Improving the readiness of smart cities' for managing crises and stresses
Cities will never be 100% “secure,” nor we can avoid all risks. But definitely we can plan to be resilient and be able to face of a wide range of stresses and shocks by making the right investments. One of the domains that we need to invest heavily is smart and resilient cities readiness, in training of the officials and cities’ staff, in citizen engagement and participation, in both the physical and cyber domains, to prepare for crises, react to restore normalcy, and learn from and adapt to the new status quo.
In this context, Smart City Resilience Officer (SCRO) is an innovative position in a smart city acting as the city’s central person for planning and building smart city’s resilience capacity. CRISIS ERASMUS+ project (https://crisisproject.eu/) aligns itself with the European policies in force, with the general objective of contributing to the development of digital skills for smart cities and, at the same time, the resilience of cities. Since urban resilience is a multifaceted concept that spreads in many dimensions such as social, environmental, economical and infrastructural, an SCRO should have an integrated view of all potential hazards prioritizing the most important ones for a city. This highlights the very dynamic and highly transversal nature of this job role. On top of that, traditional resilience approaches and tools intersect with new opportunities offered by smart cities. Therefore, additional knowledge and skills are required from SCROs to examine and incorporate digital urban infrastructures, smart and autonomous devices, and artificial intelligence, among others, into novel resilience schemes and implementations. While not many cities around the world have such employees, the need for trained professionals to undertake this job role is urgent. Moreover, lack of studies to determine the required competencies of SCROs, as well as the lack of relevant educational programs means that the CRISIS project will shed light on a pressing yet still unaddressed issue of establishing quality curricula to provide prospective SCROs with the necessary skill set for successfully fulfilling their role.
