Pandemic helps to develop smart city systems in Polish cities

The pandemic accelerated the development of smart city systems in Polish cities. Polish metropolises can already be found in the most important global rankings. A smart city is not only technology that helps manage traffic or systems for locating public transport vehicles. There is also no shortage of investments in green energy. At the same time, the inhabitants have an increasing influence on changes. The problem, however, is the lack of long-term visions and the lack of cooperation between intelligent systems of different cities.

“I will perversely say that the pandemic had a positive effect on the development of cities. There was a moment when cities competed with each other for technological innovations. They spent a lot of money just to show off a bit to make the solutions spectacular. The pandemic means that there is less of this money and it is necessary to focus on necessary solutions, that will generate some energy efficiency, that will be correlated with each other,” Kamila Kotulska, General Sales and Marketing Director at Gradis said.

Official parcel lockers, external windows with non-contact logs, greater capacity and power of city internet networks, video surveillance and drones, ozonation of streets and city furniture – these are just examples of smart city systems that appeared in Polish cities in connection with the pandemic. Technologies that have often failed to be implemented over the years have been put in place in weeks, sometimes days, thanks to the pandemic. Services that enable remote contact with the office have become a standard. An example is the CityBox in Otwock, which allows for safe handing over of disinfected documents and enables videoconference with the relevant official.

“I hope that this trend of intelligent city management, which brings savings, will continue. Cities that will see that this money is increasing in the budget, even though they invest it, will only boost this boom,” Kamila Kotulska assessed.

(Newseria)