Using information technology to improve the quality of living is a common strategy of many countries in recent years. Take traffic congestion that many cities are facing as an example, Moscow was once named the most congested city out of the 400 cities surveyed by TomTom, a Dutch smart mobility service provider. How did Moscow tackle the problem through technology?

Opinion feature by Dr. Winnie Tang, Honorary Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Hong Kong:

Acquiring foreign talent is proved to be a shortcut to promote social and economic development of a place. The United States being well known as the melting pot of various nationalities is a typical example in this respect.

Dr. Winnie Tang JP is an Honorary Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Hong Kong. She is one of the locally-bred IT entrepreneurs of Hong Kong and the Honorary President of Smart City Consortium. Over the years, she has been actively advocating the use of technology and sharing her views regarding the ICT industry, eHealth, environmental conservation, entrepreneurship and smart city concepts through her services in government and non-government organizations in Hong Kong.

Hong-Kong professor Dr. Winnie Tang has launched her highly-acclaimed Smart City 3.0 e-book which attempts to examine and establish the role played by Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Robotics and the sharing economy in the development and future evolution of smart cities on a global basis.

The detailed insight into the future of smart cities which has been compiled by Dr. Tang has drawn critical acclaim from smart city industry peers.

Anthony Yeh, Chair professor, Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong said, "I believe that this book is a must-read for anyone who is passionate about how smart cities can enhance quality of life and foster sustainable growth."

In her book, Dr. Tang highlighted some of the key emerging trends and predictions that are set to reshape our future cities. By 2020, the world's population aged over 60 years and older will outnumber children under the age of 5. According to the Hong Kong based professor a ‘tsunami of the ageing problem is fast approaching.'

In addition to this, we're also facing a huge issue in relation to increased urbanization. By 2030, it has been projected that urban areas will house 60% of people globally. This will inevitably put governments under enormous pressure. In the book, Dr. Tang outlines what she believes can be implemented in order to curb some of these trends and reduce the negative impact of them.

The Smart City 3.0 e-book stresses that whilst the opportunities represented by AI, Internet of Things and Robotics are incredibly exciting technologies destined to transform the way we live and how societies interact with each other, it's important to factor in the potential harm the mass adoption of these technologies will have. It has been estimated that half of the current livelihoods will disappear from working-class to professional.

There are many challenges and obstacles facing smart cities but with the correct strategic implementation of programs, projects and technologies, there's no doubting the fact that they can improve the lives of all living in the city.

President and Founder of Esri, Jack Dangermond praised Dr. Tang's work and said the core value of the e-book was trying to strike a balance between smart city development and conservation.

He said, "This is the essence of a smart city, which is to strike a balance between conservation and development, improving our quality of life without undermining our future with the help of information technologies and data driven decisions. This is also the core value of Winnie's book Smart City 3.0."

According to Dr. Tang, a smart city is defined by six key characteristics or attributes and they are smart people, smart economy, smart environment, smart government, smart living and smart mobility. In what is a compelling, in-depth and fascinating insight into the past, present and future of smart cities, Dr. Tang is able to clearly identify how cities have gone from digital cities, to intelligent cities to smart cities.

She claims that with further advancement in ICT and the Internet of Things, smart cities will become smarter. This will also subsequently make individuals, governments, firms and the environment smarter in the process. It will bring convenience and a much, much better quality life to those who reside in urban areas. According to Professor Tang there is no city in the world that can no longer afford to be not smart. She highlights that whilst governments and the private sector are trying to make cities smarter for different purposes, it's evident we're entering a new era of smart cities.

This Smart City 3.0 e-book compiled by Dr. Tang is an incredible insight into how smart cities have evolved and how they will continue to evolve due to advancements in technologies such as AI and Internet of Things, whilst the emergence of 5G will also have a revolutionary impact on smart cities all across the world, because a smart city can't be smart without connectivity.

The book is available to download now online. So don't miss out on the opportunity to examine and explore what the incredible and visionary future of our smart cities will look like.

Artificial intelligence (Al) is regarded as a key to drive the world's future development. Although Europe and the United States are dominated by private enterprises, while the Mainland China is led by national entities, the core of AI formation, in fact, is rested on available top-notch talent. The 2017 Global AI Talent White Paper released by the Tencent Research Institute in December last year stated that there are approximately 300,000 AI researchers and practitioners in the world, while the market demand for AI talent is in millions. In the first 10 months of 2017, the demand for AI talent was twice of that in 2016. The report suggests that the bottleneck is education - though there are 20,000 graduates from related disciplines each year, the number is far from adequate to meet the demand.