6th Brazil-Canada IST Forum - Smart Cities and Urban Mobility

The Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with the Trade Commissioner Service at the Consulate General of Canada in Brazil, is pleased to announce the 6th edition of the Brazil-Canada IST Forum, focused on Smart Cities and Urban Mobility, that will take place online on Wednesday, December 1st at 12:00 PM EST / 2:00 PM BRT.

The term “smart city” is often used to describe different ideas, with distinct approaches in development and for different realities. In theory, a smart city continues to be a utopic idea: a place where artificial intelligence supported by all sorts of sensors controls critical aspects of urban life, such as controlling congested intersections and traffic trends, tracking community needs, requirements and allocating resources accordingly, allowing policymakers to adopt innovative solutions.

Canadian cities are regularly cited in various global “smart city” indices. And while the implementation of smart cities always faces the issue of increasing costs, the success of a smart city project depends not only on the amount of money spent but on how and what choices are made.

While technology continues to be the main driver behind the adoption and implementation of smart cities solutions, Canada generally emphasizes a more human-centered approach to creating urban spaces that focus on community needs, and where technology and data become a tool to improve society. Ideally, cities not only deploy technology but also create it within the community, in a sustainable development approach to address growing urbanization challenges. Municipalities across Canada are embracing smart city technology to lower operating costs, enhance public services and build better lives by optimizing infrastructure, mobility, public services, and utilities, improving energy distribution, streamlining trash collection, decreasing traffic congestion, and improving air quality with the help from the IoT.

And while various factors have helped Canada to successfully develop the smart cities concept, a key enabler for sustainable smart cities is that all participants in the complex ecosystem share information and combine it with contextual data analyzed in real-time. Data management (and access to this information) represents the backbone of the digital city.

In this event, we will discuss some of the solutions developed in Canada for smart transit, and discuss experiences that can be used by communities in Brazil.

We look forward to seeing you there!