The pandemic has caused us to take a step back, reevaluate life, and reconsider how we as countries operate. Pandemics are not a new concept and have been seen throughout history. These outbreaks are a reminder of how a single incident can snowball into a global nightmare, but they also have a long history of becoming a catalyst for advancement. After a cholera epidemic killed 30,000 people, London built its Victorian sewer system. The Spanish flu, one of the worst pandemics in history, resulted in improved building ventilation standards.
While the world continues to grapple with the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, governments and organizations are debating how new technologies can be used to mitigate its effects and how future pandemics can be avoided or minimized. Among the originally proposed solutions, the development of more efficient and widespread smart city initiatives can improve the way critical data is retrieved, processed, stored, and disseminated. This is not a new concept and has been proven time and time again – even after the financial collapse of 2008. Only now do we see the true potential in its widespread adoption, which has been slow since then. Doing this could potentially improve outbreak detection and mitigation while shortening the execution time when taking critical actions. This massive push could cause the exact radical change that other pandemics have done by accelerating the global adoption of smart city technology.
