Velika Gorica, Krk, Koprivnica and Dubrovnik among “smarter” cities in Croatia.
The city is smart when it invests in people and their social capital, encourages sustainable economic development and manages to achieve a high quality of life, it was said at the “Smart Cities 2016 – The Future Starts Now” conference in Zagreb. The participants added that a smart city uses digital technologies to increase productivity and public benefits, reduce financial costs and consumption of resources, and actively involve citizens in governance, reports tportal.hr on March 18, 2016.
Igor Cerinski, the head of the Group for Public Procurement and EU Funds in Croatian Telecom (HT), talked about the examples of good practice, which, according to him, are many in Croatia. He emphasized that the goal of innovations must be the establishment of a quality system rather than finding solutions to individual problems.
“Velika Gorica with the e-mobility, Krk as a smart island, Koprivnica with its digital purity project, Dubrovnik with the pilot project Smart City, are providing good examples how to manage a city without unnecessary spending”, said Cerinski, noting that Croatia should keep in step with technology standards because it would be otherwise impossible to have a standard that will meet the needs of modern citizens.
“IT platforms are at the heart of all smart changes, and I hope that we will have more examples similar to these I have mentioned”, he said.
Alexey Ershov, vice president of IBM responsible for ‘Smarter Cities Europe’, spoke about the revolution of mobile applications and new technologies that provide cities with an unmatched level of communication with the citizens. “IBM’s application City Heart Beat facilitates the life of citizens, but also of city governments”, he explained, referring to innovations introduced by Madrid, Lyon, Stockholm, Bandung and Rio de Janeiro.
As a part of IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge, the company has sent over 800 experts to more than 130 cities around the world to solve pressing problems completely for free. The most interesting part of Ershov’s presentation was related to the achievements in artificial intelligence, such as Watson computer that defeated Garry Kasparov in chess and beat two of the strongest quiz participants in America in the popular “Jeopardy” show.
“However, no matter how good the technology is, people are still irreplaceable in some jobs, Ershov said.
