World urban informatics experts shed light on the future of smart cities

The GSCS & ICUI 2023 Opening Ceremony was attended by: (from left) Prof. Gong Peng, Vice President and Pro-Vice Chancellor of The University of Hong Kong; Prof. Michael Batty, Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society; Prof. Michael Goodchild, Member of the National Academy of Sciences; Prof. John Shi Wenzhong, Director of SCRI and President of ISUI; Prof. Sun Dong, Secretary for Innovation, Technology and Industry, HKSAR Government; Prof. Jin-Guang Teng, PolyU President; Mr Tony Wong, Government Chief Information Officer; Prof. Christopher Chao, PolyU Vice President (Research and Innovation); Dr Otto Poon, Founder of the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation; and Prof. Chen Qingyan, Director of the PolyU Academy for Interdisciplinary Research.

Under the leadership of Professor John Shi Wenzhong, Director of Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute (SCRI), Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Professor in Urban Informatics and Chair Professor of Geographical Information Science and Remote Sensing, the International Society for Urban Informatics (ISUI) and SCRI co-organised the Global Smart Cities Summit cum the 3rd International Conference on Urban Informatics (GSCS & ICUI 2023) in August with huge success.

The three-day conference held on the PolyU campus was joined by more than 500 experts, scholars, industry professionals, policy makers and investors from around the globe, who exchanged insights and frontier knowledge in smart cities and urban informatics through keynote speeches, forum discussions, and technology innovation exhibitions. A total of 300 abstract submissions from 21 countries and regions were received.

Speaking at the Opening Ceremony, Prof. Sun Dong thanked PolyU for bringing together strong advocates for smart cities from around the world

The biennial GSCS & ICUI is among the unremitting efforts made by Professor Shi to promote urban informatics in academia and society over the years. As the founding President of ISUI and the founding Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Urban Informatics, Professor Shi has led ISUI and SCRI to jointly publish the new ISUI Smart City Index, the first index fully based on publicly available data to evaluate smart-city development.

A global pioneer in advocating urban informatics for the development of smart and sustainable cities, PolyU has set smart cities research as one of its strategic development areas, through SCRI established in 2020.