UTTRI associated faculty Professor Tamer El-Diraby talks about why a smart city should be built in Toronto in “All of Toronto will soon be a ‘smart city’ riddled with sensors, experts say — but who will control the data?,” Toronto Star, July 16, 2020.
Described in the article as a “smart city evangelist,” El-Diraby describes a smart city in three layers:
- the hardware it would operate, e.g. autonomous vehicles, smart sidewalks
- data streams, which are continuously being improved
- governance and community empowerment
Toronto is positioned to take the smart city lead in Canada, he says, and should embrace the potential to improve existing systems and structures through as-yet unknown innovation.
“The smart city will open new horizons for new business models, new companies, new industries,” he says.
El-Diraby would like to see the data generated by smart cities managed and protected by a non-government entity.