Foreword: Diverse Range of Technical Advances in Smart Cities: Applications From Smart Disease Management to Smart Mobility

Written by Bernard Fong

Over the past few years, advancements in infrastructures coupled with information and communications technology have bought medical and healthcare services to cover virtually all parts of a smart city, from general health assessment to preventive care and emergency response.

For example, tracking the spread of pathogens have been efficiently carried out in many smart cities while information about both confirmed and suspected cases of communicable disease can be made available for outbreak surveillance. Comprehensive smart city infrastructure not only supports both patients and healthcare service providers, it also benefits perfectly healthy people by supporting a wide range of general health assessment services, like keeping track of various activities and dietary recommendations. These also open up numerous opportunities for utilizing business intelligence technologies for marketing as well as generating additional revenues. This month’s eNewsletter features two articles that discuss the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for tackling coronavirus virus outbreak; other topics covered include sensing and monitoring in a smart city environment as well as data analytics for smart transportation.

Bernard Fong
Providence University, Taiwan

 

For a downloadable copy of the July 2021 eNewsletter which includes this article, please visit the IEEE Smart Cities Resource Center.