This is a service leadership education course.

Cities and communities worldwide are facing complex challenges such as economic pressure, infectious disease, climate changes, ageing and healthcare, energy crisis, pollutions, resource shortage etc. By integrating emerging Information Technology, Business Strategy and User-centric Design, smart city solutions could enhance the liveability, workability and sustainability of our society.

This course aims to develop a group of socially responsible graduates who have a vision of sustainable development and are able to apply technology to do strategic planning and design.

Students will learn the concepts, framework and key technologies (e.g. IoT, AI, big data, cloud computing) related to smart cities and how they can be applied to different aspects of the society (e.g. transportation, healthcare, environment, accessibility). They will also learn how to research to understand and leverage related policies (e.g. Hong Kong Smart City Blueprint and the personal data privacy protection laws of different regions), and provide critical and ethical evaluation of the potential barriers and impacts for adopting the concept of smart cities from an interdisciplinary approach. In addition, students will also experience a hands-on training, for example embedded systems programming to help them create prototypes for smart cities solutions. Guided by the Design Thinking methodology, students will develop skills of human-centric design. They will work in groups to co-design feasible smart and sustainable solutions with community partners (NGOs, social enterprises, government offices, etc.) by applying key technologies learnt in this course and relating other knowledge learnt from their Major studies. Those smart solutions may contribute to accelerating one or more goals out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of United Nations (UN). In the co-design projects, students can deepen their understanding of sustainability issues and practices, and gain the opportunities to serve the community through field visits, guest lectures, public education or implementation of the designed solutions. Students may also apply entrepreneurship and marketing knowledge to develop service leadership plans or business plans, and promote their plans to be widely implemented in community services.

For example, partnering with one NGO - an elderly care centre, students may take a leadership role to plan and project, first deepen the understanding of the current challenges of elderly care in Hong Kong by field trips or interviews with elderlies, and then lead the NGO staff and elderly participants to co-design smart healthcare solutions to monitor the elderly’s health status by applying big data, AI and IoT technologies. This solution may empower the NGO to provide better services to their beneficiaries with limited resources, while enabling the elderly to enjoy better quality of life. The proposal could be implemented in a small scale to prove the concept. The process of working with NGOs could enhance the digital capacity and bring digital transformation to the organisations This outcome may contribute to the UN SDG number 3: Good Health and Well-being. This group of students may also promote their idea to inspire younger students (e.g. a public demo) or turn their idea to a business practice.

On completion of this course, students develop the sustainable development vision and leadership in strategic planning from aspects of technical, economical, ethical and policy. They may also get prepared to become a change maker and bring social impact to their workplace, community and the World.