The Emergence of a Human-Centric Data-Driven Community

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.

The 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 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:

©JEDDAH ECONOMIC COMPANY

©HEERIM ARCHITECTS & PLANNERS/LAND ART GENERATOR

Land Art Generator

“Beyond the Wave” was a submission by Heerim Architects & Planners to the 2014 Land Art Generator Initiative design competition for Copenhagen.

Jeddah Economic Tower

This 3,281-foot tower planned for the ancient port of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has an autonomous vehicle master plan where no traditional combustion vehicles are allowed.

Paul Doherty

CEO, The Digit Group

Memphis, Tennessee

As CEO of The Digit Group, Paul Doherty is one of the global industry’s most sought-after thought leaders, strategists, and integrators of process, technology, and business. A senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, Doherty is an award-winning architect, author, educator, analyst, and advisor to Fortune 500 organizations, global government agencies, prominent institutions, and the most prestigious architectural, engineering, and contracting firms in the world. His current work is focused on smart city real estate developments that include financing, design-build, and innovative technology solutions.

Plasma Gasification Plasma Gasification was created 100 years ago by the U.S. coal industry. It is the process of taking brown coal and mixing it with municipal solid waste. It’s heated at high temperatures to break it down to the molecular level, which creates a synthetic gas that drives steam and powers the turbines. The residue left over is hydrogen and a carbon-based fertilizer for agriculture. Piezoelectric Energy Piezoelectric energy is the idea of compression technology. You put materials underneath horizontal services, and as you put pressure on those materials, it excites the molecules and reharvests that energy. I think that will be one of the keys to the future of urban environments. Land Art Generators Another interesting energy producer is the idea of using art. Certain land art sculptures can be designed to harvest the power of solar or wind energies while also being visually appealing. This mixing of technologies is like writing a symphony. I encourage designers to ratchet up the efforts because we now have the ability to take their ideas from design to reality.

Cryptocity

When we start to think of buildings as computers or servers, we can start to connect buildings together. Imagine you have a blockchain contract: You know exactly what materials are in there; your buildings are talking to each other, creating a connection with other buildings in that neighborhood, district, and entire city. What would happen if every business, building, and person created their own metaverse to connect to when they wanted. That’s what we see as the future. It’s how we start to look at practical things like safety, security, energy, water, waste, and transportation issues. We are now at the cusp of being able to do things that past generations were unable to. We like to call this the Cryptocity. We are one step away from doing this around the world.