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Saifur Rahman

Professor, Virginia Tech, USA

Role of ICT in Optimal Management of Smart Buildings, Smart Cities and Smart Grids

Smart grid is a concept with many elements where monitoring and control of each element in the chain of generation, transmission, distribution and end-use allow the electricity delivery system and use to be more efficient. Smart Grid sits at the top of a four-tier hierarchy starting with the Smart Buildings and Services which are elements of a Smart Campus, many of them when interconnected forms a Smart City, and many of them taken together form the Smart Grid. A smart city relies on widely distributed smart devices to monitor the urban environment in real-time, collects information for intelligent decision making, and facilitates various services to improve the quality of urban living. Smart cities address urban challenges such as pollution, energy efficiency, security, parking, traffic, transportation, and others by utilizing advanced technologies in data gathering and communications interconnectivity via the Internet. The proliferation of personal mobile devices and the development of online social networks, make participatory sensing viable at a large scale, but may introduce many open-ended problems at the same time. This interconnectedness implies that the Smart Grid and the Smart City must be developed together, and one cannot succeed without the other.



Biography

Saifur Rahman (Life Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology (BUET), Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1973, M.S. degree in electrical engineering from State University of New York, New York, NY. USA, in 1975, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, in 1978. He is the Founding Director with the Advanced Research Institute, Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA, USA, where he is the J. R. Loring Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment. He has published over 140 journal papers and has over 400 conference and invited presentations. He is a Distinguished Lecturer for the PES and has lectured on renewable energy, energy efficiency, smart grid, energy Internet, blockchain, and IoT sensor integration in over 30 countries.

Prof. Rahman is 2023 IEEE President and CEO. He is an IEEE Millennium Medal Winner. He was the Founding Editor-in Chief of IEEE Electrification Magazine and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SUSTAINABLE ENERGY. He served as the Chair of the U.S. National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering from 2010 to 2013. He was the President of the IEEE Power and Energy Society for 2018 and 2019.