3rd Annual World Intelligent Cities Summit and Exhibition was held in Istanbul on Dec 10-11, 2014. One of most attractive panels was “Sustainable Urban Transport for Smart and Innovative Cities” where Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, was a panelist and emphasized the importance of open data for being a smart city.
3rd Annual World Intelligent Cities Summit and Exhibition (http://www.wicsummit.com/) was organized in Istanbul on Dec 10-11, 2014 where city leaders, government officials, academics, urban service providers, city development experts and the citizens met to share experiences, smart thinking and best practice for implementing the smart cities of tomorrow.
The event started with the plenary session where many attractive topics such as smart city trends and growth, the challenges behind cultivating smart communities, the future of the intelligent cities, etc. were discussed and continued with the parallel sessions. Admittedly, one of most attractive panels was “Sustainable Urban Transport for Smart and Innovative Cities” where Arzu Tekir, General Director of EMBARQ Turkey, was the moderator and Leyla Arsan, CEO of TAGES, was one of the panellists. Leyla Arsan mentioned about the smart city solutions in Europe such as CitySDK and RADICAL Projects where TAGES is one of the partners and pointed out how young developers could create creative and useful smart city applications with open data. She stated that the policies about the open data must change in Turkey and the city authorities should be collaborator with the young developers, designers and citizens for being a smart city.
The other panellists were Goktug Kara, Transport Sector Manager within the Delegation of the European Commission to Turkey, Mumin Kahveci, İETT (Istanbul Electricity, Tramway and Tunnel Company) General Manager, Judith Pollock Assistant Director of Shell Foundation, Mehmet Cevik, General Manager of ISPARK (Istanbul Parking Enterprises) and Nezih Erturk, Technical Advisor of Bombardier Transport. The interest of the citizens to the panel was also great. The main topic of the panel is transport in Istanbul and the panellist and the attendees discussed about the main issues and new projects & solutions on sustainable transport, parking and public transportation during the panel. The common purpose is to reduce the traffic density and parking issues in Istanbul and make the use of public transport easy to the citizens.
The citizens, as being the user side, indicated their daily important problems in the city and wanted them to be considered while developing new solutions and making the city smarter. They especially pointed out that they needed the solutions which firstly pay importance to health of the people and the special needs of the disabled people.
