Will Budapest ever be a smart city?
Is it a realistic expectation to have more and more self-driving cars in the streets of Budapest? – one of the main questions at Smart City Hungary 2016 conference, organized by Napi.hu and Noguchi Porter Novelli.
More and more car factories deal with sensors and cameras, and the need for self-driving cars, says László Urbán, Deputy CEO of Magyar Suzuki Zrt. But to make having self-driving cars in the city possible without supervision we need a smart city.
Planes have been taking off by themselves for years and metro line 4 has been working without a driver, so we are not that far from the goal, says István Varga, dean of the Faculty of Transportation Engineering and Vehicle Engineering at Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
But there are some serious questions that must be taken into consideration. He mentioned an example: the self-driving car possibly will cause some accidents, because of technical errors, and there the question of responsibility will become an important issue.
According to László Kovács, it is quite relative what counts as “smart”, but many problems could be avoided with smart cities. It will be needed for the cars to communicate with each other and the sensors in the town. The technical possibility is given, but the developments are not possible in the next few years, because of non-technical issues.
But what makes a city smart?
Solving a problem will not make a city smart, the whole system must be considered. So what is smart city?
“It is deliberated, homogenous, the result of developments based on long-term aims from economic, environmental and social points of view.”
– says József Pálinkás, president of National Research, Development and Innovation Office.
For a smart city smart citizens are needed, therefore it must have an attitude changing impact on people. There is no point in developing a system that helps parking, as long as people litter their trash.
To build up a system like this a good tender is needed. We need responsible applications that evolve trust between the candidate and the judges, as there were many cases when the office overpriced the applications. “Sustainability, clear project goals, responsible institutional decisions about the aims”- says Pálinkás.
According to Sándor Kulcsár, business consultant of Lechner Tudásközpont, innovations only work in a city where people feel that their town is more liveable, and the developments can give them something more. The aim is to find a solution for the needs, and the leaders have to interpret these needs, and translate them for the developers.
The aims have to be structured in a way to strengthen the already existing capacities. Every city needs a unique solution, but it is also important to have a national or international system, which ensures a bridge between the local systems.
The times of the cities are coming, their role is getting bigger, even more than the roles of city-states. They have more economic power, their population is growing and they will be even stronger, says Kulcsár. It can bring a serious change in the near future.
Copy editor: bm
Source: Napi.hu