Summer school: Smart Cities | CuriousU 09 - 18 Aug 2020 | University of Twente (Netherlands)

Smart Cities is a rapidly growing concept in both research and policy practice. It is viewed as a solution for cities to better cope with key societal challenges like energy transition, mobility and social innovation through extensive and effective use of big data and IT.

This, in turn, calls for new modes of – smart – governance, with the active involvement of a wide diversity of public, private and citizens’ organizations. In this summer course, Smart Cities is being studied through a variety of perspectives: the perspective of research, economy, government, ethics, marketing, communication, design and philosophy.

The central theme in this year’s Smart Cities course is sustainable energy, climate change and smart ways to deal with the challenges these bring to us. What technological innovation will be available? How can acceptance of people be improved? How about privacy, data and security? Will the costs be manageable? In the University of Twente high tech meets human touch and there we like to put the focus in the course.

CuriousU 2017 Testimonial- Smart Cities- Roxanni- Greece

Topics

Smart grids

Smart grids are energy networks that can intelligently integrate the behaviour and actions of all units connected to it - generators, consumers and those that do both – in order to match the demand and the supply of energy in an efficient, sustainable, economic and secure way. In this subject, research focuses on:

· local communities like residential areas and small business parks. The goal is to perform energy management at a local level in which the production and consumption are as much as possible in equilibrium.

· In the smart grid, energy is not only used but also generated as near as possible to the consumers. Imagine wind and solar energy, but also generation based on climate neutral pyrolysis oil (see also energy from biomass).

Topic: Retail

What is the role of small and medium enterprise companies in the energy sector? How do they have to develop and change to meet requirements for energy in the 21th century? What does that mean to human resources, technological equipment but also to business models and scale?

Topic: Research

How is research involved in smart cities? What are the main questions? How is energy transition and climate change playing a role in smart cities research? Who are the stakeholders and what is the time horizon for innovation and development? What are the findings and conclusions and what could be their impact on society?

Topic: Government

The city of Enschede is actively involved in implementing smart city innovation into the infrastructure. Experiences are positive and future continuation also. Collaboration with the University of Twente, Saxion University of applied sciences and local and regional business is expected to result in the development of a smart city and region where life quality, economical opportunity and high level research should be joining in future.

Topic: Privacy and security

The future of society is largely connected with growing data infrastructures. Everywhere data are collected, generated, analyzed and used for all kinds of decision-making. Many people and organisations are putting questions to privacy and protection of people rights. How is smart city development affecting the privacy of individuals and groups and how can privacy and data security be taken care of in the development and implementation of smart city environments and infrastructures?

Topic: Implementation

Smart cities do not pop up within a short time even though in recent years many examples have arisen at many places. Some of these have lead to growing wellbeing, life quality and efficiency. What determines successful implementation of smart cities? What is the role of communication, marketing, needs assessment and lobbying?

Course aim

The course is aiming at students interested in innovations that make life more effective, pleasant and efficient. Integrating technological, social and organizational science to achieve intelligent and smart solutions for challenges in a rapidly changing world. In the course you will:

· Learn all about many aspects of Smart Cities, ranging from governing a smart city to maintaining the infrastructure in a smart city

· Apply your knowledge from both technical and governance aspects to smart city development in group exercises

· Work in multidisciplinary teams

· Learn how you can contribute to smart city developments in your own environment

Festival schedule

Day