A Smart City and the Smart Buildings it contains are not a marketing campaign, a clever sales pitch or a funny political slogan. It is a series of solutions to a serious and urgent situation facing the world today. Smart Cities are emerging as a civic action due to a “perfect storm” of the convergence of market conditions, technological innovation, societal desires, governmental needs, and migration to urban environments that has accelerated on a global scale and it dwarfs any previous mass movement of people in history.
A striking example is found in a 2009 McKinsey & Co. report that indicated that 350 million people in China would be moving to cities across China by 2025. In the three years since that report was published, the number of Chinese who migrate to cities within China is proving this prediction correct. Existing Chinese cities, already overcrowded and struggling to maintain public services, are preparing for this onslaught of humanity by preparing, planning and implementing large-scale urban projects designed to transform industrial urban environments into Smart Cities with buildings. smart. Not because they want to, because they have to.
A smart city has many emerging definitions. The flexibility of this definition gives cities the opportunity to define their programs, policies and procedures according to their own local set of priorities and needs. Smart City definition frameworks are being designed and marketed by academics, businesses, urban associations and the media, as well as using technologies such as smart buildings. Through this cacophony of frameworks, a foundation has emerged that helps define Smart City areas of focus, action, and measures. Most frameworks use the word SMART as an acronym to mean specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goals. These same frameworks provide the definition of 10 Smart City elements:
• Energy
• Water
• Waste
• Infrastructure
• Public security
• Education
• Health care
• Green Buildings
• Transport
• Services to the citizen
What is interesting about Smart City initiatives is the tightly integrated way in which seemingly disparate elements work together. As cities begin their Smart City transformation process, it is useful to consider how cities will need to address social, economic, engineering, and environmental challenges. And this way will focus on Knowledge.
As we identify the challenges of living in a highly connected world of the information age, it helps us to engage with our cities as organisms. If the city is a body, then we have seen its evolution from the Agrarian Society to the Information Age through the development of systems. Each city has its own cardiovascular system (traffic, mass transit), skeletal system (infrastructure), respiratory and digestive system (energy, waste) and even a primitive nervous system (telecommunications). For a city to provide access to its intelligence behind knowledge and become a Smart City, the development of the Intelligence System that connects the central nervous system to a brain is required: entering smart buildings.
Due to the implementation of vast information technology (IT) solutions in recent decades by cities, the world has created a cornucopia of data. This data comes in all shapes and sizes and makes it possible to carry out a huge number of tasks more effectively and efficiently. The issue is not whether the city has the adequate data to become a Smart City, the issue is how. Media and marketing people call this emancipation of the data being released from their “Big Data” silos. This means that an enormous amount of data has the ability to enter the body of your city and circulate freely. The job of the IT department in cities today is not only to ensure that people do not enter a city’s system, but how to control and manage the excess data that will try to leave. A major problem for a city’s IT department is how to manage “Big Data” now that it can be unleashed so easily. The cities that solve this problem will be on the right track to be a Smart City. Those who don’t can experience what other organisms experience when there is too much blockage in their nervous system, a breakdown.
The focus on Big Data and the behavior of your city towards the management of its data is a critical element to be a true smart city. A smarter and more efficient city that encompasses aspects of smart transportation, security, energy management, CO2 emissions, and sustainability depends on the implementation of a Big Data strategic plan to enable decision makers and authorities to do their job. In response, some cities have adopted an open data approach to help make their data available to the general public, leading to an emerging market for the development and sale of “apps” to allow this open data to pay life and provide value to use.
There is a proactive approach to identifying and managing your city’s digital DNA. The building blocks for effectively and efficiently using city data will ultimately reside in a city’s ability to reuse its existing data and documents associated with the built environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities. Data from the built environment is already captured by the city in various formats and processes; Building Departments, Engineering Departments, Land Departments, Planning Departments, Tax Departments, Postal Services all collect and manage vast amounts of data which, when viewed as a whole, creates the virtual representation of your physical city. The accuracy, authentication, and integration of this city’s data is the key to a proactive approach to getting on the path to becoming a smart city. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, connectivity from your city’s nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting your city’s performance and evolution towards a smart city.
One path to enabling your city’s digital DNA comes from the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and the data captured by Smart Buildings. BIM and Smart Buildings provide the digital DNA that, when put in the context of a neighborhood, district, and city, provides authenticated data relevant to the city. Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms that look beyond the individual building project and begin to position themselves to capture value (and alternative revenue) at the data transaction level in a smart city environment will capture greater market share and open up new growth opportunities. than your competition. This revaluation of digital DNA eclipses any previous notion of the value placed on data from the built environment.
Think of your city as a network, with each building acting as a server. Every building has data, such as BIM for design and construction and Smart Building data in the form of facility management and building automation). When this data from individual buildings is connected to the city network, potentially through an open data policy, interesting things start to happen. The captured AEC data that a city already owns becomes the digital DNA of Smart Cities.
Cities are a mirror of the values of our civilization. At its core, Smart City solutions, both large and small, have the opportunity to help create an environment for people to thrive in a welcoming, inclusive and open way. The success of a Smart City will only be measured by the improvement in the quality of life of its inhabitants. It is the greatest challenge of our generation and the best legacy we can leave our children.