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Industry insight
FRED CREHAN
CONFLUENT
Smart Cities require forwardfocused data management
Ambition has become the defining trait of GCC countries. In a world fraught with environmental and resource challenges, governments here have turned to the concept of smart cities as a template for society-first infrastructure. The Line, part of Saudi Arabia’s US $500 billion NEOM project, is touted by its developers as the “future of urban living” and is being built to accommodate nine million people. A mere 200m wide, it will stretch across 170km of Saudi Arabian desert and soar to half a kilometre above it. A paragon of sustainability, it will run on 100% sustainable energy sources and be free of cars and, by implication, emissions. Instead, residents will walk to facilities, each of which will be no farther than five minutes from their homes.
The Line is just one region in NEOM, and NEOM is not the Kingdom’s only smart city venture. The Red Sea Project focuses on sustainable (or regenerative) tourism. And Saudi Arabia is not the only Arab Gulf country planning smart cities.
None of these projects would be possible without recent breakthroughs in technology. Innovations in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) have given innovators confidence to think big, bigger, and biggest. Smart cities are visualised as seas of sensors, cameras, and other hardware that form a detailed, accurate, real-time view of the urban environment for governments, businesses, and citizens. At the centre lies the cloud, home to and provider of all these technologies.
ACCESSIBILITY, SCALABILITY, AND SECURITY Everything from our energy and utilities to our roads and emergency services can be improved. But to work as intended, smart cities will require careful thought on the management of data, which needs to be scalable, secure, and instantly accessible always through a variety of channels. GCC governments have already embarked on a dizzying array of digital transformation schemes to leverage emerging technologies. These projects involve a mix of refreshes of old data architectures, the integration of others, and the cleaning and transformation of data to support real-time processing for up-to-the-minute actionable intelligence.
All of this must be backed up by minimal latency and zero downtime, even (in fact, especially) during a disaster. Rivers of data flow constantly into a central lake, but lakes must be duplicated for resilience. Meanwhile, smartedge processing frameworks take care of data reduction to ensure signals can be separated from white noise, moment to moment.
This system allows authorities at the municipal and national levels to make quicker and more effective decisions. When it comes to emergency response, traffic-congestion and road-closure data allows decision-makers to plan the most effective route for first responders to safely get to an incident. The same information can be shared with citizens to help them commute more conveniently.
PLANNING FOR THE WORST Downtime exposes the smart city society to a catalogue of inconveniences and dangers, some of them physical. Outages can also be the prelude to sophisticated cyberattacks. Good data
management and robust cybersecurity go hand in hand. Any threat posture for a smart city should include comprehensive playbooks on mitigation and disaster recovery. And when looking for protection, decision-makers should look to scalable cloud services that can offer always-on protections against internal and external threats.
The growth in worldwide urbanisation has led to an increase in the demand for public services and utilities, and hence a surge in data volumes. Good data management must account for daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal peaks in user activity. Again, such capacity issues are best addressed through the elasticity of cloud services, which also tend to be cost-effective, and easy to deploy and use.
The cloud is likely to form the foundation of every smart city ever built. Underlying technologies are managed by a trusted partner, which allows innovators to focus on adding value for the communities they serve rather than having to devote resources to maintenance or resourcing. More experiences, services, and platforms will be added as new technologies emerge.
INNOVATION, NOT UPKEEP More integration and data-sharing is likely to occur as confidence grows in smart cities, and as governments’ digital transformation programs reach maturity. The ability to handle multiple database formats, across the cloud and traditional sources will be critical, as will the ability to opt for hybrid and multi-cloud environments to solve problems. Data streaming models facilitate these flexibilities because they draw from multiple sources and integrate information into actionable dashboards, rather than serving up segmented snapshots.
We can imagine the results springing up across the region. Shimmering, safe, efficient, clean-energy environments stretching out to the horizon. Ever-watchful administrators keeping everything in check through the power of streaming data, and ready to react swiftly and precisely to any internal or external disruption. At the heart of this new urban paradise? The cloud – a scalable home for all the data and technologies that allow governments to automate these great societies and keep enhancing them to make life better for all citizens.
MICHAEL KIY
SIEMENS SMART INFRASTRUCTURE
More Sustainable and Digital
The construction and real estate industry is on the verge of substantial changes. But what will the future of construction and building operations look like? Siemens Smart Infrastructure has identified seven trends that show where the journey is headed:
1. DIGITAL BUILDING DESIGN Digital design using BIM gives building owners much more control over their project. Thanks to BIM, they can do a virtual walk-through of their building during the design stage. This is made possible by a detailed virtual model of the building, a “digital twin,” based on the BIM data.
The virtual model allows building owners to assess implementation variants in 3D and provide feedback. They can also take financial factors into account because the costs of each design measure are stored in the digital twin. As a result, it is easy to see how a particular change will affect the price.
Based on feedback from the owner and other stakeholders, the designers adjust the project, which can then be reviewed again. These iteration cycles are short and costefficient because algorithms take a lot of the work out of the hands of the designers. The digital twin allows for transparent design across disciplines. This helps avoid errors, optimally coordinate disciplines, and always provide up-to-date cost information.
2. COLLABORATION IN THE DIGITAL TWIN For digital design to deliver on its benefits, the stakeholders involved in construction must share their data. Only then can transparency be established across the entire design and construction process.
In modern software development these processes are modelled on platforms such as Github or Gitlab which allow multiple programmers to collaborate on a project. The software manages all inputs, and all changes are visible to everyone.
However, the construction industry is not there yet. Many stakeholders still work with disconnected two-dimensional plans or move the BIM data to other systems, leading to major adjustment losses. The desired transparency over the entire design process is currently still a pipe dream.
3. DIGITAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT When the digital building twin is in place, the next question is in which steps the physical building will be constructed. Today, the project planners determine the sequence. It is based on experience, is usually imprecise, and is difficult to adjust if delays occur in a sub step.
Digitalisation promises dramatic improvements for project management. In the future, computer-aided project management is likely to become even more refined. This, in turn, could change the way contracts are awarded for construction projects.
4. BUILDING WHILE CONSERVING RESOURCES The construction of buildings is resourceintensive and anything but climate-friendly: Each year, approximately 4.4 billion tons of cement are produced, releasing roughly as much CO2 as 700 coal-fired power stations.
New technologies can also make construction more resource efficient. For example, 3D printing promises not only more efficient processes, but also a massive reduction in the environmental footprint, because additive manufacturing can be used to print new shapes that use less construction material without compromising stability.
5. ROBOTS ON THE CONSTRUCTION SITE Another trend that can already be seen today is the use of robots: Drilling robots from Schindler or Hilti, for example, are already in use, independently drilling holes in concrete according to data specifications. In addition, robots are already being used to manufacture complex structures from alternative building materials.
Increased cost pressure will lead to more industrial construction. Using new digital manufacturing methods, components will be produced individually and on demand. Since more elements will be integrated into prefabricated products – electrical components, for example – the construction site of the future will increasingly focus on assembling prefabricated elements.
6. DATA-BASED BUILDING OPERATION Heating, cooling, and domestic hot water require the most energy during the building’s operational phase. A smart building of the future will have sensors and intelligent controls to make the operation of building equipment as efficient as possible. It will also take the behaviour and needs of the building occupants into account.
The data collected in the smart building can be analysed by algorithms to optimise building management: When deviations occur, facility management is informed so that they can decide what to do. The data will be available in a standardised form, and there will be applications that process the data and offer added value, such as energy savings. These applications can be available in a virtual marketplace, and customers will be able to select those that best serve their purposes.
7. ELECTRIC VEHICLES AS POWER STORAGE In smart buildings, energy storage will have a larger role than it does today. Electric vehicles will play an important part: During the day, when they are parked at work, they receive for instance solar power and are charged. The stored power can then be used at home in the evening. Smart systems ensure that the battery still has enough of a charge to drive back to work the next day. If the calendar shows a meeting further away, the discharge of power from the vehicle’s batteries will be stopped earlier so that the destination can be reached easily.
