In this episode of The Smart City Podcast, I interviewed the CEO of ResilientGrid, Inc Mike Legatt. Mike is passionate about focusing on the human when it comes to the resilience of critical infrastructure. I really enjoyed this discussion particularly around the Smart Citizen and how descisions of individuals together can impact a Smart City. We talked about some of the projects ResilientGrid, Inc is working on as well as why it’s so important to give humans a purpose in an ever increasing automated world.

Mike will be presenting at the IEEE GreenTech 2018 of Smart City conference in Austin Texas this Friday 6th of April you can check out ieeegreentech.org for more information. As always I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as I enjoyed making it.

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“My biggest passion is finding the humanity in an ever increasing high tech world”

“…ultimately these places where smart city deployments are going to be successful, are places where people want to feel a part…of something bigger…the ability to embrace not just new technologies but also new kinds of habits of collaboration”

“one of the places where human beings really shine…is that we can come up with solutions for experiences and situations that we’ve never been exposed to before”

What we cover in this episode:

• Mike’s background as a programmer, clinical psychologist and a power systems engineer
• How Mike became interested in resilience of critical infrastructure
• Setting up human beings to make a system resilient
• How the Smart City includes not just technology but Smart Citizens, whose decisions can have significant impact
• Great pockets of growth and collaboration happening in the US
• The importance of trialing smart tech in both the cities and rural areas, not a one size fits all approach
• The idea of better habits of collaboration for the success of Smart Cities and responding in emergency situations
• Leadership in the Smart City space being fluid and requiring continuous growth
• Resilient Grid working globally and learning from the differences in organisational cultures
• The trade off between resilience and robustness
• The importance of giving human beings purpose in an ever increasing world of automation and “out of the loop syndrome”

People and Projects Mentioned:

• ResilientGrid, Inc www.resilientgrid.com
• IEEE GreenTech 2018 of Smart City Conference https://ieeegreentech.org
• Resilient Seattle https://www.seattle.gov/resilience

Connect with Mike:

Connect with Mike via LinkedIn or Twitter