The weekly observer of Moscow's tech stories

MARKET IN BRIEF

main news about Moscow's projects, developers and technologies

• Coursera: Russia continues to rank #1 in the Technology and Data Science categories in the Global Skills Index

• Doctors of the Moscow telemedicine centre conducted more than 820 thousand consultations since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Usetech and Sberbank won the IT World Awards

• Cognitive Pilot to start mass production of unmanned train control systems in 2021 (Card of Cognitive Pilot

• Kaspersky Lab will present a smartphone with a secure OS (Cards of Kaspersky Lab)

More news →

INVESTMENT & IPO DEALS

• Mail.ru Group has invested in the Uchi.ru service and will receive 25% of the company (Card of Uchi.ru)

• Ozon raised $1.2 billion following its IPO

• Moscow-based online insurance startup Pampadu raised $400 thousand for development (Card of Pampadu)

LONGREAD

How Smart City is defined in the world today

During almost thirty years of the existence of “Smart City” term, a final unambiguous interpretation of it has not been provided yet. Nevertheless, this does not prevent analysts from forecasting the growth of this area on an annual basis. 

Artificial intelligence is one of the most hyped technologies among the authors of smart city strategies.  The frequency of AI references among the key smart city technologies is gradually increasing: 7 out of 9 mentions of AI in strategies refer to the documents released in 2017 and later. The COVID-19 pandemic has also become a significant driver for revising the Smart City concept In 2020. We can already see how cities are updating the global agenda taking into account this experience. 

ICT.Moscow tried to figure out how a smart city is defined today and what place is given to technology in this concept by discussing these issues with experts from Singapore, Vienna, Helsinki, Taipei, Sydney, Moscow and other cities.

Smart City is not just about pushing technology for the sake of digitalisation. We need to translate the use of technology to people’s happiness, people’s jobs, and people’s access to services. Our goals and objectives have to absolutely be grounded by real-world results.

Mr Tan Chee Hau

Director of Planning and Prioritisation at the Smart Nation and Digital Government Office (SNDGO) (Singapore)

With multiple dynamic megatrends constantly challenging us a long term smart city concept cannot be set in stone. On the contrary, cities have to be agile and adaptive to turn into sustainable more livable habitats in the coming years. Having said that, it remains of vital importance to implement strategies consequently and coherently. Being agile does not mean to skip strategies whenever a problem requires adjustments. 

Nikolaus Summer

Senior Expert of Smart City Agency (Vienna)

Smart cities was a convenient label to describe any city that takes advantage of ICT to boost sustainability and liveability for its citizens. Big tech could use this label to push a digitalisation agenda via IoT sensors, big data capture, urban analytics, and activation (smart traffic lights etc.). What we are really talking about is ‘urban futures’ and how this will change for city dwellers as the digitalisation of everything continues apace. 

Mark Burry

Director Smart Cities Research Institute (Australia)

For Moscow, the “smart city” concept has for a long time already been not a theory, but a practice. Without the introduction of modern technological solutions, the management of a multi-million megacity becomes simply impossible. That is why digitalization affects all sectors of the urban economy and the social sphere of Moscow. At the same time, in terms digitalization, the city is always guided by the “technology is for people” principle: any IT solution that is implemented in the capital should improve the city management, the quality of life and doing business.

Eduard Lysenko

Head of the Department of Information Technologies of Moscow

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Digest about AI in Russia: top news in November

ICT.Moscow has collected the most notable topics for November about artificial intelligence in one digest: successes of medical AI, the race between the United States and China, the hype around autonomous vehicles and other topics of the month.

Read full issue →

DIGITAL SOLUTIONS FROM MOSCOW

a showcase of some smart city solutions 

Gorod.mos.ru

Information portal to control urban improvements

Active Citizen

Electronic citizen poll system

City wide contact center

Robotic voice notification service for citizens

More solutions  →

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