarter city for the overall good of the region locally.

For more information, please see the international SCI’15 workshop at http://sci15.smarter-cities.net.