Sense in the city: Making the Gold Coast an intelligent and sustainable city

Cities worldwide are grappling with urban sprawl, congestion, declining liveability and mounting environmental pressures. This paper examines how emerging information and communication technologies—such as wireless sensor networks, RFID and mobile devices—can support smarter, greener and more economically efficient urban systems. It develops a conceptual ICT implementation framework for the Gold Coast, exploring potential applications in tourism and event management, innovation enablement, smart infrastructure, liveability enhancement and disaster resilience. The paper also identifies key policy and practical challenges, including privacy, affordability, security and stakeholder engagement, that must be addressed to realise an intelligent and sustainable city.