Smart City Feature: Moscow, Russia
Привет!
как дела Москвы подругой?
Do you already know Moscow is smart? I am sure you do!
Last year the city was about to win the World Smart City Award 2015 but at the end it didn’t make it!…strange circumstances because the winner was a city called peterborough and…no, no is not Saint Petersbourg, it is a small city in UK….shhhh we know is pretty sad, that’s why my dear friends, ürbes wants to celebrate Moscow and let you know a little bit more about its path for becoming SMART.
Next week the city is going to host the international smart city forum, the largest annual event on the smart future of Russian cities and regions. The event is strategically important for Russia to growth as smart country, furthermore it opens the door to an appropriate debate that could really be a plus for such a big diverse environment: imagine managing the fascinating complexity of Moscow’ infrastructures, traffic, waste disposal, government. Maybe you think I am getting to excited, and if it is the case you are completely right. I have studied Russian for four months last summer, unfortunately I only remember the words I wrote at the beginning but I could not forget some discussions about the potential of Russian cities, on the border line between the old isolation and the willingness to stand out, to be known, to share something with western world. That’s why SMART MOSCOW means to me a way to give brightness to a world that Dostoevskij lucidly depicted two centuries ago.Modern circumstances require a new development model for Russian regions and cities based on human capital, innovation and high technology.
Moscow started its great journey to be smart. Being particularly concerned about traffic congestions Moscow authorities started thinking about a way of providing the city with smoother road conditions.
From here the starting point: speed cameras and road sensors have been installed where traffic needed to be monitored, researches and data analysis have shown the main fallacies of road infrastructure, which is really hard to redesign. Moscow’s duma publishes an info session on road congestion every week, so that muscovite can have a clear framework about which path to choose on Monday morning!
Toady the whole plan for developing Moscow is more complete and several projects are included under a big umbrella, Russian government wants to have a huge role in the development however collaboration from private sector is absolutely required.
Below different areas of intervention:
- Governing
Moscow’s authorities want to become digital and offer digitalized service to their citizen as online voting, discussions, an offline service for personal documents, and the possibility of sending complains online.
- Navigation
It involves helpful tools to get around the city as a Multilanguage city guide website
- Transport
Smart Transport is about collecting and analyzing data on traffic conditions, check parking availability online and an intelligent transport system, probably the most interesting aspect, because it’s here that efforts have been concentrated to make Moscow smart. Among the most interesting projected impacts a 12% increase in the average traffic speed and 64% drop in parking rules violation can be listed
- Education
Smart education means E-learning, using new technologies at school and civil service careers online platform
- Business
Facilitating the long process of investing in Russia, especially for foreign people
- Healthcare
Integrated medical information and Analytical system which aimes to improve accessibility and quality of public health system
- Urban environment
Smart power grid, eco-monitoring, glonass control. Glonass is a space-based satellite navigation system used by the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. It provides a valide alternative to GPS.
The most captivating topic is how these areas of impact are planned to be connected. The whole infrastructure of Moscow will be integrated through a Smart City Cloud platform provided by Alphaopen CITY, an expert in hybrid cloud for smart cities (Alphaopen has already proved its capacity in Astana, one of the most developed smart cities worldwide). The idea is collecting first every kind of big data from smart buildings, transport smart system, public utilities and public securities in a unique huge cloud, secondly processing them and giving them back to citizens, government and facility management so that the output of the project will be always traceable.
Even if the goal is still pretty far, we think the plan is noteworthy and we hope next week other feasible and relevant strategies will be discussed during the International smart city forum in Moscow. Moscow’ dwellers awareness is limited to some operational initiatives indeed the impact of the whole proposal is still not perceived, but we believe it is just a matter of time.
Here is how Russia envisions the concept of a modern city
