Smart healthy urban environments

Cities are booming and constitute the heart of economic and cultural developments. At the same time, cities face complex challenges, such as growing inequality, higher levels of air pollution and congestion, social segregation and exclusion, and, in general, a lower health and life expectancy. Smart cities might provide a response to these challenges, as technological innovations can promote change in the way we live, work, travel, and interact with one another. In this course, new perspectives offered by emerging technologies and research are addressed. The course considers current issues in creating healthier, livable, inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable urban environments and links these issues to new approaches in (big) data collection, urban analysis and decision support.
The course consists of a series of lectures. Each lecture addresses a particular topic from a theoretical point of view and is accompanied by an assignment where the students apply the theory to a case.

The following topics are addressed:

• general introduction to smart healthy urban environments;
• green city & Virtual Reality (VR);
• sustainable transportation & GPS data collection and processing;
• vital city - physical and leisure activities and the urban environment
• sensing the city & Citizen Science;
• social city - social communities & inclusive smart cities;
• digital twinning for urban planning

After finalizing this course, students:

• recognize and understand current challenges and opportunities in urban systems regarding, health, mobility, and quality of life
• know how to plan a smart green infrastructure not only for climate change resilience but also to support many health and wellbeing benefits
• can explain how better-quality urban planning and evaluation can exploit the potential of the physical environment to promote physical activity
• can give examples and point out how smart city solutions can be used to build more livable, inclusive communities and improve equal access to public services.
• Can collect, process, and analyze GPS data to support policy decision making
• understand the principles of environmental sensing and can process the data collected with smart devices (sensors, IoT, web-based big data) to support decision-making processes
• are aware of the characteristics of projects where citizens are involved (citizen science)
• get familiar with using VRfor participatory planning purposes and assessing environmental interventions in the built environment
• have a basic understanding of digital twinning and how it can help to improve decision-making and develop more informed solutions to the complex urban challenges