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Smart cities are rapidly evolving due to the recent development of new technologies, such as information and communication technologies (ICTs) and artificial intelligence. Growing concerns over climate change are also driving global cities to decarbonize energy systems using increasingly cheaper renewable energy, in which smart cities play critical roles. Integration of electric vehicles (EVs) with the ICT infrastructure is an emerging issue to not only accommodate growing EV fleets but also for cost-effective deep decarbonization as energy storage. In this chapter, we review rapidly evolving smart cities and its definition, infrastructure, and disruptive blockchain applications for energy and EV integration. Then, we move on to the vehicle to X technology, a critical application for the future urban decarbonization. Finally, we introduce an important digital platform software (IoT platform), FI (Future Internet)-WARE.

Introduction The city of Shizuoka directly faces the Nankai Trough (known for its tsunamigenic history), and is facing a potential tsunami threat. In this setting vertical evacuation can be of great significance in reducing loss of life. Methods We apply a GIS based method in order to identify sites that could be utilized for vertical evacuation within the existing building stock of the city, under two tsunami scenarios of 5 and 10 meters of run-up. For each building, we estimate the volume that is expected to be lost per scenario, as well as the number of people inside and how that number fluctuates over different times of the day. Results Using the criteria of 25% or less building volume loss and 6 cubic meters of volume per person, resulted in 2,046 potential sites for the 10 meter scenario and 1,643 potential sites for the 5 meter scenario, with the maximum amount of people that can potentially be accepted in these sites in the morning hours being 873,537 in the 10 meter scenario and 304,734 in the 5 meter scenario. Discussion Our approach has shown that there is a temporal aspect in tsunami vertical evacuation due to the movement of the local population throughout the day. the proposed method can be used for preliminary identification of potential vertical evacuation sites, however, it must be followed by further vulnerability and engineering assessments of buildings, in combination with accessibility and evacuation routing in order to reach a viable and complete evacuation plan.

Norland Optical Adhesive (NOA) acrylate based photopolymers were studied as a medium for Bragg grating fabrication. NOA photopolymers have absorption maximum in near UV region, but they are transparent in visible light region. Photopolymers were irradiated by He-Cd laser 325 nm line interference patterns during holographic recording. In light irradiated regions photopolymerization takes place and volume grating can be recorded. Diffraction efficiency in dependence on sample thickness, recording beams polarization state and intensity was investigated on transmission mode. Enlargement of sample thickness allows to achieve better angular selectivity of diffracted beam, therefore thickness of prepared samples were up to 2.4 mm. In this work diffraction efficiency over 80% was achieved. The best angular selectivity of diffracted beam was several minutes. Gratings with high diffraction efficiency and good angular selectivity successfully can be used in telecommunications and data storage devices. Advantages of this grating are long term mechanical stability, low dependence on temperature changes, simple and cheap preparation (© 2011 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)