The inaugural World RAID Congress, taking place at Jaarbeurs in Utrecht, the Netherlands on 31stMay – 1st June 2016, will be the largest cross-sector disruptive innovation event in Europe this year.

RAID stands for Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Internet-of-Things and Data – the technological mega-trends that are transforming the world today. RAID informs the industry sectors of Energy, Finance, Healthcare and Transport, with a special focus on Cities.

Aimed at cross-sector C-level business and city leaders, RAID is an opportunity to learn from peers and experts about how to cope and innovate in the face of disruptive changes to established business sectors.

Alongside technology providers, city leaders will demonstrate how they are investing in RAID technologies to advance economic and social development. 

The format will be one of cross-sector plenary panel discussions with VIP speakers on Day One, followed by dedicated streams for Auto/Transport, Cities, Healthcare, Energy and Financial Services on Day Two. 

Dedicated to sustainable development, transport and health

The Cities stream at RAID is set to begin with VIP addresses on “The Challenges and Opportunities of RAID for Cities”. 

A panel on “Energy in Transition” will discuss urban utilities for increased efficiency, smart and decentralised grids, RAID and urban renewables. 

A session on “Urban Transport” will look at the impact of driverless vehicles and car sharing, the challenges of intercity transport management, AI and Intelligent transport systems for traffic management. 

A panel on “Creating Healthier Cities through RAID” will examine how cities can integrate technology and health, while a session on “Urban Development, Security and Investment” will discuss how RAID technologies can make cities safer and economically stronger. 

To view the full agenda visit www.raidconfex.com 

Join RAID, Europe’s largest cross sector disruptive innovation event

RAID will take place on 31st May – 1st June 2016 at Jaarbeurs, the largest and most accessible venue in the Netherlands, just 20 minutes from Schiphol Airport.  The host city of Utrecht is ranked by the European Commission as the most competitive place in the EU to do business.

The event is attracting a minimum of 500 attendees in its first year, with delegations confirmed from UK, China, Germany, France, US, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. 

RAID is organised by Cavendish Group, which also stages the International Capital Conference and Host City, in partnership with Jaarbeurs and with strong support from industry organisations in France, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and China.

Register here for the go-to event for cross-sector disruption and to find out about speaking opportunities contact ben.avison@cavendishgroup.co.uk

An overwhelming majority of IT professionals in US cities expect to be hit by cyber attacks that could pose a threat to public safety, according to the results of a survey announced on Thursday.

The survey assessed cyber security challenges associated with smart city technologies. Respondents included more than 200 IT professionals working for state and local governments.

Eighty-eight percent of respondents said “yes” when asked if a cyber attack targeting critical city infrastructure posed a threat to public safety

And seventy-eight percent of respondents said a cyber attack against smart city services was likely in 2016.

The survey was conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Tripwire, a leading global provider of security and compliance solutions for enterprises and industrial organizations.

The smart city sector is growing rapidly, with revenues from global smart city technology revenue predicted by Navigant Research to reach US$36.8 billion in 2016.

But cyber security experts are concerned that these technologies are being implemented faster than the technology required to safeguard them.

“While smart cities offer great efficiencies for their citizens, the same internet connectivity that enables these efficiencies can be used to deliver physical damage to infrastructure and also cause loss of life if accessed by malicious actors,” said Rekha Shenoy, vice president and general manager of industrial cyber security for Belden, Tripwire’s parent company.

IT solutions are deployed by smart cities to manage utilities such as electricity grids and wastewater treatment as well as transport, surveillance and more.

The survey also found that eighty-one per cent believe a cyber attack targeting critical city infrastructure could cause physical damage.

Eighty-three of the respondents said they are worried about cyber attacks that target smart city transportation initiatives.

And just three per cent believed there would be no cyber attacks against smart city services this year.

“As we use more and more technology to innovate around the management of cities and their infrastructure, we also create new attack surfaces that can be exploited,” said Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy for Tripwire.

“Protecting public infrastructure from cyber and physical attacks is a key consideration in the evolution of smart city technologies. We need to build smart cities with cyber security in mind, not add it as an afterthought.”

It represents perfect recipe for a traffic jam: bring thousands of cars with tens of thousands of spectators converge on a single site at a specific time. This is what happens during major sports events.
Pure science offers a way to ease the pain. Research funded by the European Research Council will underpin next-generation traffic management systems that anticipate traffic jams, rather than reacting to them
No matter how real-time the data feeding into them, existing traffic management systems are essentially reactive, switching traffic lights, opening motorway hard shoulders, or setting up diversions, after the event.
For ERC grantee Ludovic Leclercq, of the French Institute of Science and Technology for Transport, Planning and Networks (IFSTAR) and professor at the University of Lyon, this is the wrong way to look at the problem. Rather than amass and analyse the huge volumes of data that flow in as a city’s streets become congested, the transport management systems for smart cities of the future should focus on the underlying causes of congestion.
Existing technologies rely too much on a never-ending process of collecting data from cars and road sensors. For example, IBM and Volkswagen are working together to build what they call an ‘Internet of cars’ in which sensors in vehicles generate geospatial data that indicates traffic density and patterns in real time. IBM has also worked with the city of Eindhoven to implement a system that collects data on braking, acceleration and location from sensors placed in cars and on the road.
Meanwhile, Amsterdam has a congestion management system called TrafficLink, which monitors the national road network to help reduce congestion in the capital. The city plans to expand the system and to connect it to satellite navigation systems inside cars as they drive into the Dutch capital and its metro area.
Such traffic management systems may be getting smarter, but they continue to rely on collecting and analysing massive amounts of data, which is then passed onto traffic managers, who then attempt to inform driver behaviour after the event.
Collecting so much data is both “difficult and poses ethical questions,” says Leclercq. Traffic managers use it to assess traffic flow, and to identify and remove bottlenecks from the system.  But notes Leclercq, this does provide any insight into what caused the congestion in the first place.
He hypothesises that knowing more about how people choose departure times and routes would make traffic management systems much more effective.
At the heart of his ERC project, MAGNUM (Multiscale and Multimodal Modelling Approach for Green Urban Traffic Management) is the creation of a citizen science simulation game, which will be made available in the first half of 2016. Volunteer users will be able to sign up and input their preferences for traffic routes. Leclerq will combine this information with existing traffic data to determine which journeys cause the most congestion in a system.
Users will also be asked what kinds of incentives would lead them to alter their departure times or routes, or to choose to travel by public transport rather than by car. Factoring driver behaviour (demand) into road network capacity (supply) models, will provide the inputs for efficient and green traffic management.
Based on the information, traffic management systems will become truly smart and traffic managers will be able to adjust their strategy and switch, “from user equilibrium to system equilibrium,” Leclercq says. 

This article was written by Florin Zubascu of Science/Business