Sustainable Cities: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and the Rise of Green, ＂cy-Phy＂ Cities

Global cities are facing an almost unprecedented challenge of change. As they re-emerge from the Covid 19 pandemic and get ready to face climate change and other, potentially existential threats, they need to look for new ways to support wealth and wellbeing creation - leveraging Big Data and AI and suing them into their physical reality and to become greener, more inclusive and resilient, hence sustainable.

This book describes how new digital technologies could be used to design digital and physical twins of cities that are able to feed into each other to optimize their working and ability to create new wealth and wellbeing. The book also describes how to increase cities’ social and economic resilience during crisis time and addressing their almost fatal weaknesses - as it became all too obvious during the recent COVID 19 crisis. Also, the book presents a framework for a critical discussion of the concept of ＂smart-city＂, suggesting its development into a ＂cyber＂ and ＂meta＂ one- meaning, not only digital systems can allow physical ones (e.g. cities, citizens, households and companies) to become ＂smarter＂, but also the vice versa is true, as off line data and real life behaviours can support the optimization and development of virtual brains as a sum of big data and artificial intelligence apps all sitting ＂over the cloud＂.

An analysis of the fundamental dynamics of this emerging ＂info-telligence＂ economy, and of the potential role of big digital players like Amazon, Google and Facebook is then paving the way to discuss a few strategic forays on how traditional sectors such as financial services, real estate, TMT or health could also evolve, leveraging Big Data and AI in a cyber-physical integrated setting. Finally, a number of thought provoking use cases that could be designed around individuals, and to improve the success and the resilience of households and companies living and working in urban areas are discussed, as an example of one of the most exciting future markets to come: the one of global, sustainable cities

Claudio Scardovi is a managing director and global co-head of the financial services practice for AlixPartners, a global consultancy focused on restructuring, value recovery, transformation, and growth. He has been specializing in the financial services and real estate sectors for the last 26 years, including 21 as managing director or country/regional head of financial services for a number of companies, including KPMG, Accenture, Intervaluenet, Oliver Wyman, Lehman Brothers, Nomura, Advent International, and AlixPartners. He is also a teaching professor at Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi (Italy), specializing in capital markets, financial systems, bank restructuring, and transformation, lending and real estate, and at the Imperial College in London (UK) master’s course in management where he teaches risk management. Claudio Scardovi has published more than 200 articles and papers and 20 books, published by Edibank, EGEA, Bocconi Press university, Routledge, Il Sole 24 Ore, Quondam, Mondadori, and Springer. He is also a member of the Strategic Advisory Board at the Imperial College and of the Future of Financial Services working group of the World Economic Forum