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

The importance of organisational strategy in delivering net zero buildings.

7 June 2023

Dr Kwadwo Oti-Sarpong, CSIC Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, has recently published a new blog at BIM Today entitled ‘Why organisational strategy is crucial in delivering net zero buildings’, which looks at the organisational strategies used to deliver net zero buildings through innovative...

Executive Education Course in Leadership of Urban Digital Innovation for Public Value (LeadUP), 18-19 September 2023, University of Cambridge.

6 June 2023

CSIC is delighted to announce the launch of the two-day Executive Education Course in Leadership of Urban Digital Innovation for Public Value (LeadUP) . The Course is designed for senior executives and professionals in leadership roles working in public and private organisations involved in the delivery of digital...

CSIC Twitter