2016•11•30     Lisbon

Luís Soares Barbosa, the Head ad interim of UNU-EGOV, attended the 4th Conference on Smart Cities: Cities of the Future, which took place at Forum Picoas in Lisbon on 30 November 2016, and delivered an invited talk on the theme “Smart Governance for Smart Cities: Challenges and Open Issues”. The conference is part of a series of annual events organized by Lisboa E-Nova (Lisbon Energy and Environment Agency), a “non-profit association operating under private law, which seeks to contribute to sustainable development by the systematic and continuous improvement of the energy and environmental performance of the city.” The conference itself features a mix of participants from industry and academia, who engage in discussions on the theme of smart cities and associated technologies, and is supported by a number of major players from the public and private sectors and the H2020 project SharingCities.

The invited talk covered several topics, including a short analysis of smart cities regarding urbanization, digitization and sustainability, the impact of digitization on governance, the definition and evolution of e-Governance, and concluded with the challenges and recommendations of smart governance for smart cities. The report produced by UNU-EGOV as an output of the Smart Cities for Sustainable Development project, which was concluded in early 2016, was also presented.