Degree in Business Intelligence and Data Analytics

Lead the transformation of companies through the use and analysis of data.

Emerging technologies and smart cities

Description
This course provides an overview of the new technologies which have been emerging in recent years and explores their potential impact. It analyses how private companies currently apply them to develop business opportunities or resolve problems. Moreover, it describes the role of these technologies in the development of new urban services for the next generation cities (usually called Smart Cities). The course places special emphasis on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence and provides a vision of the future applications that these technologies will make possible. It also explores how the implementation of these technologies can disrupt the position of many incumbents, generating business conflicts and raising questions related to security and privacy. We will discuss all of them in class. Finally, students are required to respond to a challenge and present in groups a solution which leverages the use of these new technologies.
Type Subject
Optativa
Semester
Second
Credits
5.00
Previous Knowledge
Objectives

Learning Outcomes of this subject are:
R1 - To describe the new emerging trends and their managing role in the business
R2 - To understand their role and their disruptive impact to solve issues and improve quality of citizens' life
R3 - To understand the challenges and risks related to their implementation
R4 - To analyze the conflicts that these technologies generate regarding the incumbent companies
R5 - To apply these technologies for developing alternative strategies or detecting new business opportunities

Contents

R1 - Introduction of the emerging technologies for business and society
R2 - Introduction of Smart City
R3 - Know how to respond to a challenge
R4 - Know how to communicate with data

Methodology

The subject has two teaching sessions every week. Each Session is divided into Two parts: a first part is masterful in which the teacher explains the new Contents and 1 Second in which the students work in new Exercises to consolidate the subject. Every two or three sessions, individual or group evaluation activities are carried out by means of written tests, collection of exercises carried out at home, etc.

Evaluation

In order to evaluate if the student has achieved in an adequate degree the objectives pursued in the subject, different evaluation activities are used (with a frequency of approximately weekly). The following table shows the percentage of evaluation of each activity on the final grade:
R1 - 20% WORK IN GROUP
R2 - 20% WORK IN GROUP
R3 - 40% PROJECT IN GROUP
R4 - 20% PROJECT IN GROUP

Students who do not pass the regular call will have an Extraordinary Call in July. Students who do not take any of the rest exams will have a final grade of the subject NP (Not Presented) in the extraordinary call.

Objectives of the continuous evaluation:
- The main objective is to help students to update the subject and get a good method of work, so that it helps them to assimilate the subject, taught progressively, and in obtaining good academic results.
- It also allows to value the work that the student does day by day, without his note depends only of the examinations realized during the semesters of the academic course.
- As a teacher, it helps to have more information about the work done by students and a better knowledge of them, both academically and personally.

Retake policy: Should you fail the course overall, you will have the opportunity to sit a re-take exam, as long as assignments and projects have been presented. The re-take grade will then be: 40% the re-take exam and 60% the continuous assessment obtained during the course.

Evaluation Criteria
Basic Bibliography

- Economist (2013). Mining the urban data. http://www.economist.com/news/21566408-cities-will-become-smarter-differ... (last access:04/09/2016).
- Economist Intelligence Unit (2011). 2004-2011 Quality of Life Index. https://www.economist.com/media/pdf/quality_of_life.pdf (last access:04/09/2016).
- Samet, R.H. (2013). Complexity, the science of cities and long-range futures. Futures 47, 49-58.
- Gartner (2015). 2015 Hype Cycle Special Report. The Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. Technical report.
- McKinsey (2011). Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity. McKinsey Global Institute.
- McKinsey (2014). The Internet of Things: Mapping the Value Beyond the Hype. Technical report.
- McKinsey Global Institute Report, R. (2013). Disruptive technologies: Advances that will transform life, business, and the global economy.
- World Commission on Environment and Development (1987). Our common future. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press.
- Neal, Z.P. (2013). The connected city: How networks are shaping the modern metropolis. Routledge, New York & London.
- M. E. J. Newman (2010). Networks: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Townsend, A.M. (2013). Smart Cities: Big data, civic hackers, and the quest for a new utopia. W.W. Norton & Company Inc. New York.
- Smart Cities Council (2015). Smart cities readiness guide: The planning manual for building tomorrow’s cities today.
- Yigiscanlar,T, O'Connor, K. Westerman, C (2008). The making of knowledge cities: Melbourne’s knowledge based urban development experience. Cities 25 (2008) 63-72
- Mayer-Schonberger, V. & Cukier, K. (2013). Big Data: A revolution that will transform how we live, work and think. John Murray (Publishers), London.

Additional Material
List of Professors
Marc Viader Oliva