São Paulo as a model for smart city solutions

São Paulo School of Advanced Science assembled students from 14 countries to develop solutions and improve quality of life in developing regions.

By Maria Fernanda Ziegler  |  Agência FAPESP – Visualizing cities as data and thinking about the use of computer science in initiatives to improve the quality of life in urban centers were some of the activities performed by 150 graduate students from various parts of the world between July 24 and August 4 at the São Paulo School of Advanced Science in Smart Cities, organized by the University of São Paulo’s Mathematics & Statistics Institute (IME-USP) in Brazil.

"Smart cities is an interdisciplinary field involving not just computer science but also urban planning, biology, law and many other subject areas. The focus for this School is thinking about how, as computer scientists, we can deal with and provide data to solve the problems of cities in collaboration with professionals in other fields,” said Alfredo Goldman, who coordinated the event, in an interview given to Agência FAPESP. The School was supported by FAPESP through its program São Paulo School of Advanced Science (SPSAS).

The schedule featured specialists in mobile networks, the Internet of Things (IoT), sustainability, visualization, large-scale simulation, innovation, privacy, machine learning, big data, and software frameworks, all with a solid training in computer science. The ten courses were delivered in the auditorium of the Guita and José Mindlin Braziliana Library on the university’s main campus in São Paulo City.

“Advancing in the study of smart cities is a great opportunity to do research with a positive impact on the lives of millions of people all over the world,” said Fabio Kon, a member of FAPESP’s Innovation Research Panel and one of the School’s instructors.

So many people wanted to attend the School that 75 students enrolled at their own expense, in addition to the 75 whose travel and living expenses were paid by FAPESP.

The aim of the SPSAS is to make São Paulo State a globally competitive hub for talented researchers. To date, FAPESP has funded more than 50 Schools, all of which were attended by researchers and students from several countries.

Global vision

Over half the world’s population is already urban, and the proportion is set to reach 75% by 2050. According to Goldman, the aim of bringing these researchers together was to use computer science to create solutions that can be reproduced in all cities.

“At present, the models aren’t adaptable because every city is different, with widely differing characteristics,” he said. “We believe computer science can change that.”

For Kalyanaraman Shankari, a student from the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States, one of the best things about the School was its emphasis on thinking about solutions for cities all over the world.

“Almost all smart city applications are made by and for twenty-somethings in Silicon Valley,” she said. “The problem is that this means nothing to most of the world’s population. That’s why I’ve come to this School in São Paulo. I expect interacting with researchers from other countries to lead to solutions that make sense everywhere.”

Kon agreed. “The examples of smart city solutions we have today have almost always to do with Amsterdam, Paris or Silicon Valley, which are already great places to live,” he said. “It so happens that most of the world’s population lives in big cities in developing countries. We have to focus on the 95% of city-dwelling people in the real world who face problems with transportation, housing, health and education.”

In his view, most smart city solutions lack a global vision and are designed to optimize local, rather than universal, processes. “This is where we computer scientists come in,” he said. “We can enhance the quality of these people’s lives by optimizing city resource use through algorithms based on a holistic vision and enabling data-based planning.”

Internet of the Future for Smart Cities

The idea of holding a School on smart cities arose from a project involving 48 researchers at nine Brazilian universities: the National Science & Technology Institute (INCT) on the Internet of the Future for Smart Cities. Set up last year, the INCT has performed studies and published articles on solutions that are being tested in Brazil but that could be implemented on a global scale.

Coordinated by Kon, this is one of 33 INCTs funded by three federal agencies – the Ministry of Education’s Office for Faculty Development (CAPES), the National Council for Scientific & Technological Development (CNPq) and the Brazilian Innovation Agency (FINEP) – as well as FAPESP. 

“I believe São Paulo is a suitable place in which to test smart city models and solutions,” Goldman said. “It’s a city that adapts very fast to changes and innovations.” Among the studies performed by the project are applications and analyses of data on transportation, bus delays, health, and privacy.

“What level of privacy do people want? Basically everything is permitted today with the cellphone system,” Goldman said. “IoT involves other devices that will monitor far more than cellphones. We have a group that’s studying how permission will be validated and how data flows will be controlled. This is important because privacy concerns can’t be addressed without discussing certain constraints on freedom. We have to decide how to weigh freedom of choice against privacy.”

Another group linked to the project is investigating how to improve cloud computing-enabled vehicle networks. “In a traffic monitoring system, for example, cars pass each other so fast that there isn’t enough time for information to be shuttled between them and the cloud. One way we’re studying to improve this is to use a sort of router instead of sending the data to the cloud, making the system faster, more efficient and error-free,” Goldman said.

The INCT focuses on the use of computing to make cities better places to live, he added.

“The project will serve as a lever to obtain additional funding and increase the visibility of research on smart cities,” he said. “The SPSAS enabled us to bring together people linked to the project, especially students, and to increase its visibility to the entire world.”