Deputy Director for the Smart City direction of the Federal Autonomous Institution "Project Directorate of the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services of the Russian Federation (Ministry of Construction)" Daria Dolgikh reported at the Innopolis AI Conference for business (AI IN 2023) on August 18 that in October 2023 the department will summarize the results of the all-Russian competition "Best Municipal Practice" in the nomination "Modernization of urban economy through the introduction of digital technologies and platform solutions (Smart City)": "Based on the collection of applications, we will find out who will be included in the top 5 cities and the top 5 rural settlements."
Darya Dolgikh noted that iceland whatsapp resource the Ministry of Construction has been implementing the departmental project "Smart City" for five years now: during this time, the department has prepared a methodological base and created tools for assessing digital practices, namely the "IQ of cities" index and the "Best Municipal Practice" competition.
According to the Ministry of Construction, the competition consists of regional and federal stages and is held in two categories of settlements: Category I - urban districts and urban settlements, Category II - rural settlements. The prize fund of the competition is 150 million and 50 million rubles, respectively, and there will be only 50 winners. The last day for submitting applications is August 20.
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The Russian Ministry of Construction approved the Smart City standard at the All-Russian meeting on the implementation of the departmental project for digitalization of urban services "Smart City". It includes 18 thematic blocks, which, in addition to digitalization of urban services, also include innovations in the social sphere.
Boris Valit, Director of the Venture Investment Fund of the Republic of Karelia, founder of the Roskvartal ecosystem, the Karelia IT and Robotics Association, noted that compared to all the industries that are forming a smart urban environment, the housing and utilities sector remains inert and adopts new technologies with difficulty.
"Only the state whip encourages utility companies to provide data to the State Information System (GIS) of Housing and Public Utilities. At the same time, without this data it is impossible to create new products," he noted.
According to Boris Valit, approaches to the implementation of smart city technologies should be different for new buildings and old housing stock: management companies of new residential complexes have greater potential for implementing services, where utility rates are initially high, which allows for the implementation of innovations without increasing them. Boris Valit believes that innovations will not come to areas with old housing stock anytime soon, since residents are reluctant to accept higher prices for services, even if this is an investment in digital solutions for their convenience.
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Cities have become smarter with regions
The "Smart City" project of the Russian Ministry of Construction has de facto become a "Smart Region". Governors of the subjects of the Federation want to receive data in uniform formats from all municipalities. In addition, regional authorities, unlike municipal ones, have more financial resources to order digital platforms and services. Although de jure, city heads are not subordinate to governors.
In the urban water supply management system, on the contrary, smart city technologies, including those based on AI, are already widely used, industry representatives note. Evgeny Klebanov, executive director of Technikon LLC (Republic of Belarus), reported that virtual reality technologies are used to train operators, AI - to predict water consumption and energy-efficient filling of tanks, and digital twins - to control pumps in the water supply system. According to him, digital twins have reduced electricity consumption by up to 7%, reducing the operating time of pumps by up to 10%.
"The water supply system is cyclical and can be predicted, so using neural networks i