Creating a Human-Centric Smart City

KAUST’s unique physical environment makes it the ideal living laboratory to innovate for liveability, sustainability and community

MICROSOFT

“We are proud of our partnership with KAUST. When KAUST Smart was first launched to push the boundaries of ideation and experimentation, we saw that the project aligned with our approach to innovation. Together with KAUST, we can make it possible to turn ideas into real solutions.”

Turki Badhris, Vice President for the Public Sector in Saudi Arabia at Microsoft Momentum is gathering at KAUST Smart, a program to turn the university campus into a smart city as well as a living laboratory. KAUST has provided its researchers with the tools they need to innovate digital and inclusive solutions to the modern-day problems associated with urban environments, using crowdsourcing and other cutting-edge tools to meet the needs of the university’s diverse and growing community. Formally known as Digital Experience and Innovation at KAUST, this team of futurists is colloquially known as KAUST Smart and is led by Jason Roos, the university’s chief information officer, and Mohamed Abdel-Aal, director of Digital Experience and Innovation.

The university proved to be a particularly good fit for a project such as KAUST Smart because the campus features a small population of around 7,000, and is a community in which all the goods and services needed in an urban environment are readily available. The university also features research centers that are managed by Fortune 500 companies, including Dow Chemical Company, Aramco and SABIC. Moreover, the university is a self-contained environment overseen by KAUST itself, which makes it unique when compared to typical cities where multiple institutions act as stakeholders and do not always work together or have

common interests. Taken together, the university has all the necessary factors for what Roos calls a living laboratory: a place where innovators can experiment with the full support and collaboration of the surrounding community. This makes KAUST the ideal setting to introduce smart city concepts such as machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing to address challenges. This includes leveraging driverless vehicles to transport residents quickly and efficiently, using drones to deliver packages in order to keep trucks off the road, and equipping buildings with networked systems to ensure energy efficiency. These experiments could help to establish new technologies that will be adopted in urban areas around the world.

The starting point for these experiments in modern life is to identify human needs. Roos’ team begins with researching what people want and need to live their lives, asking them directly and then considering what technologies can make that happen. The next step is experimentation, and one of the most visible examples is the fleet of electric shuttles now popular on campus. These remain prototypes that are not yet truly autonomous vehicles and, for now, have human monitors on board for safety. Testing is to continue for another two or three years, and will deliver valuable insights such as the best times to charge their batteries, their resistance to extreme weather, and how to improve AI and sensors in the vehicles.

Drones could be another valuable piece of the smart-city puzzle if the right infrastructure exists. KAUST Smart’s ability to collaborate within the institution, drawing on its on-campus scholars as needed, offers the opportunity to equip houses with rooftop hatches and interior chutes to receive drone packages, improving capacity for last-mile service. This is especially important when compared to how that might work in a typical city, where myriad stakeholders and commercial providers could complicate operations. A fully enabled drone delivery service also requires the creation of a digital replica of the city in order to control air traffic and avoid accidents.

Other solutions for everyday challenges in urban life include cashless payment services, digital wallets and AI-enhanced restaurants. In another pilot program under way at KAUST, six restaurants are participating in a service in which diners can order in advance, check restaurants’ occupancy to determine if they are busy or if friends plan to dine there, and pay online. The next and crucial step in the cycle – after needs are identified and pilot programs established – will be to receive and analyze feedback from community members. KAUST Smart’s crowdsourcing concept will encourage residents to share their experiences in the smart city, as well as express their needs and priorities. This will allow the team to circle back to where it started: identifying the needs of residents and finding the right technologies to inspire the next round of innovations.

JASON ROOS Chief Information Officer

WE AT KAUST ARE A SELF-CONTAINED COMMUNITY – A LIVING LABORATORY. THIS GIVES US THE UNIQUE ABILITY TO DEVELOP AND REDEFINE SMART CITIES AND OTHER DIGITAL EXPERIENCES.