When Aarti Tandon was looking for the right city to anchor an annual “Smart City Expo” in the United States, she settled on Atlanta.
“We felt Atlanta was the ideal market to hold this conference,” said Tandon, co-founder and CEO of Smart City Expo Atlanta, a spin-off of the world-renowned Smart City Expo World Congress that’s been held in Barcelona since 2011.
A whopping 80 percent of a cross-section of metro Atlanta leaders who gathered at a panel discussion on smart cities convened by Bank of America Merrill Lynch thinks reducing roadway congestion is the most pressing transportation challenge that digital technology can address in the region.
By Guest Columnist GEOFF DUNCAN, a Republican candidate for lieutenant governor
For anyone who lives in metro Atlanta, there isn’t a day that goes by that their greatest nemesis – traffic congestion – isn’t a topic of conversation.
For far too many of us, just figuring out how we get from Point A to Point B has become the greatest challenge of living and working in this region. INRIX, the transportation analytics firm, ranked Atlanta’s congestion the fourth worst in the nation last year and eighth worst in the world.
Even with more than $7 billion in transit and road construction on the books in metro Atlanta, the future of mobility improvements is soon to be developed in Chamblee and along Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, in Gwinnett County.
Atlanta has never been at a loss for big dreams, and the latest project maintains tradition. The city intends to develop a huge Internet system that will do everything from locate gunshots to spark development in blighted neighborhoods.
By Guest Columnist ALEX KARNER, formerly of Georgia Tech and now assistant professor in the School of Architecture at The University of Texas at Austin, with JENNIFER HIRSCH, ROBERT ROSENBERGER, and JESSE WOO, of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Atlanta is one of many cities across the country that is increasingly adopting “smart cities” technologies. These are usually internet-connected sensors that gather data about the environment. Common examples include traffic signals that monitor intersections for accidents, trash cans that alert sanitation workers when they’re full, or air quality monitors that send an alert when pollution levels are unsafe.
