Society 5.0, Smart City and Smart Community: Organizing Data for Resilient Communities

Society 5.0, Smart City, and Smart Community share the goal of integrating technology into everyday life but differ in scope and approach. While Smart Cities prioritize urban efficiency, using IoT and big data to optimize services and infrastructure, Smart Communities extend this focus to rural and suburban areas, promoting more localized and participatory solutions. Society 5.0, on the other hand, proposes a systemic and humanistic vision in which advanced technologies such as AI and big data are centered on human well-being and the balance between economic progress and social inclusion. In terms of data organization, Smart Cities and Smart Communities generally prioritize collection and analysis to solve specific challenges, such as mobility or resource management. Society 5.0, on the other hand, emphasizes the democratization of this data, ensuring inclusive and equitable access to empower communities and increasing their decision-making capacity in the face of complex challenges.

By applying these approaches to modeling cultural landscapes through a community AI hub, the differences become complementary. Smart City logic brings geospatial monitoring and visualization technologies to optimize data collection in urban and rural environments. Smart Community adds a participatory approach that engages local communities in the co-creation process and values traditional knowledge. Society 5.0 connects these initiatives to a larger purpose, integrating data and knowledge into an inclusive digital ecosystem capable of proposing scenarios that reconcile sustainable development and cultural heritage preservation. Together, these perspectives structure an innovative and inclusive approach to modeling cultural landscapes where science, tradition, and technology converge to build more resilient and connected communities.

The integrated application of these perspectives is at the heart of the “Cultural Environment Community AI Hub” project currently under development at the Instituto Terra e Memória/CGEO/University of Coimbra.

This pioneering project aims to bring together technology, scientific knowledge, and traditional knowledge in a collaborative ecosystem capable of shaping cultural landscapes (past, present, and future) and offering innovative solutions to the challenges of sustainable development promoting inclusion, conservation, and the empowerment of local communities.