skip to content

Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction

Transforming infrastructure through smarter information
 

CSIC Research Associate Viviana Angely Bastidas Melo argues that urban systems that integrate social and technical domains are becoming more and more necessary and ‘a critical planning and management responsibility’.

In her latest blog entitled How do we conceptualise and design urban interventions that satisfy the social and technological needs of the real world?, Dr Viviana Angely Bastidas Melo reflects on the challenges that city professionals in private and public organisations face while planning urban systems. She states that ‘Conceptualising and designing urban systems that embrace both the social and technical worlds have become a critical planning and management responsibility that should put peoples’ needs above technical desires’.

The main challenge, she argues, consists in ‘the complex interdependencies that exist between socio-technical system ‘components’ such as people, strategies, policies, regulations, processes, data, applications, technology, and physical infrastructure’. She suggests that there is the need to equip professionals with the right skills to enable them to design urban systems to achieve ‘interoperability between people’ in addition to ‘data interoperability’ already occurring in many digital innovation projects in the urban built environment.

She concludes by suggesting that ‘A common language can help city leaders to manage cities' complexity and to design digital solutions that align with their concerns and expectations. Such alignment can build a bridge between urban planning officers and digitalisation experts by making explicit the links between social and technological needs’.

Read full blog here

Latest news

UK Risks Harming National Interests Without Urgent Reform to Visa Policy for Scientists, warns Lords Committee Chair

7 May 2025

The UK risks missing a real opportunity to drive economic growth in the UK and to build up our research base in science and technology unless urgent reforms are made to its visa and immigration policies for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) talent, the Chair of the House of Lords Science and...

CSIC event in Cambridge to honour 63 Rankine Lecturer Professor Kenichi Soga

24 March 2025

On 21 March 2025, the Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) hosted an event in honour of Professor Kenichi Soga, Donald H. McLaughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California Berkeley. The event at the West Hub, University of Cambridge was chaired by CSIC...

 

CSIC Social Media

Follow us on:  LinkedIn and BlueSky

Watch our videos on: YouTube