The spread of Fusus, a police technology platform that merges public and private cameras with predictive policing and other surveillance tools, is sparking debates in towns across the U.S.
Officer Mike Martinez has a mental map of all the security cameras in the small Californian town of Rialto.
… “This is not about Big Brother watching you,” he told Context from behind the wheel of his black and white SUV police cruiser. “This is about public safety.” — Read More
Tag Archives: Smart Cities
Toronto wants to kill the smart city forever
In February, the city of Toronto announced plans for a new development along its waterfront. They read like a wish list for any passionate urbanist: 800 affordable apartments, a two-acre forest, a rooftop farm, a new arts venue focused on indigenous culture, and a pledge to be zero-carbon.
The idea of an affordable, off-the-grid Eden in the heart of the city sounds great. But there was an entirely different urban utopia planned for this same 12-acre plot, known as Quayside, just a few years ago. It was going to be the place where Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation arm of Alphabet, was going to prove out its vision for the smart city.
Sandwiched between the elevated Gardiner Expressway and Lake Ontario, and occupied by a few one-story commercial buildings and a mothballed grain silo, Quayside shouldn’t have been that hard to develop. But controversy ensued almost from the moment in October 2017 that Waterfront Toronto, a governmental agency overseeing the redevelopment of 2,000 acres along the lake shore, announced that Sidewalk had submitted the winning proposal. Read More
Seoul will be the first city government to join the metaverse
Seoul says it will be the first major city government to enter the metaverse. On Nov. 3, the South Korean capital announced a plan to make a variety of public services and cultural events available in the metaverse, an immersive internet that relies on virtual reality. If the plan is successful, Seoul residents can visit a virtual city hall to do everything from touring a historic site to filing a civil complaint by donning virtual reality goggles. Read More
The 5th AI City Challenge
The AI City Challenge was created with two goals in mind: (1) pushing the boundaries of research and development in intelligent video analysis for smarter cities use cases, and (2) assessing tasks where the level of performance is enough to cause real-world adoption. Trans portation is a segment ripe for such adoption. The fifth AI City Challenge attracted 305 participating teams across 38 countries, who leveraged city-scale real traffic data and high-quality synthetic data to compete in five challenge tracks. Track 1 addressed video-based automatic vehicle counting, where the evaluation being conducted on both algorithmic effectiveness and computational efficiency. Track 2 addressed city-scale vehicle re-identification with augmented synthetic data to substantially increase the training set for the task. Track 3 addressed city-scale multitarget multi-camera vehicle tracking. Track 4 addressed traffic anomaly detection. Track 5 was a new track addressing vehicle retrieval using natural language descriptions. The evaluation system shows a general leader board of all submitted results, and a public leader board of results limited to the contest participation rules, where teams are not allowed to use external data in their work. The public leader board shows results more close to real-world situations where annotated data is limited. Results show the promise of AI in Smarter Transportation. State-of-the-art performance for some tasks shows that these technologies are ready for adoption in real-world systems. Read More
A Global Smart-City Competition Highlights China’s Rise in AI
FOUR YEARS AGO, organizers created the international AI City Challenge to spur the development of artificial intelligence for real-world scenarios like counting cars traveling through intersections or spotting accidents on freeways.
In the first years, teams representing American companies or universities took top spots in the competition. Last year, Chinese companies won three out of four competitions.
Last week, Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Baidu swept the AI City Challenge, beating competitors from nearly 40 nations. Chinese companies or universities took first and second place in all five categories. TikTok creator ByteDance took second place in a competition to identify car accidents or stalled vehicles from freeway videofeeds. Read More
How Congress and the Biden Administration Could Jumpstart Smart Cities With AI
AI promises to help cities save money, address infrastructure needs, and reduce emissions. But to unlock these benefits and help smart cities reach their full potential, the federal government has an important role to play in funding RD&D and facilitating cooperation.
The next wave of connected and intelligent technologies, including sensors, 5G, and artificial intelligence (AI), holds great promise for improving the energy efficiency of many systems, including urban systems.1 Building automation systems can automatically monitor, control, and optimize a building’s heating and cooling, lighting, and other mechanical systems. Real-time traffic data coupled with smart traffic lights can reduce energy use. Digitalization is also enabling integration of previously isolated systems: Grid-integrated buildings provide demand response to the grid; and smart electric vehicles (EVs) shift their charging times to off-peak hours.
At the same time, cities are increasingly making their own climate commitments and looking for ways to reduce their own emissions—and the emissions of businesses and residents who live in cities. Read More
Dahua Provides “Uyghur Warnings” To China Police
‘I know your favourite drink’: Chinese smart city to put AI in charge
From robots delivering coffee to office chairs rearranging themselves after a meeting, a smart city project in China aims to put artificial intelligence in charge, its creators told a conference this week – raising some eyebrows.
Danish architecture firm BIG and Chinese tech company Terminus discussed plans to build an AI-run campus-style development in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing during an online panel at Web Summit, a global tech conference. Read More
Bjarke Ingels Is Designing an Artificial Intelligence-Based ‘Smart City’ in China
A space where the barriers between humans and artificial intelligence will be removed.
After smartphones and smart homes, the next logical step is smart cities. Who better to take us there then superstar architect Bjarke Ingels, a noted off-the-wall thinker, and Terminus Group, a burgeoning Chinese tech firm that specializes in smart services.
Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG) recently unveiled plans for a striking, high-tech hub that will become the future headquarters for the firm. Read More
NtechLab face biometrics piloted in ten more Russian cities’ public security systems
NtechLab, which provides the face biometric technology used in Moscow’s massive public security system, has launched pilot projects in ten other cities, though Kommersant (as translated by Google) reports that funding challenges could slow or prevent an operational rollout. Read More
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