Guy Elad shares his insights on working in the smart cities space

Last month the Faculty of Built Environment’s Smart Cities Research Cluster and UNSW Founders hosted a Smart Cities Roundtable to connect Mr. Guy Elad, Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality Deputy CIO and Director of Operations and IT Services, with leading researchers and experts working in the smart cities space.

In 2014, Tel Aviv-Yafo won the World Smart Cities Award at the Smart City Expo World Congress for their Digi-Tel resident’s card. As a leading smart city, they have leveraged a high-tech ecosystem coupled with Israeli ingenuity to make Tel Aviv a desirable incubator of ideas for future investors and a model of best practices for future entrepreneurs.

This knowledge exchange event focused on building networks and potential research collaborations between researchers in the Faculty of Built Environment, City of Sydney and Tel Aviv-Yafo, and provided a forum for Mr. Guy Elad to share some of Tel Aviv’s tech innovations and initiatives that transformed the start-up city into an exemplar smart city at a global level.

Joining Mr. Guy Elad on the panel were Dr. Tom Gao: City of Sydney, Chief Technology and Digital Services Officer, A/Prof Nancy Marshall: Faculty of Built Environment UNSW and Professor Christopher Petit: Faculty of Built Environment UNSW and the chair Dr. Christine Steinmetz: Faculty of Built Environment UNSW.

This event was an initial meet and greet and brief exchange opportunity with Mr. Guy Elad to identify synergies and potential collaborations for research, which will flow on into events and hackathons on the topic of smart cities and solutions. Stay tuned for updates and upcoming events.