The two-day Smart Cities 2017 conference at Stamford Bridge, the west London home of Chelsea Football Club, includes a day about ‘secure cities’.
The conference runs on Wednesday and Thursday, February 1 and 2. After the conference opens at 9.30am, Tony Porter, the Surveillance Camera Commissioner, is the first speaker.
The consultant and trainer Dr David Rubens will speak next. As featured in Professional Security magazine, his doctorate from the University of Portsmouth was about the connectedness of cities – and how that can lead to a cascade of things going wrong, whether criminal (cyber-attack on networks) or otherwise man-made (a failure of ATMs) or natural (extreme weather causing failures in utilities and services).
Giving an Australian viewpoint is Angus Taylor MP, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation. Other speakers before lunch include Prof Andrew Blyth, Director of the Cyber Defence Centre, Department of Computing and Mathematics, Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Science University of South Wales, on building cyber resilience; and Colin Leatherbarrow, Product Solutions Director, Chubb Fire & Security.
And speakers after lunch include consultant Bruce Braes, Director of Optimal Resilience; on safe campuses, Russ Huxtable, Head of Business Continuity and Resilience, Swansea University and Chris Keane, Sales Manager of the communications software company CriticalArc; and Dr Liz O’Driscoll, presenting a case study on Exeter City Futures.
The end of the first day will see inaugural awards for Smart Cities UK presented. Day two is about urban innovation generally, such as autonomous vehicles; and use of wireless IoT networks to deliver value for smart cities.
As organisers say, a smart city is a place where the traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies, for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses. The smart city concept goes beyond the use of ICT for better resource use and less emissions. It means smarter urban transport networks, upgraded water supply and waste disposal facilities, and more efficient ways to light and heat buildings.
For more about the event contact Guy Whiffen at Ascent Events; email [email protected].
Pictured: the statue to Chelsea footballer Peter Osgood, outside the Stamford Bridge stadium. As featured in the June 2015 print issue of Professional Security, the work of art was designed to double as a counter-terrorism, anti-ram-raid barrier.
