ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted daily lives and operations in many parts of the world. Being home to more than half of the world’s population, cities were particularly hit hard by the pandemic. Different socioeconomic, institutional, and technological measures and policies have been adopted by cities in their efforts to control the pandemic. This chapter is focused on those measures and policies enabled by smart technologies and solutions. COVID-19 was the first global pandemic that occurred after digital revolution. It was, therefore, no surprise that smart technologies and solutions have been deployed at a large scale to deal with it. It is argued that this has even accelerated adoption of such technologies and solutions. By focusing on the planning, absorption, recovery, and adaptation capacities, this chapter discusses how smart solutions and technologies have contributed to resilience against the pandemic. In terms of planning, it is discussed that planning and existence of smart city infrastructure have enhanced different resilience characteristics such as connectivity, innovation, and resourcefulness that have helped some cities be less affected by the pandemic. These characteristics and availability and deployment of smart infrastructure have also enabled cities to absorb the initial shocks through, among other things, better tracing and tracking. Smart solutions and technologies have also enhanced resilience characteristics such as connectivity, creativity, agility, flexibility, and inclusion, thereby helping cities to resume their functionalities in a more timely manner. This, for instance, has been achieved through teleworking, telemedicine, automatic operations, etc. Lastly, contributions to adaptation had fostered connectivity, learning capacity, and flexibility. It is expected that the use of technology will lead to positive behavioral changes that may last even after the pandemic. Despite all these positive contributions, there are concerns about privacy and digital divide that need to be duly considered and addressed for more effective uptake and implementation of smart city solutions and technologies. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.