News from the Third IEEE International Smart Cities ... · PDF fileis a typical case of realizing campus informatization ... designing an automated handover algorithm for fully

News from the Third IEEE International Smart Cities

Conference (ISC2 2017)

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by Xiaojun Wu, General Co-Chair of ISC2 2017 and Wei Fang, Technical program Co-Chair of ISC2 2017

In September 14 – 17, 2017, the Third IEEE International Smart Cities Conference (ISC2 2017)

was successfully held in Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China. ISC2 2017 is sponsored by IEEE Smart

Cities Initiative, IEEE Power & Energy Society, Wuxi Municipal Commission of Economy and

Information, National Center for Schooling Development Programme of MOE, China, Jiangnan

University, and IEEE China Council. Four tutorials, five keynote speeches, twenty-nine technical

sessions, one panel about IEEE smart cities construction experience, and one special technical

session were organized in ISC2 2017. More than 300 delegates and speakers from about 20

countries and regions were gathered in Wuxi, China for the inaugural IEEE International Smart

Cities Conference

Figure 1. Poster of ISC2 2017 in the University

In September 15, 2017, the opening ceremony of ISC2 2017 was held. Mr. Zhu Tuo, Party Secretary

of Jiangnan University, Mr. Huang Qin, Deputy Mayor of Wuxi, Mr. Liu Zhimin, Director of

National Center for Schooling Development Programme, MOE, and the directors from different

departments of Wuxi municipal attended the opening ceremony. The opening ceremony was chaired

by Professor Chen Wei, vice president of Jiangnan University.



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Figure 2. Group photo of opening ceremony

Mr. Huang Qin said that it has become an irreversible trend in the world for the construction of

smart city, which is an effective way to solve the problems of urbanization and to realize the

sustainable development. Now Wuxi is actively promoting the comprehensive application and deep

integration of IoT in various fields of economy and society, one of which is the construction of

Smart Wuxi. And the rapid development of Wuxi IoT industry has laid a good foundation for it.

Meanwhile, local government has issued "the Wuxi Smart Cities Development Plan" and “The

Three-year Action Outline of Smart City Construction”, which clearly set up the theme of

“Experience China, Smart Wuxi”. Wuxi has become China's first "prototype and pilot city of

national smart city construction ". In May 2015, the Kick-off Workshop for Wuxi Selected as IEEE

Smart Cities Initiative was held, during which local government kept the commitment and

co-worked closely to do the experimental job. With confidence, responsibility and advantages as

well, local government shall promote the process of experiment, work out problems and endeavor

to strengthen the international cooperation and exchange. The local government will take the

opportunity of this conference, together with the IEEE, experts around the world, to expand the

field of cooperation, enhance the level of cooperation, and achieve mutual benefit and common

development in a larger scope, at a higher level.

Mr. Liu Zhimin addressed that Wuxi is one of the first Demonstration Cities supported by the

National Pilot Smart Cities Project and the only IEEE smart city of Asia. It has boldly pressed

ahead with the emphasis of planning and social infrastructure and has gradually formed Wuxi



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uniqueness by many years exploration. Wuxi now is the pioneer and vanguard of the construction of

smart cities in China. As a university directly supervised by MOE, Jiangnan University in Wuxi is

always at the forefront of the construction of Smart Campus. Its “Intelligent Energy Management”

is a typical case of realizing campus informatization with high-tech methods and is definitely worth

learning and promoting.

Professor Josef Kittler, who is Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering and the award winner of

Chinese Government Friendship, said that to construct smart city is an effective way to solve the

problems in cities and artificial intelligence is one of the key techniques for smart city. Mr. Wang

Chao from IEEE China Council, Professor Baek-Young Choi from Kansas City and is general

co-chair of ISC2 2018 also gave the welcome speech in the opening ceremony.

Mr. Zhu Tuo gave his welcome speech at last. He said that Wuxi municipal government

successfully held the kick-off ceremony here in year 2015. Now, Wuxi, known as the third IEEE

smart city in the world, has made remarkable achievements. As a close partner, Jiangnan University

has been supported by Wuxi municipal government. As a part of the Wuxi World Internet of Things

Exposition (WIOT), ISC2 2017 is an excellent platform for communication and all the experts and

scholars will make use of this opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute intelligence and

strength to the construction of the future city. We look forward to working with all of you to make

exchanges, learn from each other and reap the benefits.

Four tutorials were mainly held in September 14, 2017. Mr. Roberto Saracco, who is from IEEE

Future Direction Committee, gave the tutorial titled ‘Technology Forecast for Smart Cities’. The

tutorial addresses the issue of technology evolution and its impact on the market with a specific

focus on the smartification of cities. Dr. Muhammad Alam from Instituto de Telecomunicações,

University of Aveiro made the three hours’ tutorial, which is titled ‘Smart Buildings for Smart Cities:

IoT perspectives’. The tutorial focused on the role of IoT for smart buildings that will play an

integral part to meet the urban development vision resulting in a smart city. Professor Victor M.

Larios, who is the director of Smart Cities Innovation Center, University of Guadalajara, gave his



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tutorial titled ‘Developing Smart Cities Ecosystems’. In the tutorial, different models to develop a

Smart City are presented and the role of their key players in their ecosystem to keep a continuous

development phase and produce local technological innovation are analyzed. Professor Mark Fox,

from University of Toronto, Canada, gave his tutorial with the title ‘AI-based Measurement and

Analysis of City Performance’. He provided an introduction to the representation of city data, and

its use in the measurement and analysis of city performance in the tutorial.

Five keynote speeches were given from September 15 to 17 respectively. Professor Josef Kittler

gave the speech titled ‘Face and Soft Biometrics Recognition for Smart Cities Applications’. He

thought that biometric technologies will play an important function in many smart cities security

applications, including access control, verification of identity for secure transactions, and visual

surveillance. He illustrated how linguistic description of suspects by witnesses can enhance the

accuracy of re-identification. Professor Xin Yao, IEE Fellow, from Southern University of Science

and Technology, China and University of Birmingham, UK, gave the speech with the title

‘Self-awareness and Self-expression in Computing’. In the speech, he gave a very briefly review of

self-awareness in some psychology and cognitive science literature. In order to illustrate the ideas

of self-awareness and self-expression and their potential use in real-world systems, a case study of

designing an automated handover algorithm for fully decentralized smart camera networks was

presented. Professor Stan Z. Li, who is the researcher from Institute of Automation Chinese

Academy of Sciences, introduced his personal experiences with AI research and real applications.

Mark Fox talked about the information system for smart cities. He presented a different view of city

information systems and explored the question of how smart city information systems should

BEHAVE and not just how they are constructed. Mrs. Sue Ellen Haupt, from National Center for

Atmospheric Research, USA, gave her speech titled ‘Integrating Weather Information for

Connected Vehicles: A Big Data Application’. She introduced the Pikalert® system that brings

together weather information and real-time data to provide crucial real-time information to enhance

the safety of surface transportation systems.



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There were 29 technical sessions in ISC2 2017, in which the authors of accepted papers presented

their papers. The topics included smart transportation, smart energy, smart health-being, smart

government, IoT, smart environment, big data and open data and artificial intelligence and pattern

recognition techniques for smart cities. The organization committee of ISC2 2017 prepared a panel

to share the construction experiences of IEEE smart cities. Representatives from

Guadalajara(Mexico), Trento(Italy), Wuxi(China), Kansas City(USA), Casablanca(Monaco), and

Natal(Brazil) discussed the experience in the panel.

Mr. Chandrasekaran Srikanth and Mr. Bill Ash, from IEEE Standards Association, organized the

special technical session titled ‘Standards based Technology for Smart Cities’, which was held the

full day on September 17. The attendees from Alibaba, Huawei, Philips Lighting, CRRC

ZHUZHOU INSTITUTE CO.,LTD, and Celefish Ltd presented the speeches in the session.



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(a) Mr. Zhu Tuo (b) Mr. Huang Qin

(c) Mr. Liu Zhimin (d) Mr. Wang Chao

(e) Prof. Josef Kittler (f) Prof. Baek-Young Choi

(g) Prof. Chen Wei (h) Opening Ceremony

Figure 3. Graphs from Opening Ceremony



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(a) Roberto Saracco (b) Muhammad Alam

(c) Victor M. Larios (d) Mark Fox

Figure 4. Graphs from Tutorials



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(a) Josef Kittler (b) Xin Yao

(c) Stan Z. Li (d) Mark Fox

(e) Sue Ellen Haupt

Figure 5. Graphs from Keynote Speeches



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Figure 6. Graphs from Technical Sessions

Figure 7. Graphs from the panel of sharing experience among IEEE Smart Cities



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Figure 8. Graphs from the Special technical session titled ‘Standards based Technology for Smart

Cities’



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Figure 9. Discussion during coffee breaks

Documents

News from the Third IEEE International Smart Cities ... · PDF fileis a typical case of realizing campus informatization ... designing an automated handover algorithm for fully