How Do Smart City Technologies Help to Cope with the Pandemic?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes worldwide. A large body of research already exists to identify factors that influence the disease incidence and mortality, both at the scale of individual regions within countries and at the national scale. The consistently high number of cases of virus acquisition and the discovery of new strains show that the relevance of this research is not decreasing. International and domestic experience demonstrates the expansion of the use of digital technologies to combat the pandemic and its consequences. These include technologies that help identify infected individuals, trace contacts, predict the spread of the disease, conduct diagnostics and treatment, raise population awareness, maintain social distancing and self-isolation, and enable the transition to an online format. These technologies are more widespread in smart cities through the availability of the corresponding infrastructure; however, they can be implemented anywhere. This study is aimed at assessing the contribution of smart technology and comfortable urban environment to the fight against coronavirus infection. A hypothesis is proposed about the existence of an inverse dependence between smart urban environment and the number of deaths. The dependence is checked by statistical methods. The results we obtained show that the presence of a developed urban infrastructure in fact reduces excess mortality, which includes deaths not only from the infection itself but also from its consequences. A developed urban infrastructure also contributes to mitigating the issues associated with healthcare system overload and helps to reduce difficulties related to planned medical examinations and planned operations, etc. Nevertheless, the level of digitalization of urban environment has no significant impact on mortality.