On August 5th, ABES promoted the webinar NEW TIMES: LIFE IN THE CITIES, which brought together researchers and engineers from large companies in Brazil to debate urbanization and how technology can help solve environmental, mobility and society issues.
The event had the support of Movimento Brasil, País Digital, Bertha Capital, BR Angels, Bossa Nova Investimentos, Kyvo Innovation and Startup Farm, partners of the ABES Startup Internshilp Program. The debate was moderated by Roxane Ré, presenter and editor of Jornal da USP no Ar.
“We aim to help build a more digital and less unequal Brazil. It's the theme of today's webinar, life in cities, is extremely important in that regard. ABES is an entity that has been in existence for 33 years, and 70% of its members are small and medium-sized companies”, highlighted Rodolfo Fücher, president of ABES, as he thanked the panelists and other participants. He also spoke of the partnership signed with the Meu Futuro Digital project, to help qualify professionals for the IT market.
Improve public management
Marcos Buckeridge, director of the Institute of Biosciences at the University of São Paulo and coordinator of the USP Global Cities Program at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IEA/USP), said that “we can govern cities better if we have data that can be used by scientists and to guide politicians and managers”. He spoke about a recently published article, in which he approached the city as a system, formed by secondary and tertiary subsystems in complex networks. City life can be configured as a triangle, with the population and its aspirations at one of the vertices; on the other is science, producing knowledge, data and solutions; and in the third are those responsible for public management. “The big problem that we have in cities is that of management, which needs to improve”, he assessed, which demands more integration between the occupants of each vertex.
multiple faces of the city
Marcelo Nery – Collaborating Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies – USP Global Cities program and Technology Transfer Coordinator at the USP Violence Studies Nucleus, spoke of the importance of understanding that there are several cities within large metropolises. “It is not possible to affirm, for example, that São Paulo is a violent city, because it has more violent regions and less so. There are areas thinking about 5G and we also have rural areas and indigenous tribes”, he commented. He also recalled that there are mistakes when using new technologies associated with old or non-transparent practices to understand how algorithms and data generation work.
more intelligence
Then it was the turn of Fabiano Sabatini, Technical Account Engineer at Intel Brazil. He explained that the company has two main moves, one of which is to add intelligence and efficiency to products, provide more accurate data and multimodal platforms. “When it comes to the smart city, I believe it needs to be people-centered. The technology itself, although essential, needs to be invisible and solve the problems”, he pointed out. Another important point is the generation of quality data, with accurate measurements. He said that Brazil has good companies developing analytical solutions and that they rely on Intel's computational power for information processing.
well-being and quality of life
Fabio Jardim, Technology Manager, responsible for the hardware and software development team for Internet of Things (IoT) solutions at Logicalis, explained that the company is global and 100% Brazilian, which has been growing and creating business units relevant to the changes that the world has been suffering. He commented that as a technology integrator, Logicalis sees latent demands in areas such as smart buildings, global warming, sharing resources more efficiently, and identifies those that can meet the demands, which are centered on human well-being and to improve the quality of life in cities.
Climate changes
Tatiana Tucunduva, a researcher at the Global Cities Program at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP and a professor at UNINOVE for the Academic Master's Degree in Smart and Sustainable Cities, addressed the issue of climate change and the importance of formulating policies that can help improve life in cities. In his assessment, the technologies are available, but it is still necessary to learn how to use them to better deal with extreme weather events or a pandemic, as they are happening today, which bring a lot of material and life losses, bringing down essential systems, either energy, transport or communication. An important point to be resolved is that alerts reach the population, but people do not know how to act, because there are no action protocols established by the authorities.
violence against women
The panel also included the participation of Debora Sotto, Researcher of the Global Cities Program at the Institute for Advanced Studies at USP, who presented some reflections on the situation of inequality of women, whether in the context of the social isolation generated by Covid-19, also in the pre-pandemic period, in light of the UN's sustainable development goals. She highlighted the importance of offering women public services, infrastructure and social protection policies. “In the specific context of the pandemic, we observed a worsening of inequalities in the division of domestic work, an increase in the vulnerability of domestic workers, who lost their source of income, and a significant increase in violence in the homes”, she warned.
Watch the full webinar in this link.
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