Smart Cities Webinar - World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development 2023

The objective of the webinar is to highlight the significant role engineering plays in innovation for a more resilient and sustainable world. This webinar will offer an opportunity to showcase some of the innovations and phenomena applied within Smart cities for resilience and deepen our understanding of engineering innovations.

The world is urbanizing at an unprecedented speed and scale, with 4.5 billion people, more than half the world’s population, living in cities today. Rapid urbanization and the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters, due to extreme weather events exacerbated by the impacts of climate change, are putting more people and assets at risk. With this, there is a greater need for reimagining cities with innovations in health, agriculture, energy, waste management and industrial and infrastructure development for a more resilient world.

Engineering is at the centre of how we design, build, operate, regenerate our cities and rebuild after natural disasters. From the critical infrastructure such as our water, sewage, energy, transportation and digital systems our daily lives rely on, to city planning, cities are designed and enabled by engineering. With urban populations set to increase to 68% by 2050, we must improve city design and infrastructure, by rethinking new technologies and infrastructure and retrofitting existing ones so that our urban centres become dynamic, equitable, and resilient places for people to live and thrive.

This webinar is organized by UNESCO on the occasion of World Engineering Day.