Smart, Responsive and Resilient Cities during COVID-19 pandemic

Smart, Responsive and Resilient Cities during COVID-19 pandemic

The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted cities and communities worldwide. Although cities, communities and governments have some emergency and disaster response plans, the scale of the outbreak has strained their re-sources and capabilities. Smart City technologies, with their innovative digital approaches and impacts, offer the poten-tial to facilitate responses to COVID-19. As a result, municipalities and the public health system have turned to technol-ogy companies for help. Many established and start-up technology companies have responded with ideas and pro-posals. However, the results have been mixed and uneven. Some problem areas get a lot of ideas while other problems get none. Still other ideas are unfeasible. Many respondents lack understanding of how cities respond to public health emergencies. 

This white paper discusses the role of the Internet of Things (IoT) in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. This role is discussed in the context of a smart city-public health emergency collaboration framework. The framework provides a structured way to identify collaboration opportunities between cities, public health systems and the technology com-munity. It integrates typical smart city ecosystem capabilities with the CDC public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities. The framework is then used to identify potential IoT opportunities. Three example areas of op-portunity are described. 

Table of Contents 

• Executive Overview
• Introduction
• The journey to recovery goes through four stages
• COVID-19 responses vary by stage but two core strategies remain constant throughout
• The role of technology in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Challenges in engaging the technology community
• Developing a better way to collaborate
• Using the framework
• IoT Opportunity—Safe Spaces
• IoT Opportunity—Agile Response to New Outbreaks
• IoT Opportunity—Targeted Interventions
• Closing and Final Thoughts
• References

 

This is an excerpt from the “Opportunities for the Internet of Things in Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic” white paper written by Benson Chan, Renil Paramel, Senior Partner and Peter Williams, Partner at Strategy of Things.