Designing smarter cities

By James Dacey in Berkeley, US

This weekend politicians at the COP21 summit in Paris signed a landmark legal agreement to keep global temperature rises at bay by curbing carbon emissions. The tricky next question of course is: how are we actually going to do this? In this short video, civil engineer Arpad Horvath of the University of California Berkeley explains that one of the aspects will be a fundamental rethink of our urban infrastructures. Horvath believes we need to move towards “smart cities” with smaller carbon footprints at all levels – from greener individual buildings, to more sustainable transport networks.

I met Horvath in Berkeley as I’m in the area to attend the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU Fall 2015) taking place this week in San Francisco. I’m joined here by Physics World features editor Louise Mayor, so keep an eye on this blog for coverage of that event throughout the week. Later in the week we’re also planning to get out into the field to see research into natural hazards and how the state is mitigating against their effects. California of course has no shortage of those, including earthquakes, wildfires and the ongoing drought that shows little sign of letting up.