Global team includes key city leaders, the broader smart city ecosystem and academia to drive the development and adoption of best practices for smart cities
MORRISTOWN, NJ—January 19, 2016—TM Forum, the global member association for digital business, today announced the launch of its Smart City Forum and accompanying Leadership Team. Having driven successful business and IT transformation for over 25 years, the creation of the Smart City Forum is a logical step for TM Forum, as cities are becoming a natural convergence point for Internet-of-Everything (IoE) technologies, underpinned by intelligent communications networks. As urbanization drives rapid growth in cities worldwide, the challenges of privacy, big data analytics, open data and operational efficiencies demand collaboration on a truly global scale.
The smart city industry is projected to be a 400 billion USD market by 2020. According to research by McKinsey, 600 cities from around the globe are expected to generate 60 percent of the world’s GDP by 2025 – a clear imperative for cities seeking to be leaders to evolve into smart cities.
“At TM Forum, we look at smart cities as a point of convergence for the Internet of Everything,” said Peter Sany, president and chief executive officer, TM Forum. “In the urbanization wave we see coming, the evolution toward smart cities is of vital importance to businesses in all industries and to society as a whole. We are honored to have so many diverse senior officials and business executives join the Smart City Forum and look forward to facilitating the collaboration that will rapidly drive cities the world over into a sustainable and prosperous future.”
Co-chaired by Peter Marx, chief technology officer of the City of Los Angeles, and Jane Chen, senior vice president of ZTE and chairman of ZTEsoft, the Smart City Forum will be expanded to encompass 100+ leading smart cities and governments worldwide, the top 10 global smart city research groups, 10 Smart City Innovation Centers and hundreds of suppliers, service providers and international bodies from the wider smart city ecosystem.
“I am delighted to team up with city leaders from around the world to drive common solutions for city sustainability, business viability and citizen value,” said Peter Marx, chief technology officer, City of Los Angeles and co-chair of the Smart City Forum.
When fully established, the Smart City leadership team will include seven smart city leaders (G7), a rotating chair from the Smart City Think Tank Group, a rotating chair held by the Smart City Innovation Centers, three service providers, three equipment suppliers, two leading systems integrators and two impactful global consultancies.
“As a long-time supporter of TM Forum, I am very pleased to co-chair this important initiative with Peter Marx,” said Jane Chen, senior vice president of ZTE and chairman of ZTEsoft. “The Smart City Forum is developing meaningful global best practices that will benefit smart cities the world over.”
In addition to Peter Marx and Jane Chen, TM Forum also welcomes to the Smart City Leadership team:
- Paulo Carvalho, general director, City of Lisbon
- Jamie Cudden, smart city leader, City of Dublin
- Mark McDonald, chief information officer, City of Vancouver
- Samir Saini, commissioner and chief information officer, City of Atlanta
- Paul Wilson, managing director, Bristol (UK) Is Open
- Kristina Verner, Director, Intelligent Communities, Waterfront Toronto
Joining these city leaders are a cross-section of the smart city ecosystem that creates and operates many of the solutions needed in the next era of urban innovation. The Smart City Forum welcomes Mike Zeto, general manager smarter cities at AT&T, Rosalia Simon Navarro, smart city leader at Telefónica, Gerard Corcoran, smart city leader at Western Europe Huawei and Manuel Machado Alonso, smart city leader at Deloitte.
To secure a strategic direction that is aligned with the latest and best global research, the Smart City Forum has also established the Smart City Think Tank Group, bringing together key academia to advise and influence direction, and drive a pragmatic research agenda. The first think tank members include Prof. Carlo Ratti, director Senseable City Laboratory at MIT, Prof. Sören Auer, leader of Fraunhofer IAIS, Prof. Wan Wanggen, head of Smart City Research Center at Shanghai University, Dr. Wan Biyu, chief Scientist at the Chinese Society for Urban Studies National Smart City Joint Lab and Prof. Brian Field, former chief urbanist at the EIB, et al.
Accelerating Smart City Implementations
The mission of the Smart City Forum is to accelerate smart city sustainability, workability and liveability by connecting the best minds in the world and combine pragmatic execution with top academic research. By adopting a very hands-on approach, the team will bridge city visions and creative, innovative solutions within TM Forum’s Collaboration Platform and Catalyst rapid proof-of-concept projects.
At the Forum’s inaugural Smart City InFocus event in September 2015, which brought together 200+ international dignitaries in Yinchuan China – one of the smartest cities in the world – attendees debated what city leaders need to do in order to make a smart city agenda a reality.
“We need a powerful force to turn smart city visions into smart city realities,” said Jesse Berst, chairman of the Smart Cities Council and executive advisor to TM Forum. “The Smart City Forum will build on the best practices collected in the Council’s Smart Cities Readiness Guide. It will provide a much-needed venue for turning theory into practice.”
Turning Visions into Realities
The Smart City Forum focuses on a number of important challenges for cities and creates an evolving asset base to make adoption and interoperability between cities a reality, ranging from the creation of best practices through to creation of APIs. An example is the recently announced TM Forum and FIWARE collaboration which is also supported by the European Union.
“In Bristol, we are creating an open programmable city based on software-defined networking that turns the city into a testbed for Internet of Things, 5G wireless technology, big data visualization and other new technology plays, with the ultimate goal of making Bristol a fun city to live and work in. We will benefit from the service providers within the Smart City Forum,” said Paul Wilson, managing director, Bristol Is Open.
“The aim of our regional Smart Dublin initiative is to drive innovation and collaboration in the development of new urban solutions to city challenges, using open data and with the city region as a test bed,” added Jamie Cudden, smart city lead, City of Dublin. “Working through the Smart City Forum will allow us to align the needs and challenges of cities alongside cross-industry expertise to find open and transferrable solutions which will help accelerate smart city deployments and create more liveable cities” (source: Basic Solutions).
Members of the Smart City Forum will benefit from a shared collaboration platform and environment, with access to market leaders in multiple industries including TM Forum’s hundreds of global member companies and thousands of engaged individuals.
Overcoming Shared Challenges with Practical Solutions
“Identifying pragmatic solutions for shared smart city challenges is the focus of our new smart city initiative,” said Carl Piva, vice president of strategic programs and Smart City Forum leader, TM Forum. “We make this happen by aligning the industry behind a set of common denominators that are required to create working solutions for urban innovation.”
“We are bringing together global ecosystems to focus on the challenges at hand,” continues Piva. “We have just concluded our most recent regional Smart City Digital Leadership Summit in Singapore, which will be followed by a number of activities leading up to our major Smart City Live! event at TM Forum’s flagship event in Nice, France this May, which we expect will evolve to becoming a leading meeting point for smart city experts from around the world.”
Resources
- Visit Smart City Forum home for a detailed program overview, Catalyst proof-of-concept projects, community signup, videos, and more.
- Read TM Forum’s Smart City case study, “Mapping a Scalable Smart City Solution,” featuring ZTEsoft.
- Check out Smart City trends, articles, interviews, videos, and opinions on TM Forum Inform™.
- Register for TM Forum’s flagship TM Forum Live! 2016 conference in Nice, and attend:
- Review the winners of the TM Forum Smart City Hackathon from TM Forum Live! 2015.
- Check out past events, including:
- Smart City InFocus 2015 in Yinchuan, China, September 2015
- Digital Leadership Summit: Smart Cities in Singapore, December 2015
About TM Forum
TM Forum is the global industry association for digital business, connecting talented individuals, leading companies, and diverse ecosystems to accelerate our members’ successful digital business transformation. The collective experience and interests of our member community – comprised of tens-of-thousands of professionals within 900+ market-leading global enterprises, service providers and technology suppliers that together account for trillions of dollars in annual revenues – drives everything we do, from thought-provoking research and publications, to practical guidance, collaboration programs, tools and best practices, hands-on events, and training for business and IT leaders.
Through three key programs – Agile Business and IT, Open Digital Ecosystem, and Customer Centricity – we provide an open platform for our members to connect and collaborate with individuals and groups from around the world to solve key challenges and rapidly innovate to deliver new services, improve business agility, partner for success, reduce cost and risk, and enhance customer value and loyalty. To accelerate your R&D and join our digital journey as a valued member and collaborator, please visit www.tmforum.org.
Press Contact:
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