Uploaded on 2015-06-10 by DimIoss

**Water**: Clean water is the source of life essential to any urban organization. Most cities develop around a water element (sea, lake, river or natural spring) and develop infrastructure not only to clean this water to a quality level that allows its consumption but also to bring it in the city and directly within the human habitat. From the ancient roman aqueducts until modern tap water systems, this is built with highly complex infrastructure networks, which are less and less visible in our modern society but require more and more complex systems to manage clean water availability. Information systems will play a critical role in future sustainability of clean water infrastructures. Those will allow a better and more detailed visibility of where (habitat, industry, public areas), when (day, night, peak hours, seasonality) the consumption of clean water happens and in what form (cooking, washing, bathroom, public fountain, public sanitation). The availability of such information will allow a more efficient management of clean water stocks and flows, especially considering an increasing pressure on costs and public budgets, resources scarcity and environmental criteria for development of sustainable Future Cities. **Energy**: Energy in the form of electricity consumption is a continuously expanding commodity essential to habitat consumption, industry development and transportation use. Development of Future Cities will see a further expansion of our habitat comfort, economic and industry growth as well as transportation commuting and further shift from private to public modes. All those will impact electricity consumption and complexity of its infrastructure. Here as well, Smart Grid systems that allow better energy consumption information will play an essential role in order to support sustainability of Future Cities. **Transportation**: Transportation infrastructures support commuting of human activities within a city and are also an expanding mode of intra- and inter-city communication. Modes and reasons for using transportation might evolve but the overall volume of transportation ‘flow’ is a continuously expanding criteria that directly impacts the necessity of developing not only bigger but also more efficient transportation infrastructures. I also here highlight the criticality of transportation information systems in the sustainability of future urban systems. For both individual and public transportation network it is crucial to enforce optimized design and use of highways and local roads, long- and short distance public transportation infrastructure (train, tram and bus networks but also airport and seaport clusters) which all have a direct architectural impact and visibility on sustainability of our modern urban systems and physical organization of our cities. **Health**: This is another crucial element essential to any human organization: urban systems that promote healthier life (proximity to natural environmental, parks and green areas in the city) but also urban infrastructure that provide efficient health support (hospitals and medical networks). Here too, information systems play an important role not only in measurement of health factors within and around the human habitat (pollution control, allergic components, sanitation levels) but also in the organization of health infrastructure such as hospital administration (availability and density of hospital infrastructure based on population health information, dispatching of medical emergency treatments based on city’s urban organization and local population density). Smart Networks with the expansion of Information systems in urban infrastructure will play an essential role in Future Cities’ sustainability. It will not only be critical to build and sustain urban infrastructure but also to design it in a smartest way and allow more efficient utilization of environmental, human and capital resources for development of sustainable future urban systems. Illustration: Wind power in Crete-Greece: ![enter image description here][1] Traditional windmills (left) allow availability and usability of clean water for local population, where modern wind turbines (right) allow generation of electricity linked to the national power network. Both infrastructures have an impact at territorial scale but with a different sustainability impact to our urban systems (left: local impact and benefit with no impact to nearby urban systems, right: local impact with no direct local benefit but with optimized impact at global urban system level) [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14339402508294493.jpg