The national secretary of Telecommunications and Digital Policies of the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications (MCTIC), Vitor Menezes, said that the smart city concept involves cities that use technology, innovation and communication infrastructure, “and that promotes good -being of the community through four aspects: social, environmental, cultural and economic”.
During the presentation of the plan, the secretary cited as examples of actions that can be developed by cities, the installation of security cameras, facial identification, crop monitoring, rainwater harvesting systems, electronic medical records and projects of urban mobility.
National Chamber
“This national plan is a public policy of the government, launched by the Ministry of Science and Technology, which will organize and add the other ministries to the project. The idea is that we can work on it, including together with the Ministry of Regional Development, within the Chamber of Smart Cities, which we should create in the coming days”, explained the secretary.
“In this chamber, we will conduct the national smart cities project, we will establish the indicators, we will define the way we are going to work, what we are going to pursue, what are our targets, in what way we are going to level the cities”, he explained.
“Brazil has an infrastructure problem. Most cities often lack connectivity infrastructure. So, you can't talk about smart cities if we don't have connectivity. We need to evolve with leveling, surrounding indicators, so that we can have a very structured national plan. This is not a program of months, but of years. And it is a constantly evolving program as well,” he said.
Vitor Menezes said that a decree should soon be published establishing the national policy for sustainable smart cities. “The decree provides for our concept for smart cities and some more specific issues regarding the functioning of the chamber. We will have a little more detail about the operation of this program”, explained the secretary.
“We believe that the details of the phases and projects will be done in the chamber itself. But we want, at least, the structured program, the indicators and the leveling of the cities to start later this year”, he added.
According to the secretary, the plan is important because most of the Brazilian population – around 85% of the total – lives in cities. “And it is important that the municipalities have better quality of life, that they have the capacity to generate wealth for the population, have security, that parents have peace of mind with their children and that the people of this locality have access to technology”.
“We realize today that a smart cities program, above all, generates efficiency. If you, for example, have a smart government management program, it will certainly generate profit for the municipality. If you have a simple camera monitoring system, this tends to reduce crime in the city. So, this is a program that will bring many benefits at all levels of government”, he concluded.
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