e-Learning Course on Smart City

Cities, as the crucible and the hub of human innovation and advancement, face critical changes in their fundamental role. Through a smart city, the global community has strived to converge and integrate environmental, digital, bio, and financial technologies to solve various urban problems. It is imperative to understand the true value and implementation practicality of key technologies in their full depth for their deployment in the construction of new smart cities or in the regeneration of legacy cities to advanced smart ones in the right way. This course is intended to provide a full scale of study on the whole perspective of smart city, which will include theoretical, political, economic, administrative, regulatory and governance framework of smart city, research and analysis on global best practice cases of smart city implementation and their actual operational characteristics, approaches and methods to develop a master plan to achieve mid-to-long-term communal goals, and building successful business models for sustainable business ecosystems in and around the smart city, and all relevant subjects of study and research.

This course will make an overall introduction to global smart city development in order to inform the leaders in smart cities and communities. The course will enable the course takers to make a step forward in developing an open, collaborative, citizen-centric, and digitally-enabled operating model for their city that realizes their vision of smart city toward sustainable, resilient, and prosperous future.

Week 1: Smart City Fundamentals __

This week will introduce the definition, idea, and components of the smart city. It will explore global standards of Smart cities, and why the smart city has emerged as a solution to urban problems. Then it will look into how urban problems are getting more complex and “Smart Technologies” can be the solution through forming an organic system. The week will look most closely at the recent global standards of smart cities with an aspect of smart technologies and as a solution to complex contemporary urban problems.

Week 2: Smart City Solutions and Technologies ****

This week explores the major technology, service, application, and development of smart cities. A smart city is a platform where various innovative technologies can be implemented and combined with urban infrastructure. The cutting-edge innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, IoT, 5G mobility, etc. are needed to construct the smart cities and they will derive the new smart cities’ services such as autonomous driving, green energy, smart living, smart governance infrastructure, etc. The derived services will be applied to new business models, new projects, and opportunities for partnerships. This week introduces related technologies and services based on global standards related to smart city platforms, and expands its scope to actual application and partnership models.

Week 3: Smart City Cases and Practices __

This week will further dip down to a level of elaboration details. It will introduce diverse cases of global and Korean Smart Cities. It will look at various smart city components divided into “Green”, “Smart”, “Development”, and “Value”; while “Green” cases will cover energy and environmental components in smart cities, “Smart” cases will introduce the cases that made urban lives or systems easier and convenient through a completely new system/technologies that never existed before, and “Development” part will penetrate the vitalized urban cases by developing the residential area or for start-up businesses sites. Lastly, “Value” part will introduce the cases on how urban underdeveloped industrial and residential areas have been regenerated by smart city components. Each case includes applications related to transportation, health care, well-being, mobility, etc.

Week 4: Smart City Planning __

This week introduces the master and future plans from representative smart cities or from international organizations, which usually entails a strong future vision to build inclusive, sustainable cities. This highlights the necessity of establishing a sustainable urban system plan. Smart cities, suggested as one of the promising solutions, had been under study in various fields and the master plan is about the holistic framework of the future of a city to solve the problems and achieve the goals of communities of smart cities. Additionally, business models from smart cities would be the economic mechanisms that private sector can participate and extend together to achieve the virtuous cycle for economic prosperity. Therefore, this week introduces the representative master plans of smart cities and practices to build the business models for sustainable economic growth for smart cities. ****

Week 5: Smart City Financing __

This week introduces diverse financing methods to extend business models of smart cities. In the early stages of smart city planning, government-led funding is most needed. However, cities must find innovative ways to implement smart cities other than traditional public funding. Therefore, this week introduces the mechanism like Public-Private Partnership (PPP) which will help municipal governments overcome their financing and technological capability while providing private sector additional opportunity for profit. Also, it will provide various global smart city PPP cases, financial models and instruments that can help cities sail through the various financing methods.

Week 6: Smart City Implementation __

This week introduces examples and know-how of implementing and operating of smart cities. Smart cities are based on various data generated by cities and it is necessary to know how to process and organize them in order to maintain a solid ecosystem. Smart cities need a management center that collects various data and effectively manages and utilizes them, and it will require efforts to advance services and technologies derived from smart cities. In addition, this week seeks to understand regulatory issues and related solutions for building smart cities, and present the future directions for smart cities. Smart city is to transform the cities with data-driven innovation, open innovation, global innovation to maximize the enormous economic and social benefits. This week will help you introduce implementation examples and related regulatory issues, and help you to implement your own smart city plans and guide your future direction.