IEEE SCFS 2022 – Sustainability in Action, Tel Aviv

Join us and put Sustainability in Action, for seven generations! Be part of the twin green and digital transformations that are creating a flourishing future for our cities. Fulfill the mission of UN SDG Goal 11: “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

Take home new insights to improve life in your community.

Who will be there?

Representatives from over 100 cities from 35 countries will present their challenges, successes and lessons learned. Experts from industry and academia, including SMEs and start-ups, will showcase tried and tested solutions. Together they will create “action tanks”, held over several sessions, where stakeholders can put together a rich set of alternative actions to move our cities forward. Hybrid attendance (online and onsite in Tel Aviv, the startup nation!) ensures sharing and collaboration on a global scale.

What will we talk about?

We will use three main themes to organize the challenges and opportunities facing our communities on the path to sustainability.

The Climate Crisis

As home to most of the earth’s people, cities bear the burden of reducing green house gas emissions to lessen global warming. In addition we must be ready to protect our people from unavoidable climate change induced problems expected in the coming decades. Sub themes include:

Attenuating the urban heat island
Facing the problems of sea-level rise and episodic flooding due to extreme weather.

Self Sufficient Cities

Long supply chains for food and goods, major engineering for water supply and waste removal – our cities have large carbon footprints and are vulnerable to climate disasters. Increasing urban self-sufficiency and local production can help. Sub themes include:

Food tech, green walls, and urban agriculture
Urban water and waste challenges
Energy resilience and efficiency

Future Cities, Future Jobs

Cities have always been incubators for change. In the current period of rapid changes and disruptions in the global economy, cities need to continue to be leaders in positive innovation. Sub themes include:

Urban planning and development
Liveable environment and quality of life
Innovation districts and living labs
Stimulating and supporting growth of local economies
Public safety and security
Manufacturing and production

What will we do?

On a “blank canvas”, with worldwide landscapes to be integrated into the picture, participants can paint their ideas. At the end of the conference, the canvas will show a vibrant mixture of possible solutions, contacts, skills and knowledge shared among the participants. With follow up, this “big picture” we create can become the basis for standards and best practices that will help each city see and act in the future.

THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Rapid urbanisation has resulted in the emergence of megacities – cities with more than 10 million inhabitants) all over the world during past two decades. These cities are not sustainable as currently designed, and must reduce their carbon footprint to reduce the augmentation of global temperature and limit warming to 1.5C. Many of these cities are coastal and particularly vulnerable to sea level rise. But even cities away from the coasts are vulnerable to the greater frequency of wind storms, wildfires and floods that are fueled by the heating of the atmosphere.

What must be done

UNESCO began the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 and included agendas for 2030 to prevent any global warming over a 1.5C of increase. This agenda requires reducing the carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide (N2O) footprint in the following areas:

How we produce electricity and heat for the cities that represent 30% of CO2 and 3% of N2O emissions
Industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, extraction and refining of oil, gas, and coal contribute 30% CO2, 33% methane, and 8% N2O emissions. 
Mobility over roads, rails, maritime, and aviation with an account of 19% CO2 and 2% N2O emissions
Buildings operation, including cooking with 6% CO2 emissions
Agriculture with the energy used in processes to farm, crop, fishing with 1% CO2, 38% methane, and 79% N2O emissions
Forestry and land use with 14% CO2, 5% methane, and 5% N2O emissions
Waste generation and related processes, including wastewater treatment, produce 23% methane and 3% N2O emissions.

We seek to commit to the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal 13, "Climate Action."

Figuring out how to do it

Governments and industry have been working on

Assessments to determine the existing carbon footprint of cities.
Strategies to reduce the dependency of the energy grid on fossil fuels.
Circular economies principles for industry and agriculture to avoid waste and greenhouse gases from landfills.
Carbon capture in building and landscaping.

and many other ways to lessen the contribution of cities to the climate crisis.

Cities also have to learn ways to deal with the effects of increasing heat and climate-induced disasters on the people who live in them. At this conference, we seek options for rebuilding our urban infrastructure that not only have a net-positive influence on the climate but also address environmental injustice and make life better for all who live in our cities.

SELF-SUFFICIENT CITIES

Supplying food and water to our megacities requires long agricultural supply chains and major infrastructure supporting the provision of clean water and the removal of wastes. Furthermore, energy must be provided for heating and increasingly for cooling, and people and goods must be moved in and out of the city.

Future proofing our cities requires that food, water and energy all be produced as close to home as possible. Furthermore, a circular economy must conserve food, water, energy and materials, and prevent waste materials from polluting the planet. Packaging should be minimised, and the water and carbon footprint of food production must be reduced.

The conference held in 2022 happens in Israel, one of the leading countries in technology and innovation for efficient agriculture. Some of the other strategies we will be considering:

Food production of vegetables is happening in old building structures inside cities, with artificial solar light to accelerate the growth process and high-efficiency water use.
Other options for growing food in cities include fish farming and high protein meat replacements.
Growing food in the cities and not outside, using circular economy principles, reduces logistics on the supply chain and increases access to consumers. These projects have extensive sensors, data analytics, control systems, and artificial intelligence to achieve high efficiency.
Energy resilience and efficiency can be achieved by optimizing urban transportation to limit CO2 emission and commuting times.
Building operation, heating and cooling can use heat pumps and district heating to minimise urban energy use.
Flexible energy grids can be constructed within the city limits from renewable sources that are less expensive than fossil fuels.
Urban planning must ensure that the megacities of the future allow all people to find jobs near their homes.

FUTURE CITIES, LIVES AND JOBS

Cities have always been incubators for change and growth. But now access to global economies makes cities sensitive to supply chain disruptions and volatile financial markets. During the pandemic, we saw how global industries such as electronics suffered from the impacts of labor shortages.

Digital transformation is also occurring everywhere as businesses take advantage of AI and massive increases in computing resources to provide new goods and services and to automate old ones. Old jobs are lost, and citizens must be trained for new jobs created in the knowledge industry. At the same time, in a “green” transformation, urban energy and construction infrastructure must be rebuilt to avoid greenhouse gas remissions – a new way of rebuilding that should be done with the human need for connections to nature in mind.

All this transformation can cause deprivation and unemployment if a local economy cannot keep up, but also creates an opportunity to rebuild a livable environment with an improved quality of life. Cities are responding with innovation districts and living labs, stimulating entrepreneurship and supporting growth of local economies. Some cities have implemented alternative coin systems based on cryptocurrency to provide resiliency to financial market volatility. Other cities are creating innovation districts that empower startups, and experimenting with education and training models to improve the skills of their labor force.

During the conference, Israel will be sharing its experiences in innovative urban life and economies with worldwide attendees. Our action tanks will look to find concrete technology and deployment formulas to help other cities take action. We plan to develop a common framework for standards and best practices with IEEE that cities can use in their RFPs for future endeavors.

Hybrid summit in the Smart City of Tel Aviv, Israel

Resilience to climate change

Supporting urban living & economies

Tech for achieving self-sufficient cities