Smart Cities
By 2050, most experts believe that three quarters of the global population will live in cities. How can we ensure that these cities will not only be a place to live in, but will become sustainable, healthy, happy and productive places for people and planet?
Trans-disciplinary, application oriented research in close cooperation with industry and municipalities and connected to national and international trends, contributes to making cities smart in all respects: in housing, sustainability, mobility, health, safety and social cohesion.
The challenge is to create a harmonious new home, not just a collection of houses
There is hardly a topic at our university which is more complex than smart cities. In this field all twenty industrial and societal sectors merge together with all scientific disciplines and stakeholders. Furthermore, cities cannot be separated from their rural environments. We need to look at the total in an integral systemic way, from a visionary perspective.
The building sector is currently innovating at a fast pace, mainly because government has set disruptive goals on sustainability. The built environment is one of five pillars in the governmental program “The Netherlands circular in 2050”. Construction is responsible for fifty percent of the use of raw materials, forty percent of the energy consumption, thirty percent of the water consumption and 35 percent of the CO2-emission. The Dutch government has decided that in 2050, the entire (building) economy should be 100 percent circular. Now is the time for our university to cooperate with public and private parties to make this possible.
Because in developing smart cities ethical issues arise, it is of vital importance that public organizations like the university have an active role in shaping them. When you search for smart cities now on the internet, the only solutions you’ll find are in the hands of large companies like Google or Microsoft. That is scary. We should develop counterparts under public governance. When we develop data platforms at a university, they are open by nature. And we care about aspects like privacy, legal issues, trustworthiness, validity and reliability of data upfront.
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SB&C Symposium: Buildings & Cities and Beyond
Smart Buildings & Cities PDEng Program organizes the annual SB&C Symposium on 5 November 2019. This year’s theme is: Buildings & Cities and Beyond.
Next to the presentations of our trainees and a presentation of our two leading teachers, you can meet the new Management Team of SB&C and other ‘SB&C friends’.
More information about the program and registration via this link.
Our research lines
Educational programs
The goal of the Smart Cities Center is to establish dedicated programs and to develop new courses that meet the needs of our future engineers.
There is hardly a topic at our university which is more complex than smart cities. In this field all twenty industrial and societal sectors merge together with all scientific disciplines and stakeholders. Furthermore, cities cannot be separated from their rural environments. We need to look at the total in an integral systemic way, from a visionary perspective.
Nico Baken, Executive Manager
Living labs
Student teams
Meet our team
Projects
Contact us
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Smart Cities Center
Our partners
The Smart Cities Center aims at developing long-term strategic partnerships with industry, research institutes and governmental organizations. Examples of organizations collaborating with us include:
