Pol Mac Aonghusa from IBM Research Dublin discusses opportunities and challenges presented by rapid urbanization and the growth of connected devices and data. Key points include:
- By 2050, over 70% of the world's population will live in urban areas, stressing infrastructure and demanding new solutions.
- Trillions will need to be invested in urban infrastructure by 2030 to support economic growth amid austerity measures.
- 50 billion connected devices are expected by 2020, continuously generating large volumes of diverse data from multiple sources.
- Semantic technologies will be needed to organize, explore, and unlock value from this complex, cross-domain data in a sustainable way.