ABSTRACT
Over the past few years Amsterdam has been doing everything in its power to become ‘smart’. Like all other significant big cities, it is working hard to find innovative ways to make life more pleasant, safe and sustainable. It is positioning all sorts of sensors and collecting large amounts of data to help it make better decisions, and in so doing, automating society. Oftentimes this involves casting an envious eye on a number of smart ‘model cities’, such as Songdo in South Korea and Masdar in the desert of the United Arab Emirates. Here, large-scale pilot projects have been launched, full of impressive tech, sensors and screens that make life easier. Another attractive example can be found in Rio de Janeiro, where IBM has built a huge, futuristic command centre to regulate traffic as efficiently as possible, serve tickets for traffic violations and predict and respond to emergency incidents.
