A veritable “perfect storm” of challenges and opportunities is profoundly changing the fundamentals of urban areas throughout the world. The driving force is the exploding growth of urban populations caused by both global population growth combined with dramatic relocation to urban centers. The United Nations predicts a near doubling of city dwellers by 2050 as the global population increases from 7 billion to 9 billion with the urban population to grow between 2.5 billion and 3 billion people in the next 30 years.

This poses daunting challenges for planning, deployment, operations, and management of infrastructure, procurement and utilization of resources and provision of services. Within each urban area, it becomes more difficult to procure and manage the necessities of life and business—housing, transportation, water, fuels, electricity, communications, information, education, products, services—while at the same time maintaining and improving economy, efficiency, sustainability, reliability, security, health, and safety.

Fortunately, exponential improvements in the performance versus cost of electronics, telecommunications and information technologies are making it possible to address these complexities and challenges. A particularly interesting example is the advent of the “smart grid,” an especially important development since everything else in an urban area requires economical, reliable and sustainable electric power and energy.

Article in full: http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/14/05/smart-cities-and-smart-grid



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