IGF 2023 WS #150 Smart Cities: Harmonizing Infrastructural Technologies

Description:

This workshop attempts to provide complementary and harmonizing policy guidelines for new and emerging infrastructural technologies by identifying the main societal and policy related challenges that smart cities are currently facing. Such problems include safety of new and emerging technologies, privacy and security related data management, equity and accessibility, democracy and bottom-up public participation, and environmental sustainability. The new and emerging infrastructural technologies that this workshop discusses include energy systems, automated vehicles, data center management, and online communication tools. In this workshop, we show that tackling the societal and policy problems of each technology is often futile because complementary or contradictory problems emerge from other technologies. To elaborate, the use of automated vehicles is expected to decentralize the energy infrastructure with individual possession of batteries from the vehicles. Additionally, the use of these smart technologies will further increase the demand for data centers, which may also impact energy systems. Therefore, instead of focusing on just one technology, in this workshop session, we discuss several different technologies, their societal challenges, and how policies, societal perspectives, and other technologies can mitigate or potentially worsen societal and sustainability problems. The goal of this session is twofold. First, it will give space to experts to discuss the relevant policy harmonization gaps and to examine how different forms of infrastructural technologies can alleviate or even solve some of the challenges. Second, it will give an overview to the participants on how different systems can function in a complementing manner.