Smart solutions in cities during a pandemic - selected areas, functions and applications

Today's cities face many challenges, including those related to the aging of the population, climate change, or broadly understood public safety and health. Examples from many places around the world show that without access to modern technologies, cities, companies, and public institutions could not function, provide services or care for the safety of billions of people living in urban areas. That is especially vital in conditions of the threat to many people's health and life and shutdown of economies caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, the article aims to present selected examples of smart solutions used in cities in the face of the challenges related to ensuring security. Their functionality in pandemic conditions is also described both at present and if the state of emergency continued for the following years. The study proved that the importance of smart solutions for contemporary cities' functioning is growing in the face of the threat to the residents' health and life caused by COVID-19. That mainly applies to tools in the area of e-government, e-education, and e-services in the healthcare sector, including applications for reporting and informing about clusters of virus infections.