Smart Cities initiatives can mean different things to different people and solutions providers. However, there is no doubt that a smart city solution should not only focus on providing the core service but should also contribute to the safety of the users of a service. That is why quite a lot of smart cities solutions are being presented from safety perspective as well – smart cities ought to be safer cities. I was honoured to be invited to present our initiative on Smart Cities R&D and innovation at an event co-organised by NEC and IDC – the event was titled, “Smarter and Safer Society – How ICT makes Government and Enterprise work smarter ”. It was a great get together where different speakers and panelists were enthusiastically presenting their visions, understanding, and observations about smart cities initiatives and solutions. I really enjoyed the talks, dialogues between panelist and audience. I spoke about our initiative on setting up an interdisciplinary centre for research, development, and innovation that can lead to citizen-inspired socio-technical solutions for making a city smarter. Here are the presentation that I used for supporting the talk and following is the abstract of my talk.

The Australian Centre for Smart Cities at the University of Adelaide is bringing together a multidisciplinary group of researchers with industry and government partners to carry out use-inspired world class R&D to build competency and knowledge related to Smart Cities. In his presentation, Professor Ali Babar will explore how to find innovative answers to the challenges that demand a Smart Cities approach to urban living. He will share the vision and objectives of the Australian Centre for Smart Cities, which is poised to help Universities and Cities to conceive and realise more efficient, safe, and sustainable Smart Campuses and Cities of the future.