Accelerating innovation: Smart Cities International Conference at SNSPA

19-12-2022

The Faculty of Public Administration, SNSPA, organised on 8 and 9 December 2022 the 10th edition of the Smart Cities International Conference entitled 'Accelerating innovation'. It was an open scientific meeting which brought together various experts in the field of Smart Cities.

To find out more details about the conference, we spoke with Cătălin Vrabie, Chair of the Smart Cities International Conference and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Public Administration.

What ideas contributed to organising an event of this type at SNSPA?

"The Smart Cities International Conference, abbreviated SCIC, is an initiative dedicated to open, inclusive, formal and informal dialogue on Smart Cities issues among all interested stakeholders. The conference emerged from the organisers' desire to put into an academic debate different aspects of Romanian cities' life - and also of the cities outside the country's borders - through multidisciplinary scientific approaches. Therefore, there are talks about the past, present and future on the acceptance of democracy as the most efficient tool of governance and acceptance and compliance with the state's rules," says Cătălin Vrabie, PhD.

The first Smart Cities event occurred in 2013 as the first of its kind in Romania. 

"Entitled 'Accelerating Innovation', the conference reached its 10th edition in 2022, and it was a significant scientific event being the oldest in this area of research in Romania. The hybrid format conference brought together various specialists: representatives of governments, intergovernmental organisations, the private sector, the technical community, academia and members of civil society active in the field of Smart Cities and related such as architecture, engineering and medicine, managing to reach the attention of policymakers through the presence of representatives of the European Parliament and Embassies of the world states in Bucharest summing up approximately two hundred participants from twenty-seven countries such as Japan, Norway, Germany, Italy, Poland, Denmark, Switzerland, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Indonesia, and Ukraine," also commented Cătălin Vrabie, Chair of the Smart Cities International Conference.

The Smart Cities series of conferences prove that academia is the most visionary actor in research and development, always finding new trends for a brighter future. How to access the papers?

"All the conference papers, like every year before, will be published in the Smart Cities and Regional Development (SCRD) Journal and the Conference Proceedings. Thus, ensuring their visibility to a much larger scientific community," concludes Cătălin Vrabie, Chair of the Smart Cities International Conference and an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Public Administration.

Written by Cătălin Mosoia (SNSPA Editorial Team).

^{Photo credits (banner): SNSPA}