Smart cities integrate businesses in an expanding global innovation network. They do much more than creating a single great product or industry to stay ahead of the innovation curve. They develop visioning initiatives to create their preferred futures.

But making products that “change the world” does help keep locations in the news. Hyperloop systems to increase the speed and lower the cost of travel are synonymous with Californian innovators. Augmented reality glasses that will remove the need to work at your PC put New York developers in the spotlight. Singapore is known for its digital economy and driverless taxis.

Smart cities cannot afford to be complacent about their achievements. If they stand still, they will soon be overtaken by further innovation.

Digital disrupter Uber plans to add driverless cars to its ride-sharing network. The next innovative mode of travel around smart cities will be autonomous aerial vehicles – drones and quadcopters. Dubai plans to have passenger drones up and running within months.

How can cities stay ahead of the curve?

For futurist Sohail Inayatullah, progressive innovation is empowering (increasing inclusion), nature-based (learning from, protecting and often enhancing through new technologies) and purposeful.

Mayors, CEOs and leaders create a progressive culture that attracts and retains talented staff. Smart organisations improve staff skills and design reflective spaces. They provide a healthy lifestyle culture supported by excellent pay and conditions.

They also encourage employees to participate in innovation hubs, city labs, maker spaces, universities and business start-ups, and via shared platforms with Creative Commons licences.

California’s high-tech companies – Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, Netflix, eBay, Tesla and the like – gain product feedback from customers and New York financiers every year at CES in Las Vegas. CES 2017 displayed TVs with 2.5mm screens that vibrate to make sound, holographic displays, eye-tracking phones and an electric car that accelerates from 0-59km per hour in 2.39 seconds. While products on display were designed in US cities, global suppliers made many of them.

Cities also stay ahead of the innovation curve through the actions of industry leaders who promote the diversity and stability of local workforces. In 2008, US smart cities benefited from the support of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who testified to the importance of hiring foreigners.

Microsoft, along with Amazon and Expedia, again supported Washington State in 2017 by testifying against US President Donald Trump’s immigration ban. In a joint message of co-operative governance to protect global relationships, 16 US attorneys-general rallied against the presidential executive order denying entry to citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. They rejected the immigration ban for undermining national security and America’s core values as a “nation of immigrants”.

Separating reality from hype

Smart city “reality” is about co-creation at the fastest rate in history. This relies on physical and digital connectivity, openness to global markets and high-speed internet. By 2020, Australians will enjoy a 5G wireless internet service with speeds 100 times fast than the current NBN.

High-speed connectivity is needed to support virtual reality and rich entertainment experiences. SpaceX wants to launch 4,425 satellites, rebuilding the internet in space to create a “full and continuous global coverage”.

For leaders, smart city “reality” also means promoting their city’s unique benefits. Socially inclusive, affordable cities with liveable climates attract talented staff.

Australia’s largest city, Sydney, offers those conditions. It is a global leader in bio-tech, high-tech manufacturing. It also has some of the highest levels of sustainability and natural environmental open space in the world.

Compared to London, Sydney rates better for political stability, crime rate, cost of living and cost of rent. Sydney is similar to London in productivity, world university rankings, and health system performance.

Cities with the most advanced technology and liveability include Sydney, London, Stockholm, Seoul and Toronto.

Aligning innovation to emerging futures

Smart cities reduce hype by creating visions. Visioning imagines socially inclusive, sustainable and transformational futures and consequences before enacting them.

When delivering foresight workshops, I use the acronym SELECTFTGP – for “select futures that grow possibilities”. This seeks to encompass all systems: social, environmental, legislative, economic, cultural, technological, futures, transport, governance and political. Considering all social possibilities and impacts, before narrowing to preferred futures, helps to avoid “hype”.

The Australian government has a national Smart Cities Plan. The plan emphasises attraction of talent, accessibility, connecting high-density housing and job centres and high-quality urban design. It recommends a smart city reference group to improve stakeholder engagement, a national cities performance framework, and City Deals.

Queensland is including a Townsville City Deal in its draft regional planning framework, ShapingSEQ. The City Deal will “hard wire” ShapingSEQ through an agreed delivery mechanism for project prioritisation, funding and governance. Submissions on the draft document close March 3, 2017.

Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan, Sunshine Coast and Geelong have applied futures studies methods to their city visioning.

Smart cities will advance across the Australian landscape when state governments legislate for cities to create and align 20-to-30-year visions to their emerging futures.

The Conversation

Picture source: Alamy Image

Picture used for illustrative purpose only

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But in the rush to collect all manner of information about customers, tensions are rising in Silicon Valley over whether such practices amount to a form of surveillance that customers will ultimately find invasive.

Whether ordering an Uber, streaming music, shopping online or tracking a health condition, consumers are giving an unprecedented amount of information to technology companies.

“The data that companies … have on you is significantly greater than you appreciate,” Mark Suster, managing partner at venture capital firm Upfront Ventures, said in an interview at a conference in Santa Barbara, California, sponsored by CB Insights, a business data firm.

Discussions during the two-day conference centered on the importance of ‘big data,’ the catchphrase referring to massive information sets that are stored and analyzed by companies.

Collecting big data helps Airbnb, for instance, know whether its customers prefer to travel to the beach or mountains, and Uber knows popular drop-off locations and how to price trips.

Collecting large amounts of data is also paramount to developing artificial intelligence (AI), among the most highly sought technologies in Silicon Valley, which teaches machines to make decisions that humans previously had. AI can, for example, help a shopper decide on a new pair of shoes, help a doctor diagnose a disease and enable a car to drive itself.

But questions loom about how much personal information startups are collecting and how securely they store the data, with whom they share it and how they intend to use it.

“We are going to become comfortable with a level of surveillance that we never would have previously been comfortable with, because it makes things just a little easier,” said Jeremy Liew, a venture capitalist with Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Some startups have overstepped. Uber Technologies Inc faced an investigation by New York’s attorney general into a feature known internally as “God View,” which allowed employees to access and track the location of individual Uber riders without obtaining permission. Uber settled the matter and agreed to encrypt customers’ geo-location data.

Peter Coles, head economist for Airbnb, said the data his company guards is fairly benign. “I think it is very unlikely that we would be collecting anything about users that they would be surprised to know.”

But the tension was pronounced in one on-stage discussion at the conference. Matthew Zeiler, founder and chief executive of Clarifai, a visual recognition tool used in healthcare, suggested creating a Wikipedia-style database of anonymous patient data that was open to the public.

“That can be very harmful, especially to the patients,” argued Gabriel Otte, founder and CEO of Freenome, a cancer-detection startup. Patients would be loath to tell the truth, he said, if they knew their most private health information was going to end up on the internet, even without their name attached.

Still, it is unclear if younger generations, who have grown up with apps such as Facebook and Snapchat that encourage sharing, view privacy in the same way.

“People don’t care as much as they profess,” Dave McClure, founding partner of 500 Startups, said in an interview. “Convenience is generally going to win over privacy.”—Reuters

Image: Alamy

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During the meeting, Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer highlighted the features of DEWA’s new headquarters named Al-Sheraa, which is Arabic for sail. The new building will be the tallest, largest, and smartest net Zero Energy Building (ZEB) in the world. The Al-Sheraa building will have over a million square feet, over 200,000 square feet of land. It is being built in the heart of the Cultural Village in Al Jadaf.

The RTA delegation included Maitha bin Udai, CEO of the Traffic and Roads Agency, Ahmed Bahrozyan, CEO of the Licensing Agency, Adel Al Marzouqi, Director of Parking, Mendana Al Obaidly, Deputy Director and Manager of Technical Support, Office of the Director-General and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, and Roudha Al Mehrizi, Deputy Director of Marketing and Corporate Communications and Manager of National Identity and CSR.

“We work to achieve the vision of Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to make Dubai a global centre for clean energy and green economy. By building Al-Sheraa, we establish a role model in Dubai and the world to achieve a balance between development and the environment to protect the right of future generations to live in a clean, healthy and safe environment. This supports the UAE Vision 2021 to make the UAE one of the best countries in the world, and the Dubai Plan 2021, to make Dubai the preferred place to live, work, and visit,” said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer.

“The total built-up area of Al-Sheraa will be over 1.5 million square feet. The building will have over 16,500 square metres of photovoltaic solar panels to produce over 3,500 kilowatt. There will be more than 2,000 square metres of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV). Total renewable energy generated by the building will be over 5,400 megawatt hours (MW/h) annually. The building will have an Energy Utilization Intensity (EUI) of 60 kW/m2 per year. The building will be completed and inaugurated by the end of 2019,” added Al Tayer.

Mattar Al Tayer was impressed with the technical and architectural design of DEWA’s new headquarters, which will be a smart eco-friendly building that uses solar energy to meet the electricity needs of the building. He was also impressed with the main and necessary equipment that meet the highest levels and provide a suitable environment for employees and customers.

Al-Sheraa’s design was inspired by the traditional houses in the UAE, where enclosed spaces overlook an open courtyard. The courtyard will be the focal point and most prominent feature of the building. To reduce heat in the open courtyard, a sail design is used to provide shaded areas. Natural light during the day will stream through specific openings in the sail, giving sufficient light without the associated heat. The courtyard features trees and plants to give occupants an outdoor feel in an indoor setting, within a sustainable environment.

The building will use the latest technologies including Internet of Things (IoT), Big and Open Data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Robots will be used for cleaning and to provide security services. A smart app will alert the employees about the time they should leave their homes based on the traffic. The same app can be used to book parking spaces and meeting rooms. Visitors can use the app to reach the building and the meeting rooms easily.—WAM

Image: /mediaoffice.ae

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