Making smarter cities work

Cities face huge challenges relating to urban growth, health, mobility, resource depletion, climate change, and social needs. This ‘We Invite for You’-session focuses on the Smart City-evolution whereby cities use smart solutions, enabled by digital technologies, to deal with these urban challenges.

Jacob Dencik, Senior Managing Consultant at IBM and Smart Cities expert, will highlight the new opportunities created by these smart solutions for changing the ways cities operate, engaging with citizens and creating more liveable urban areas. He will illustrate these opportunities with the help of concrete examples from around the world, and will explain how Big Data, Analytics and the Internet of Things can be leveraged to transform cities. Finally, this session aims to provide insights in how private companies can capitalize on the Smart City trend and projects, by engaging and collaborating with city decision-makers on smart city initiatives.

Agenda

Jacob Dencik, senior managing consultant at IBM and Smart Cities expert

Dr. Jacob Dencik is a Senior Managing Consultant with IBM Business Analytics & Strategy and has extensive experience in advising cities, regions and countries on their economic, social and urban development. He has also advised numerous companies on their global operations and location strategies. Within IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative, Jacob led the development of the Smarter Cities Assessment and Roadmap offerings and the subsequent implementation of assessments for more than 50 cities around the world. More recently, he has been involved in a number of Smarter Cities business development initiatives and projects. He often works as a global Subject Matter Expert on Smarter Cities. Jacob is a co-author of the book “The European Challenge: Innovation, Policy Learning and Social Cohesion in the Knowledge Based Economy” (Policy Press, 2005) and contributing author to the book “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Innovation – New Roles for Key Players” (Edward Elgar. 2009). In addition, Jacob has authored and co-authored multiple published research reports and thought leadership, including IBM’s ‘How Smart is Your City?’, ‘Improving economic competitiveness and vitality – A smarter approach to economic development’, ‘Economic Vitality – Prosperity and public engagement in a data-driven world’ and the annual Global Location Trends reports.