Transforming Yekaterinburg into a Safe, Resilient-Smart and Sustainable City

Abstract

The initiative (since 2014) project described in this paper is a product of a joint innovative research and implementation effort of the Civil Engineering and Architecture Institute, Ural Federal University, the Science and Engineering Centre “Reliability and Safety of Large Systems and Machines”, Ural Branch Russian Academy of Sciences (both Yekaterinburg), Start-up OptiCits, Barcelona, Spain and the Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA. The project is based on using the MAICS convergent technology [1] to create a versatile multi-purpose tool for optimizing the science and art of risk based governance of resilience-smart and sustainable city infrastructure and communities operating in usual and extreme conditions. The tool being developed is tailored to the needs of the City of Yekaterinburg–the capital of the Urals Region and allegedly the third most important and vibrant city of Russia. It is also being offered to the Yekaterinburg City Administration as an every-day decision-support work-tool and addendum to the Strategic Program “Yekaterinburg 2030 – a Safe City”[2] during preparation of the city for winning and conducting the World Expo-2025. Authors believe that the findings of this research would also be useful to the Sverdlovsk Oblast cities of every size and type of communities that inhabit them, including, first and foremost, Nizhny Tagil, Kamensk Uralsky, Serov, Pervouralsk, Revda, Verkhnyaya Pyshma, multiple mono-cities et al. The project also incorporates block-chain technology, smart contracts and digital currency as an effective tool for implementing the project.