INNOVATION & CHANGE
THE EMERGENCE OF A HUMAN-CENTRIC, DATADRIVEN COMMUNITY BY PAUL DOHERTY
Urban innovations, technologies, techniques, and workflows are challenging conventions, shifting values, and offering new ways of providing services. Smart city ecosystems are leveraging how the built environment meets the demands of human-centric design through data-driven processes.
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he Digit Group is a smart cities development group. We do design and, sometimes, construction and operations, but we’re really about discovering innovations, especially urban innovations, that help with the development and delivery of housing, transportation, technology, energy, media, and health care. We look at smart cities as a system of systems. There’s no one silver bullet for any place on the planet. We look at innovations like ingredients in a kitchen, and we are the chefs that create those special recipes. If we focus on ensuring that we hold the people responsible for the design, master planning, and construction of our cities accountable, we will create a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable future for our urban environments. Carbon Neutrality At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, there was a lot of talk about carbon neutrality. A lot of effort and money is being put into it, but much of it isn’t helping. What would help is a scientific, data-driven approach. And there are new technologies that can help with that. For example, starting in 2022, there will be a multi-year phasing out of the construction industry’s traditional PDF contract into a smart contract. When you hear smart contract, think blockchain. Not blockchain as in Bitcoin or NFTs (that’s something else); we’re talking about a relationship between owner and architect: “I contract you to
22 | Smart City Miami
do this work, and I pay you upon delivery.” Using a blockchain, we can have a conversation about Building Information Modeling (BIM) as part of the construction documents. Now you can see things in 3D, which improves communication. There’s also another piece called specifications, which is the narrative of what needs to be built. We call that the BIM process. This now can talk to the smart contract, which has immutable data. We will require that every piece of material, equipment, and fixture has a geotag. When the subcontractor puts materials and systems in place, they will communicate to the BIM that it was done according to the contract, on time, and correctly. That then talks to the ledger system that confirms they’ve met the contractual obligations and pays them wirelessly. This data that’s part of the contract becomes part of the blockchain, a trusted piece of data that everyone agrees to. This can be very powerful for taking into account not just that the construction was done properly, but that it was done non-wastefully. We can now have an ongoing performance measure because the data is immutable. Net-Zero Energy I’m a big believer in clean tech, but, for the most part, it’s not meeting our needs. For example, the best solar energy you can get efficiency-wise is 23%. We need at least another generation or two to improve the process. In the meantime, we’re looking at other forms of energy, including:
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