Our team was invited to take part in the Smart Cities – Urban Tech Solutions to Shorten the Road to Recovery webinar that was held on July 9. The discussion focused on whether modern cities are equipped to cope with COVID-19, has enough attention been paid to implementing solutions and how innovation and technology can help overcome the obstacles to recovery.

Nadia Soultanova, Director “Digitalization, Innovation and Investments” at Innovative Sofia, participated in the meeting.

‘COVID-19 has been a challenge, but also an opportunity because it really sped up the collaboration in the city with everybody – the municipality, businesses, universities. We saw a huge step forward happening overnight, a real acceleration in collaboration. I very much hope that we will continue this collaboration in whatever the future reality will be. This collaboration, innovation, and openness should be the “new normal” if we want to be able to resolve future crises – health or not health-related. 

Of course, we also need more data to back up better decisions, as well as new policies that will allow us to adopt the new technologies. Technology is there, expensive or not so, but legal and administrative hurdles should be resolved so that the new technologies could be adopted and people could use them. Also, and that is a global issue, low trust between people and governments should be resolved’, Nadia Soultanova said during the discussion. 

If you missed Urban Tech’s online webinar dedicated to urban tech solutions that help cities shorten the road to recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, you can watch the discussion in the video below.

Panelists: 

•  Tim Newns, CEO MIDAS, City of Manchester, UK
•  Nadia Soultanova, Head of Digitalisation, Innovation and Investments at Innovative Sofia department, Sofia Municipality, Bulgaria
•  Paul Kallee-Grover, Director, Avison Young
•  Dr. Philippe Bouvier, President, Institut National de Recherche En Gestion Urbaine – INREGU