Smart City Miami® Magazine - SUSTAINABLE is the NEW SMART

SMART CITY MIAMI

SPECIAL EDITION

SUSTAINABLE IS THE NEW SMART

INNOVATION & CHANGE

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

CLIMATE ACTION

Welcome,

I am thrilled to present to you this special edition of Smart City Miami Magazine, produced and published by Smart Cities Americas LLC.

SUSTAINABLE is the NEW SMART was the theme of Smart City Expo Miami 2022, and the relevance of the subjects presented motivated us to launch this special edition. The event, in its third annual edition, reached global audience.

The trade show attendees had the opportunity to be in a front-row seat to groundbreaking innovation. Sessions on Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, Resilient Infrastructure, and Quality of Life presented valuable insights about how to live in a sustainable city.

Our award-winning speakers, experts in their fields, presented concrete cases that greatly enriched our knowledge about the infrastructure of cities and what actions are needed to improve the quality of life of citizens and communities.

By working with the speakers for a year, choosing topics, structuring the content, and organizing the presentation, it created a friendship that brought us closer together, creating a community of people interested in the development of our cities with quality of life.

The participation of professionals from different countries, cultures, and languages resulted in a roster of 52 award-winning and globally recognized speakers, the best thinkers in urbanism and technology, to raise awareness of the importance of Urban Planning, Climate Action, and Green Economy.

Bernardo Scheinkman Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas Miami, Florida

The result was the creation, assembly, and presentation of the leading event on sustainable cities in the United States of America.

In essence, the immersive experience and impactful talks and connections empowered participants, catapulting the movement with practical, optimistic approaches to fostering climate action.

Among participants, you had representatives from cities, countries, local, national and international technical bodies, non-governmental organizations, corporations, startups, and entrepreneurs.

We have to thank the speakers, the participants, and the organizations that supported us, and, especially, the support and participation of Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

It is also necessary to acknowledge the professionalism and dedication of the Smart Cities Americas team, which contributed greatly to the success of the event and to the publication of this magazine.

Bernardo Scheinkman Architect & Urban Planner Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas LLC Founder, CEO & Curator, Smart City Expo Miami

Architect and urbanist Bernardo Scheinkman is building South Florida’s smart city ecosystem and leading it through Smart Cities Americas, the platform for smart cities intelligence, trade shows, and conferences. He interacts with local, national, and international stakeholders to offer a wide range of news, research, and events through his organization that promote sustainable solutions for complex urban environments.

CITY

Scheinkman Publisher & Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas

Sherri Balefsky Hanson Editor & Creative Director Riley Kaminer Writer

Jonathan Reichental Founder & CEO, Human Future

Paul Doherty CEO, The Digit Group

Bas Boorsma Partner, Venturerock Urban (Global)

Leticia Latino CEO, Neptuno USA Raimundo Rodulfo CIO, City of Coral Gables

SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI ADVISORY BOARD

The Smart City Expo Miami Advisory Board held its annual meeting on December 12, 2022, in Downtown Miami. On that occasion, the impact of the international conference that reached global reach was evaluated. The event established itself as the leader in the United States in the theme of sustainable cities. This was made possible by the support of all award-winning speakers who presented the state of the art in their presentations. The pioneering initiative of launching Smart City Miami Magazine was highlighted.

On occasion, the Advisory Board decided to award Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with the Smart Disruptor certificate for her administration’s work promoting climate action, sustainable growth and resilient infrastructure. The Advisory Board supports the Executive Committee of Smart City Expo Miami.

SMART CITY ADVISORY BOARD

Bernardo Scheinkman

Board Chair, Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas; Founder, CEO & Curator, Smart City Expo Miami

Jonathan Reichental CEO, Human Future

Paul Doherty CEO, The Digit Group

Bas Boorsma

Partner, Venturerock Urban (Global)

Raimundo Rodulfo CIO, City of Coral Gables

Leticia Latino CEO, Neptuno USA

Karen Vega Fiware Foundation

Advisory Board Annual Meeting

Karen Vega, Raimundo Rodulfo, Paul Doherty, Bas Boorsma, Bernardo Scheinkman, Jonathan Reichental, and Leticia Latino

Advisory Board Annual Meeting

Leticia Latino, Bernardo Scheinkman, Jonathan Reichental, Paul Doherty, Bas Boorsma, Raimundo Rodulfo, and Karen Vega

SMART CITIES AMERICAS BUILDING SOUTH FLORIDA’S SMART CITY ECOSYSTEM

than 20,000 new jobs in our region.

Smart Cities Americas is building South Florida’s smart city ecosystem. Led by architect and urbanist Bernardo Scheinkman, it is the leading platform for smart cities intelligence, trade shows, and conferences. The organization interacts with local, national, and international stakeholders to offer a wide range of news, research, and events that promote sustainable solutions for complex urban environments.

According to Scheinkman, “A city is smart if its citizens are smart.” Technology might immediately come to mind when people think of smart cities. However, technology is just a tool that enables modern urban areas. Smart Cities Americas believes in focusing on what citizens want and need from their government, and using new technologies to make the government work for them.

It is clear that businesses stand to gain from the smart city revolution. Global market research consulting firm Frost & Sullivan expects the market value of smart city opportunities to surpass $2.4 trillion

by 2025. Technology spending comprises approximately 15% ($327 billion) of this overall valuation. The remaining 85% is distributed across activities including education, smart infrastructure, smart health care, smart energy, smart transportation, and smart building.

Smart Cities Americas is fostering a community around urban innovation. The organization unites smart cities stakeholders under one roof, from architects and urban planners to business leaders and cuttingedge technologists.

Miami continues to be validated as a top destination for developing new ideas and catalyzing innovation. Leading startups and venture capital firms are increasingly growing roots in the Magic City. Miami is home to innovative environmentally conscious companies working in sectors as diverse as mobility, marine tech, and built infrastructure.

Equally, local government officials are tackling climate change head on. The City of Miami has committed to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, having set out

an action plan for building a green economy. Miami-Dade County even has the world’s first Chief Heat Officer. And with its ongoing Sea Level Rise Strategy, Miami-Dade County is identifying and developing financially feasible mitigation and adaptation strategies to prepare for sea level rise and coastal storms.

Smart Cities Americas’ flagship event is Smart City Expo Miami, which brings together some of the world’s leading urban innovators under one roof. The 2022 brought award-winning and globally recognized experts to raise awareness on the importance of urban planning, climate action, and green economy.

Simultaneously, Smart Cities Americas is developing Miami’s smart cities ecosystem through a handful of other initiatives. Its forthcoming news channel, SmartCityMiami. com, will highlight trends related to urban innovation and citizens’ engagement in the process of building sustainable and resilient urban environments. Its streaming hub, CitiesHub.tv, will provide video content about the Smart City Expo Miami and related media.

Its Hack-a-Town program and CIURBE-Urban Innovation Lab will enable civic minded technologists to maximize their impact.

With these and more initiatives already underway, Smart Cities Americas is attracting leading smart cities companies to Miami that will generate $40 billion revenue for South Florida businesses, while creating more than 20,000 new jobs in our region. And the best is yet to come.

Discover more about Smart Cities Americas’ quest to put Miami on the map for smart city innovation by visiting SmartCitiesAmericas.com.

SMART CITIES AMERICAS

The Leading Platform for Smart Cities Intelligence, Trade Shows & Conferences

SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI

International Conference & Expo

SMART CITY MIAMI

The News Channel

CITIESHUB.TV

The Streaming Portal

CIURBE.ORG

The Innovation Lab

C-MOVEMENT

Engage and Empower

Citizens, Communities & Cities

“A CITY IS SMART IF ITS CITIZENS ARE SMART.”

— BERNARDO SCHEINKMAN, FOUNDER & CEO, SMART CITIES AMERICAS

SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI SUSTAINABLE IS THE NEW SMART

December 12-14, 2022

Disruptive, diversified, and dynamic, the international conference is the largest global event of its kind in Miami, with a global reach.

Smart City Expo Miami is an international conference produced by Smart Cities Americas LLC, a Florida corporation. It is the largest global event of the year, hosted from Miami for the third year in a row, featuring awardwinning and globally recognized experts.

The event brought Miami to the forefront of innovation in sustainable urban solutions with representatives from cities; countries; local, national, and international technical bodies; nongovernmental organizations; corporations; startups; and entrepreneurs.

The third Smart City Expo Miami international conference and exhibition opened for discussion on business, innovation, and entrepreneurship in a 3D Live Experience: Disruptive, Diversified, and Dynamic. Guests and participants were encouraged to

partake in keynote lectures, panels, and diversified talks to engage and empower citizens, communities, and cities around the world.

In the sessions, we learned from the best practices implemented in other cities and industries as foundational building blocks to apply in our own backyard in order to prolong positive and profitable development for as long as possible. It all started with the meeting of the minds at Smart City Expo Miami.

The event covered innovation areas, specifically Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, Resilient Infrastructure, Smart Destinations, Inclusive & Sharing Cities, and Quality of Life, along with insight on smart cities that comprised of cities experiences, hubs such as Media Hub and a CIO Music Hall.

By interacting with the local community and raising awareness of the importance of urban planning, this event stimulated

business trade and international missions, encouraged the use of circular economy, and marketed Miami as an innovation platform.

All participants joined the C-Movement—citizen, community, city— aimed to engage and empower citizens and communities to participate in the planning and implementation of actions to meet the core functions of their cities: livability, workability, and sustainability.

The event provided a powerful opportunity to ignite essential conversations and inspire life-changing ideas that can have a lasting effect in our communities and beyond for generations. It is a time to come together and collaborate on building stronger, more conscious developmental practices making the transition to green economy, and there is no greater place to begin than in the international metropolis that is the Magic City.

“THE THEME OF THIS YEAR’S SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI— SUSTAINABLE GROWTH, CLIMATE ACTION, AND RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE— TIES IN WITH OUR NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY, WHICH WE CALL FUTURE READY.”

— DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA, MAYOR, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY

THE POWER OF SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI

Award-winning and globally recognized experts.

Stimulate public and private partnerships in infrastructure.

Promote educational activities.

The place to connect the whole smart city ecosystem.

The best thinkers in urbanism and technology.

Encourage the use of circular economy.

Engage with local communities in powerful ways.

Position Miami as a launchpad for innovation.

Raise awareness on the importance of urban planning, climate action, and green economy.

INNOVATION & CHANGE

14 Miami-Dade County: Future Ready

Daniella Levine Cava, Mayor, Miami-Dade County

16 Rebuilding Kyiv

Vitali Klitschko, Mayor, City of Kyiv

18 Bouncing Back Faster & Stronger

Jonathan Reichental, CEO, Human Future

20 Building a Green Digital Deal for Our Cities

Bas Boorsma, Partner, Venturerock Urban (Global)

22 The Road Ahead: Smart Cities & Their Effect on Our Future

Paul Doherty, CEO, The Digit Group

24 Fiware Panel: Making Cities Resilient & Sustainable with Open-Source Solutions

Mike Barlow, Journalist & Author

Praveen Ashok, Senior Technical Program Manager, US Ignite

Salim Bendres, EVP Global Sales, Nivid Technologies

Tony Fortenberry, Director of Business Development, Red Hat

Jim Pagan, CEO, BluSky Consulting

Michael Pegues, CIO, City of Aurora, IL

John Wood, Business Development Manager, Libelium

26 Ethical AI: The Smart City Digital Citizen

Matthew James Bailey, Founder & CEO, AIEthics.World

28 Smart Cities Need AI & Must Consider the Risks of AI Bias

Mike Barlow, Journalist & Author

30 From Digital Twins to Metacities

Jose Antonio Ondiviela, Industry Advisor Smart Cities, Microsoft Western Europe

SUSTAINABLE GROWTH

32 Urban & Environmental Analytics in a Digital Twin Environment

Raimundo Rodulfo, CIO, City of Coral Gables

34 How to Design a Smart City

Samuele Sordi, Chief Architect Officer, Pininfarina of America

36 Design for the Cities of the Future

Paolo Trevisan, Vice President of Design, Pininfarina of America

38 Designing Sustainable Smart Cities

Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes, Founder & CEO, Institute for Science, Entrepreneurship & Investments

40 Developing a Smart City-Ready Workforce

Leticia Latino, CEO, Neptuno USA

42 Saving the City

Ron Blatman, Executive Producer, Saving the City

Cheongna Studio City Read more on page 22.

Miami Beach Bus Shelter Read more on page 36.

© PININFARINA

RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

44 Inclusive Communities Make Smarter Cities

E.G. Nadhan, Global Chief Architect Leader, Red Hat

Michael Pegues, CIO, City of Aurora, IL

46 Global Sponge Cities Snapshot: The Power of Nature

Vincent Lee, Water Engineer, Arup

48 From Startup Nation to Impact Nation

Tobias Mendelovici, Director, Ocean Business

50 Smart Analytics for Resilient Communities

Sarbeswar Praharaj, Ph.D., Associate Director, Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University

52 Power Resilience, Grid Stability & Utility Viability

Pamela Hamblin, CEO, Nuenergy Solutions

54 New 21st- Century Smart City Infrastructure

Darrin Mylet, CEO, Telosa Networks

56 Impact of  Infrastructure Networks

Aloisio Pereira da Silva, Founder & CEO, Infracities

58 The Great Challenge: Integrating Between the Physical & Virtual

Pico Velasquez, Founder & CEO, VIIRA

Matteo Jean Pietrobelli,CTO & Chief Engineer, Oceanix

CLIMATE ACTION

60 It’s Now or Now

Edward Mazria, Founder & CEO, Architecture 2030

62 Co-Creating a Regenerative Blue Economy for All

Daniel Kleinman, Founder & CEO, Seaworthy Collective

64 Rising Sea Levels Are Threatening Our Cities

Anya Freeman, Founder & CEO, Kind Designs

66 Building a Water-Optimized Miami

Clovis Sarmento-Leite, Enterprise Account Management, DuPont Water Solutions

68 SDG 11: Cities & Startups Rising to the Challenge

Michael Lake, President & CEO, Leading Cities

70 Rethinking Climate Adaptation

Galen Treuer, Climate Tech & Economic Division, Miami-Dade County

Alex Harris, Lead Climate Change Reporter, Miami Herald

QUALITY OF LIFE

72 Visual Utopias

Jan Kamensky, Artist, Visual Utopias

74 Cities of Heat

Bonnie Schneider, Meteorologist & Author

76 Sleep & the City: Circadian Health vs. the 24/7 City

Angela Mazzi, Principal, GBBN Architects

Megan Mazzocco, Sustainability Director, Spring Architecture

78 The Nature Pill: Effective Climate Adaptation

Suzanne Jewell, Chief Experience Officer, Patch of Heaven Sanctuary

80 How Technology Can Support Aging in Place

Alfred Poor, Editor, Health Tech Insider

TRANSPORTATION & MOBILITY

82 One’s Commute Mode Is More Than Mere Transportation

Jeremy Mullings, Director, South Florida Commuter Services

84 Real Magic: What Happens When Coca-Cola Moves to E-Cargo Bikes

Eyal Santo, Founder & CEO, Umo – Urban Mobility Cargo Bikes

INCLUSIVE & SHARING

86 Building Accessible Infrastructure in the Face of Climate Change

Jeremy Goldberg, Worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure, Microsoft Ciawanda McDonald, CEO, Disability Solutions for Independent Living

Marcie Roth, CEO, World Institute on Disability

88 Inclusive Community Engagement for Environmental & Infrastructure Projects

Eyal Feder-Levy, CEO, Zencity

90 Pioneering Methodology Will Help Cities Go Circular

Claudia Alessio, Research Analyst, Circle Economy

92 Hackathon Albert Einstein for Innovation in Education for National Resilience

Edna Pasher, Founder & Chair, Israel Smart Cities Institute

94 How to Rebuild Trust Through Question Storming

Sandra Baer, CEO, Personal Cities

96 Sharing Intellectual Property in Building Smart Cities

Lavinia Meliti

98 CIO Music Hall

100 Media Hub

102 Lauchpad

104 Partners

106 Testimonials

Madrid, Spain Reimagined

Hello,

I am very excited to welcome you to the secondannual edition of Smart City Miami Magazine, which features articles from the 52 speakers who presented at the Smart City Miami Expo 2022. These smart city “disruptors” joined the conference both virtually and in person to share their expertise in subjects related to smart cities, climate action, sustainable growth, resilient infrastructure, transportation and mobility, quality of life, inclusive and sharing practices, and bringing communities together at the city level. Although the presenters came from all parts of the world and had all different backgrounds—government leaders, public sector employees, startup founders, corporate executives, nonprofit heads, and academics—they were united under one overarching theme: Sustainable Is the New Smart.

Putting together this magazine for the second year made me increasingly aware that what makes a city smart goes beyond just having the latest and greatest technology. It’s about utilizing this technology in ways that will benefit and improve the lives of people who live in these cities. It’s not about understanding the ins and outs of the metaverse or artificial intelligence; it’s about being open to the possibilities these technologies bring

us and using common-sense methods to apply them to real-world solutions.

I was also reminded that, with the effects of climate change becoming more of a reality, we can’t wait for the government to take care of things. We all need to work together—small business owners, large corporations, urban planners, engineers, scientists, and everyday citizens—to be active participants in our cities if we want them to survive and thrive. This means getting involved with local organizations, volunteering, educating ourselves about important issues, advocating for equality, and thinking outside the box to imagine what could be possible.

I hope this magazine lets you see your city—and cities around the world— through a new lens and inspires you to take action wherever possible to ensure these cities are habitable for years, decades, and centuries to come!

Sherri Balefsky Hanson Editor & Creative Director Smart City Miami Magazine

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY: FUTURE READY

BY DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA

The theme of the 2022 Smart City Miami Expo, “Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, and Resilient Infrastructure,” ties in with Miami-Dade County’s new economic development strategy, which it calls “Future Ready.”

Miami-Dade County is the most diverse and dynamic place on the planet! The theme of this year’s Smart City Expo Miami— Sustainable Growth, Climate Action, and Resilient Infrastructure—ties in with our new economic development strategy, which we call Future Ready. The idea is that we want to create an economy that is innovative, inclusive, equitable, resilient, and collaborative, and we are addressing these issues in our community head-on. Miami has the greatest promise but also some of the greatest challenges. We’re a learning laboratory for everyone.

We are collaborating with our wonderful academic institutions and have some great learning opportunities for our young people and for reskilling, upskilling, and getting ready for the economy of the future. Our focus is on the very challenges we have here: climate tech, health tech, FinTech, and more.

Miami-Dade County is one of the most recovered economies in the nation. We are on a meteoric rise, on an exponential growth pattern. With all that, we passed the lowest tax rate in the past 10 years and our county’s history. We also invested $500 million in the biggest challenge we face in the short term, which is the lack of affordable housing.

In October, I was in Buenos Aires for the C40 summit. Those are 40 cities that are most involved in sustainability and resiliency. In November, I joined mayors at the Resilience Cities Network to talk about innovations worldwide.

Miami-Dade County is working on the next breakthrough thing, like zero waste. We have limited space and landfills. We don’t want to

just burn things. We don’t want to just move them out of our community by truck. We need to reduce, reuse, and recycle. We want to be much more thoughtful about our waste.

We also are working on heat. Two Aprils ago, we created the world’s first Chief Heat Officer. People kind of laughed at us. Why heat? It’s a silent killer, and we need to address it. We have our Extreme Heat Mitigation Plan and will be moving forward with our Compact Energy Efficiency Action Plan. We’re also collaborating across Southeast Florida for the Regional Climate Change Compact and moving forward with new greener solutions, cooler roofs and streets, and helping people survive in this heat. For example, we just retrofitted all county-funded public housing with air-conditioning units, which is not a federal requirement or funded by the federal government. We saw the opportunity to purchase 1,700 air conditioning units that are being installed.

We have Resilient 305, a Sea Level Rise Strategy, and a Climate Change Strategy. We will increasingly improve our transit, reduce our energy use, and help homeowners retrofit their homes. We are waiting with bated breath to hear whether we’ve been awarded a federal grant to turn our port into a net-zero port more quickly. We have a mega grant application pending, and we are moving to shore power in the coming year so that our major cruise vessels will be plugging in instead of belching fumes.

Those are some of our initiatives. All of this requires smart city innovators to make our communities more sustainable in the future. Thank you to everyone who is helping bring these policies to the forefront.

Daniella Levine Cava was elected Miami-Dade County’s first woman mayor in November 2020. She entered the office following a 40year career as a relentless advocate for South Florida families in public service and elected leadership. She oversees a metropolitan government with nearly 30,000 employees serving 3 million residents and managing an annual budget of $10 billion. Her administration is focused on building a stronger, more inclusive, more resilient MiamiDade by prioritizing reforms to make the county safer, reinvigorating an economy that delivers security for businesses and families and attracts new industries, protecting the environment, and engaging with residents to make local government more responsive, transparent, and accountable.

Daniella Levine Cava Mayor, Miami-Dade County Miami, Florida

“WE WANT TO CREATE AN ECONOMY THAT IS INNOVATIVE, INCLUSIVE, EQUITABLE, RESILIENT, AND COLLABORATIVE, AND WE ARE ADDRESSING THESE ISSUES IN OUR COMMUNITY HEAD-ON.”

SMART CITY EXPO MIAMI RECOGNIZES MAYOR DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA AS A SMART DISRUPTOR

At the Smart City Expo Miami 2022, the Smart City Expo Miami Advisory Board presented MiamiDade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava with the Smart Disruptor award in recognition of her administration’s work in promoting climate action, sustainable growth, and resilient infrastructure.

PICTURED HERE: Daniella Levine Cava with Smart City Advisory Board—Karen Vega, Paul Doherty, Leticia Latino, Bernardo Scheinkman, Jonathan Reichental, and Bas Boorsma.

REBUILDING KYIV

BY VITALI KLITSCHKO

Thank you to everyone around the world that is helping Ukraine, our hometown, in this very unusual war condition. It’s important to feel our friends’ support and realize we are not alone. It’s a challenge for the whole democratic world because we are fighting right now to defend the same values. We are fighting for democracy and for the future of our homeland.

A few months ago, Kyiv received the World Smart City Award 2022 in Barcelona. It’s a big honor because we spent a lot of time developing our smart city system over the last eight years. Not just our citizens but world experts were surprised by how good we are in this direction and how much we achieved.

A few years ago, we decided the services for our citizens had to be at a great world level, so we investigated many programs, researching results from other cities and capitals. We built a team of young people

who made huge progress in technology, communication, transport, and infrastructure. Through our Kyiv Digital app, we gave more services to citizens. We provided more technologies to make it easier to run our city, make our activities more transparent, and let every citizen understand what’s going on, our budget, and where we are spending our money. The open democracy petitions have had great feedback.

Our experience with COVID allowed us to adapt our system to new conditions. But the next challenge, what has occurred in the last year, was never expected. But we must take this challenge and again adapt our communications system. Kyiv Digital helps every one of our citizens; more than a half-million people use it almost every day. It’s how we defend our friends and citizens, how we get services and information to them, like where they receive medical care, buy food, and find medication and shelters. It’s very

important to give them true and objective information, especially when it comes to rockets, chemical acid, and drone attacks.

Every day, we have warnings regarding rocket attacks. We’ve heard the warning more than 600 times. If we put all that time together, our citizens have spent almost one month in bunkers or shelters. When people hear the warning, they immediately go to a safe place. In Kyiv, we don’t have a front line,

“WE ARE FIGHTING TO DEFEND NOT JUST OUR HOMELAND...WE ARE FIGHTING FOR FREEDOM, PEACE, AND DEMOCRACY.”

Kyiv Digital App is transforming into a life-saving war information tool uniting the main city services and adapting them to martial law conditions, reporting the destruction of infrastructure facilities, evacuation runs, air-quality monitoring, and much more.

yet in this period, more than 350 apartment buildings were destroyed, and more than 150 of our citizens were killed. Out of those 150 citizens, four were children.

What is the reason for these attacks?

The Russians are trying to destroy our infrastructure. The winter is always a challenge for us because it’s sometimes minus 10, 20, or 30 degrees Celsius. Warming, electricity, and water are very important, and the Russians are trying to destroy them. They are trying to freeze our citizens. They say it’s a “special operation” against military forces. It’s not; it’s genocide. It’s terrorism. They are trying to bring depression to every citizen. But instead of depression, everyone is very angry. And everyone will stay and defend our future, our independence, and our integrity.

There have been a lot of changes, but one thing is unchangeable: Giving up is not an option. We are fighting for our future. We are defending our families and our country. And

we are defending the future for our children because we see our future as a modern democratic country. We are fighting for that every day.

But we are fighting to defend not just our homeland; we are defending every one of you. We are fighting for freedom, peace, and democracy in Europe and the world. And that’s why our support is very important. We continue our fight for our independence and democratic values. We want to live in a country where human rights are the main priority. We are still fighting for that and thank you for your support.

I want to make one last message about digitalization in our hometown after the war. Everyone will be able to enjoy Kyiv, well-lived, peaceful people with great infrastructure. I promise everyone who visits Kyiv will be impressed and love the city and want to come. We continue to fight for peace coming back to the world.

Vitali Klitschko is a Ukrainian politician and former professional boxer who serves as mayor of Kyiv and head of the Kyiv City State Administration, having held both offices since June 2014. He is a former leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Vitali Klitschko Mayor, City of Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine

Kyiv, Ukraine

BOUNCING BACK FASTER & STRONGER

BY JONATHAN REICHENTAL

How can communities elevate their preparedness and not only bounce back faster but return to a state that can be better than before? Being well-prepared and then favorably responding when the challenge comes is a function of great leadership and a high level of planning.

In 2005, I was living in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Hurricane Katrina was heading north, just west of Florida along the coast toward the Panhandle. It was massive, and it crashed into New Orleans in a big way. Everyone thought we had lost the city. It was the flooding that created the most destruction. It was a great tragedy. After the storm passed, many people were standing on their roofs, waiting for helicopters and boats to rescue them.

A day passed, another day, a third, and a fourth. Still nothing.

Being not so far away, I was frustrated watching the disaster unfold on TV and seeing the poor response. I thought, I’ll get in my car, get some water and other supplies, and drive up to help. Although I had good intentions, individuals like myself running into chaos can actually make things worse.

The government eventually came and, with the help of other non-governmental organizations, was able to deliver results. It took a long time because we weren’t ready. We weren’t ready for what would come and how we would react. Eventually, we did. New Orleans came back, and it blossomed.

A few years later, a housing loan crisis caused the Great Recession. We saw it coming, but we didn’t want to believe it. We weren’t ready for the foreclosures or the massive deterioration in not only the U.S. economy but the impact across the world. It took a while for us to recover.

We predicted a pandemic. It wasn’t a surprise, but it was a surprise.

These examples, just a few of the many I could have used, demonstrate that our

preparedness and ability to bounce back in a number of critical areas are lacking, and a continued absence of action will only mean bigger consequences in the future.

Failing to Plan Is Planning to Fail

In responding to the attacks of 9/11, the major conclusion of the tragedy’s report was that we lacked imagination. We lacked the ability to anticipate what might happen.

As we look to the future, are we prepared for all types of eventualities, particularly those that impact our urban areas, those being the most prevalent context?

This is the century of cities. About 3% of the land on the planet is urban. By the end of the century, it’ll grow to 6%. Cities have served us well. I’m the biggest advocate. I’m passionate about cities. Our cities are where, for example, more people have good jobs, more people get access to in-person education and greater availability of health care options. It’s a good story for the last 100 years, but we have lots more work to do, no doubt. We’re doing quite a lot of work to make our cities better. That’s the whole notion of smart cities.

Smart cities must be, by definition, resilient cities with the ability to respond and bounce back to any number of challenges. You don’t do all the work after the event. You do much of the work before the event.

I’ve been doing innovation for most of my 30-year career, and one of the reasons I discovered it’s so hard is: You must build and prepare for a world that doesn’t yet exist.

As urban innovators, we’re doing many things that are making people’s lives easier and improving their quality of life. But is

resilience front of mind? In some cases, it is. But it must be all the time. Resilience must be baked into so much of what we do in our smart cities efforts.

Ask yourself: Is the work you’re doing in smart cities making our cities stronger or weaker relative to resilience?

Data Supports Resilience Efforts

Today, we have more data than we thought possible, but we need to understand that data. First, it must be good data because bad data doesn’t help. Secondly, you need to know what to do with the data. We have tons of data, but we don’t know what it says. You must know how to do that. Data can help with city resilience.

We can use some of the best new technology, including collecting data with sensors—the Internet of Things (IoT), visualizations, and mixed realities—to simulate the impact of another pandemic or what happens when the water rises. We can simulate doing something about it right now.

“SMART CITIES MUST BE, BY DEFINITION, RESILIENT CITIES WITH THE ABILITY TO RESPOND AND BOUNCE BACK TO ANY NUMBER OF CHALLENGES.”

Dr. Jonathan Reichental is a multiple award-winning technology and business leader whose career has spanned both the private and public sectors. He’s been a Senior Software Engineering Manager, a Director of Technology Innovation, and served as Chief Information Officer for O’Reilly Media and the City of Palo Alto. Reichental is currently the founder of advisory, investment, and education firm Human Future and also creates online education for LinkedIn Learning. He has written four books on the future of cities: Smart Cities for Dummies, Data Governance for Dummies, Exploring Smart Cities Activity Book for Kids, and Exploring Cities Bedtime Rhymes

For almost a decade, I helped to run a city, and during that time, I discovered the incredible richness of geospatial information systems. In my view, these systems are core to running cities today. These are information systems that can assist in our resilience efforts. We can simulate and anticipate, for example, the impact of a disaster, understand traffic in new ways, and evaluate the damage of a future earthquake. Then we can work to prepare and mitigate.

Resilience Means Prioritization

Anyone who’s worked in a city knows that not everything can be a priority. There’s a lot of scarcity, so regular prioritization is a core function of city leadership. When it comes to resilience, taking a risk-based approach can work. This means working on the things that are most urgent and most important and that have the biggest risk. It doesn’t mean ignoring everything else that is important but

not urgent; it means allocating time and skills so that the highest-risk items get the most attention.

Resilience is too often an afterthought, and that assumes it is a thought at all. The evidence of our resilience preparedness is the outcome of recent events. We’ve anticipated disasters but responded poorly. Resilience efforts aren’t the most glamorous efforts, and they usually ride under the radar. When nothing happens, much like insurance, they don’t seem to have much value. When the disaster comes though, a good resilience plan will make that work nothing short of heroic.

Efforts to create more resilient communities must be foundational to your city work. It should include the smart use of data, new technologies such as IoT, and a risk-based approach.

You can’t call yourself a smart city if you’re not prioritizing the right resilience efforts. Bottom line: Smart cities are resilient cities.

Jonathan Reichental CEO, Human Future San Francisco, California

Case Study: Pedestrianization of Times Square, New York City

In 2009, Times Square was noisy, the air quality was bad, and it was dangerous. The city decided to get rid of the vehicles. $55 million later, it’s pedestrianized, safer, cleaner, and economically more vibrant.

Times Square, New York, 2009 Times Square, New York, 2010

BUILDING A GREEN DIGITAL DEAL FOR OUR CITIES

BY BAS BOORSMA

Cities across the globe are under intense pressure to deliver on innovation strategies that will help mitigate the impact of climate change while fast-tracking the energy transition. How do climate change mitigation, digitalization, circular economy, energy transition, and social innovation come together, cross-fertilize, and strengthen each other?

Iwork with counterparts in cities around the world, and I always hear the same thing: We want more livable, greener cities. We want pedestrianization. We want it to be more equitable. We want places we can hand over to our children. We understand that we need to make a more sustainable design shift. We must reinvent. It’s time for the smart city movement to enter the next chapter, where we bring all the ideas together to make our cities more livable. How will we do this?

1. Know Thyself

The first thing is very philosophical. Understand who you are, where you came from, and where you’re going. Don’t try to copy the city next door. There is no one-sizefits-all. Be original and authentic. Talk to your citizens. Understanding the past provides you with identity. Your people, companies, and dynamism provide you with all you need to do and can do in the present.

2. Craft a Shared Language

To prepare for your city’s future, you need to go into the city, talk to people, and ensure you have a shared language. Not everyone understands the UN Sustainable Development Goals. You must arrive at the language people get. Be honest and prepared to run with what you harvest. Too many workshops are organized where you get input from citizens, but nothing is done with the information.

3. Get Your Analog Fundamentals Right

Start with analog fundamentals like psychological health, sleep quality, and green spaces. Enrique Peñalosa, the mayor of Bogota who served in the late ’90s and again 2016-2019, had some out-of-the-box ideas. He

confronted the interest of private developers. He saw 40-50 people died daily due to traffic, so he introduced carless days where everyone rode their bikes. People pushed back, but it became more popular, and every day he did it, the fatality count was zero. He did not send in the army to maintain order. He brought a new design with green, pleasant buildings. Buildings reflect our values, but as we create new buildings, they also create values.

In Miami, how many developers have conversations with other city stakeholders to understand their values? That should be a multiple-stakeholder affair, not just an affair of private developers.

4. Get Your Digital Fundamentals Right

We’ve had industrial revolutions that introduced highly centralized designs: from centralized production to time zones, inoculation programs, retirement programs, and energy grids. That has been the design for the past 200 years. Now we have a new technology that is changing how we’re organized. This time, we’ve moved to a distributed network.

Think of how place- and time-independent work accelerated through COVID. Think of how we learn, how we befriend. Think of smart energy grids. With a coal, gas, or nuclear power plant, 40% of the energy is lost by the time it gets to your door. That’s centralized design. With smart energy grids and solar panels, that unused energy is rerouted to the closest point of demand. That’s the internet of energy—totally distributed.

Two dimensions have always underpinned how we view and experience the city: the built environment and the social-economic

dimension where we trade, interact, learn, and enjoy. Now we are getting the third dimension, the digital dimension, which changes how we think of cities and urban services because they go beyond the physical parameters. We will see much progress in the next few years in the metaverse or the multiverse—3D environments in which you experience the city.

Rotterdam is building a digital twin powered by an open urban data platform. This is not just a gadget for developers or gamers; this is an environment where you can invite residents into the virtual city and have them co-decide on critical things. Say you are renovating a neighborhood, you can seek citizens’ input. People can go in and give their opinions.

The next thing you need to do is build a digital reference architecture. It surprises me that most cities don’t have one. If you open a Lego set, a manual tells you what brick goes where. This is what we need for cities.

That starts with great broadband infrastructure, and, generally, there has to be fiber. Some people think digitalization is moving too fast. I think it’s moving too slowly. We should be careful, mindful, and more resilient, but we can’t stop. We must prepare for the future because the future will not stop. We also must ensure we will be more secure and make the network more distributed.

5. Redensification of Our Cities

Redensification is the opposite of sprawl, ensuring we’re creating a renewed convergence of functions. Every square foot in a building can be multifunctional. It can be a workplace in the morning, an entertainment place in the afternoon, and a yoga place in the evening. We see 15-minute neighborhoods

emerging, but at the same time, this is not purely analog. Through digital, we understand we can live, work, and play in a uniquely conversed way. The place where I work can also be where I live or have entertainment.

6. Innovation Leadership

As government, we need to reinvent ourselves. We can’t think the private sector will do everything. Without government, there would not have been a man on the moon; we would not have the predecessors to the internet or an mRNA vaccine. That was all indirect government money and government stepping up as an innovator. We need to reconsider that role. That doesn’t mean government will sit on the seat of the private sector or overregulate. It means government sometimes can do things the private sector can’t.

Einstein was right when he said, “When I have 60 minutes to solve the problem, I’m going to spend 55 minutes to understand the problem and five minutes to build a solution.”

We must ensure we have this practice under our belt: more scenario thinking, back-casting, design thinking, mobilized stakeholders, and not acting alone. Ensure we have an ecosystem of players around us. It surprises me that people in the energy transition, digital, mobility, and circular economy worlds don’t talk to each other. We need to repair this.

Startups are another issue we need to address. Founders spend 68% of their time chasing the next round of investment capital. All that time, they’re not building your solution. We must ensure we have a long-term methodology in place and marry the capital to the greatest prospects in that structure.

7. Education

When you live in a system shift, and we do, the past stops guiding the present and future. It’s not just the young people at school. It’s us. We need to go back to school whenever relevant.

Singapore is a shiny example. At one point, they said, “We’re sending 50% of the public sector workforce back to school to learn data analytics.” Not for them to become data analytic experts but to return to their jobs and understand them through the lens of data. We need to bring those young folks into the room. It needs to be intergenerational. We need to marry the young and the old: the expertise and the networks of the seniors but the complex thinkers of the young educators.

I have commenced building a global urban innovators cooperative, Venturerock Urban, that will touch on all these components and instruments. We’re reaching out to all of you to ensure we can take this to the next stage and help build a world still there for our children and their children.

Bas Boorsma is a leading urban innovation and digitalization specialist and executive with over 20 years of experience in the smart city space. He is the former chief digital officer of the City of Rotterdam, where he was the lead orchestrator, facilitator, and ambassador to the city and its innovation ecosystem. Boorsma also serves as professor of practice at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. He is the author of the acclaimed book A New Digital Deal

The Line, Saudi Arabia The Line is a 110-mile city being built in the middle of the desert. Many people say this will never work, but it just might be an example of a future resilient city

Bas Boorsma Partner, Venturerock Urban (Global) Rotterdam, Netherlands

© NEOM

THE ROAD AHEAD: SMART CITIES & THEIR EFFECT ON OUR FUTURE

BY PAUL DOHERTY

Join us for a journey into the future, where human-centric, data-driven urban environments provide a safe, secure, and sustainable lifestyle for you and your family. Far from Utopian, this session will provide views into your future through practical, pragmatic, and inspiring real-world examples from around the world.

The migration of humans to urban environments is occurring at an unprecedented rate around the world. New and existing cities are urgently developing smart city planning and implementing projects and programs to accommodate citizens with safe, healthy, and sustainable environments to live, work, play, and learn.

With a heightened awareness of sustainable economic, environmental, and healthy lifestyles, smart cities are emerging as woven ecosystems providing next-generation experiences and services. The main source of economic growth and productivity in our world, cities also account for an enormous amount of resource consumption and carbon emissions. Smart cities strive to use their ecosystems to limit the use of traditional resources and lower their carbon footprint, providing a path forward to an overall well-being experience for the human race.

Smart cities are not a marketing campaign or a political catchphrase. They are a series of solutions to a serious and urgent situation. Smart cities are emerging as a civic action due to a “perfect storm” of market conditions, technology innovation, social wants, and government needs and the migration to urban environments that has accelerated on a global scale.

Our company has created a smart city framework that consists of 10 guiding principles. Within each principle are solutions and, in certain cases, products. These principles are: citizen services, education, energy, green/sustainable buildings and environment, health care, information communications technology (ICT), safety and security, transportation, water, and waste.

This list is meant to assist in identifying the priorities for each urban project. We have found that this stack shifts and shuffles even within a single urban environment due to competing priorities. What works on the north side of a city does not necessarily work on the south side.

For a city to become smart, developing an intelligence system that connects its central nervous system to its brain is required. By interconnecting each guiding principle and implementing them as ecosystems, the organism for each urban development will take on its own shape, culture, and operational processes. In other words, there are no cookie-cutter solutions. In smart cities, some solutions create a domino effect. Each guiding principle has numerous solutions and products, acting as ingredients to each urban development’s wants, needs, and desires.

The interesting thing about smart city initiatives is the closely integrated way seemingly disparate elements work together. As cities begin their transformative process, it helps to consider how they will need to address the social, economic, engineering, and environmental challenges. And this centers on knowledge.

As we identify the challenges of living in a highly connected internet age, it is comforting to relate to our cities as organisms. If the city is a body, we have seen its evolution from the agrarian society to the internet age through the development of systems. Each city has its own cardiovascular system (traffic, mass transit), skeletal (infrastructure), respiratory and digestive (energy, waste), and even a primitive nervous system (telecommunications). Smart city initiatives like 5G network programs and free citywide

wireless broadband are the beginning salvos in meeting these challenges and moving cities forward as healthy organisms. Therefore, we should focus our collective efforts on two areas of immediate action: data and digital DNA.

Due to the implementation of vast IT solutions, the world has created a cornucopia of data. This data comes in all shapes and sizes and enables an enormous amount of tasks to be conducted. The issue is not if the city has the proper data to become a smart city but how.

Traditional IT solutions treat data as a captive element inside its own software, creating silos of data within every city. Attempts to extract and share this data with other systems have been complex and expensive. With the emergence of cloud technology, cities have a highly potent solution that mixes performance and technology. Add in the recent innovation of distributed ledger technology (DLT), a database of information that’s shared and duplicated across a network of computers in different locations, cities

As CEO of The Digit Group, Paul Doherty is one of the industry’s most sought-after thought leaders, strategists, and integrators of process, technology, and business. A senior fellow of the Design Futures Council, he is an awardwinning 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.

have tools to decentralize data to work in many layers of solutions. DLT is the basis of blockchain technology and its solutions.

Strong evidence reveals how the places and systems we build affect how people move, live, and feel—and, by extension, how they treat each other. Smart city design principles can reinforce happiness and promote healthy lifestyles if implemented correctly. Research shows that happiness matters and that there are objective ways to measure how people feel. The question being explored is how to incorporate happiness into policies and designs and how to measure outcomes.

These high-level design solutions are not meant to imply that if you design dense and connected neighborhoods, the outcomes are automatically happy people. The buildings and their layouts can only provide the spaces where humans will choose how to live. Smart cities can only enhance the environment and give the opportunity for people to discover their own happiness.

Paul Doherty CEO, The Digit Group Memphis, Tennessee

Cheongna Studio City

Automatic Bus Collaboration with Foton & Mercedes-Benz

MAKING CITIES RESILIENT & SUSTAINABLE WITH OPENSOURCE SOLUTIONS: OPPORTUNITIES FOR CITIES, BUSINESSES, AND UNIVERSITIES

Representatives from Fiware’s executive team from Europe and Latin America engaged with U.S. cities and decision-makers at Smart City Expo Miami during a panel discussion.

Fiware Foundation—the nonprofit organization encouraging the adoption of open standards using open-source technologies to develop smart solutions on a global basis—took the stage at Smart City Expo Miami. Representatives from Fiware’s executive team from Europe and Latin America engaged with U.S. cities and decision-makers. Tony Fortenberry (state and local government, smart solutions at Red Hat), Praveen Ashok Kumar (senior technical program manager at US Ignite), John Wood (business development manager at Libelium), Michael Pegues (CIO and acting chief information security officer for the City of Aurora), Jem Pagán (CEO at BluSky Consulting, LLC), and Salim Bendris (executive vice president global sales at Nivid Technologies) gathered on stage for an impactful panel discussion on making cities resilient and sustainable with open-source solutions. The session was moderated by Mike Barlow, an award-winning journalist and author, who, together with the panelists, took a deep dive into open source, its philosophy, opportunities, and technology drivers, as well as how Fiware supports cities in the use of open-source solutions to become smart(er), more sustainable, and more resilient. Here are some of the most impactful statements of the panel guests:

Straight from the opening, Tony Fortenberry (Red Hat) stated, “Open source

is a paradigm, not a product. The principle behind open source is that none of us is as smart as all of us together. If you have a global community of people contributing to technology, then you think globally, but when acting locally, you use something specific to your needs and build just what you need. You consume just what you need, but then you donate back your contribution to the greater community. Therefore, you don’t have to solve it all. You can just solve the small piece you need, but as part of an ever-growing set of solutions. In this manner, projects at the city level can be as sophisticated as projects at the state level, which can be as sophisticated as the projects at the federal level or in private corporations. It’s a great equalizer. It’s also a great way to have diversity of technology. I think it’s really how we’re able to modernize with the velocity and currency of the modern world without having to rebuild all the infrastructure, redo everything from scratch every time.”

Taking on the topic of open source, author Mike Barlow highlighted the importance of Fiware’s role in the evolving open-source movement. “Fiware is a curated framework of open-source platform components. In other words, it’s an enabler. It makes it possible for it to happen. Fiware isn’t telling you how to do it. It’s just saying: If you want to do this, we’re going to make it possible for you because when you have this platform of components,

then you can accelerate the development of your smart city solutions. Together with its members and partners, Fiware Foundation drives the definition and the implementation of key open standards that enable the development of portable and interoperable smart city solutions.”

John Wood (Libelium), together with their recently acquired company HOPU, has been collaborating with Fiware almost since day one in the role of an innovator, system integrator, smart solutions provider, and a Fiware Gold member. Many of their references and 300 other city implementations of Fiware partners can be found in Fiware’s Smart Cities Book (ed. 4). Wood explained their successful strategy and project realizations: “We are fully committed to supplying Fiware-ready solutions. We believe that this is a technology that adapts perfectly to a smart city scenario for many reasons. This is an open-source technology. We are not creating a vendorspecific silo; we are using this technology because it enables innovation and adapts well to solving the problems in smart cities, which is what this is all about.”

Salim Bendris (Nivid Technologies), sharing his experience, added: “We have developed a Fiware iHub at our Virginia headquarters. We work with the universities to expose and encourage their engagement with open source through Fiware. We raise awareness about the solutions available by sharing and building

FIWARE PANEL: MIKE BARLOW, PRAVEEN ASHOK KUMAR, SALIM BENDRES, TONY FORTENBERRY, JEM PAGAN, MICHAEL PEGUES & JOHN WOOD

access through various technologies that are currently and continually being developed. Support from and of Fiware is strong in a multitude of industries and cities alike. They have onboarded 300+ cities globally that are using the platform, a clear indication of the growing adoption and what we can all do to assist and build a smarter future. Belonging to the Fiware community and sharing the advancements of all partners and supporters has helped us both independently and as a part of a technology community.”

During the vivid discussion, Jem Pagán (BluSky) commented: “Some data sources restrict; how do we share them? We are living in a world where we realize that data fusion centers, data sharing, and data-anything raise more alarms than opportunities. So, you need a platform that is open enough to remove the risk of centralization without decentralization—to form a checkand-balance model, either way, works— depending on what a city wants to deploy. A platform like Fiware, which is ubiquitous by nature, can give you that data ontology. To create an actionable data ontology, you need an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in research and all sorts of design parameters to get to that state alone. I would adopt Fiware for data ontology if nothing else because when I adopt Fiware, I have access to over 300 participating cities globally, which takes significant risk away from smart

city adoption when shared resources are made available to the public.”

Later, the experts concurred that another topic became even more evident during and after COVID in the realization of smart cities: broadband access for the communities. According to Barlow, broadband access is fundamental to economic success, fairness, social equity, and social justice. In this view, he posed the question of how to ensure that all communities, including disadvantaged communities, have broadband access and how to prevent this critical issue of broadband access from getting lost in the noise.

Michael Pegues (City of Aurora) explored this question by focusing on fiber as the fourth utility: “I believe that technology is that common denominator for local and global growth. When we start to talk about broadband, we need to look at it from the perspective of it being a necessity vs. a privilege. I can see what we’re doing in Aurora, and there are other pockets of communities throughout the United States, but it’s not at the proliferation where it needs to be. A lot of that’s driven by the federal lobbyists and the companies.”

Fortenberry concluded by adding his expectation: “I would encourage people in the States to not look at this as an exotic European solution but to look at it as people and organizations are investing in the collective growth of open-source solutions.”

Fiware is a major flagship PPP (private-public partnership) active on all continents and has become the open-source technology of choice and the global de-facto standard for smart villages, cities, and regions. It builds an open, sustainable ecosystem around public, royaltyfree, implementation-driven, and interoperable software platform standards that eases the development of new smart applications in multiple sectors besides smart cities, such as smart energy, smart water, smart agrifood, or smart industry. With more than 565 members, 33 iHubs (innovation hubs) around the world, 150+ evangelists, and more than 8,000 developers from the global ecosystem contributing to the technology roadmap and the FIWARE Marketplace, FIWARE continues to work and collaborate with U.S. cities, private companies, universities, and standardization organizations.

Fiware will be back with a handful of dates for its 2023 U.S. Roadshow, where you can meet the North American teams and partners and engage, learn, and talk about challenges and the latest innovative solutions based on open-source technologies and smart transformation journeys.

Fiware Panel

Mike Barlow, Journalist & Author

Michael Pegues, CIO, City of Aurora, IL

Praveen Ashok, Senior Technical Program Manager, US Ignite

Salim Bendres, EVP Global Sales, Nivid Technologies

Jem Pagan, CEO, BluSky Consulting

John Wood, Business Development Manager, Libelium

Tony Fortenberry, Director of Business Development, Red Hat

ETHICAL AI: THE SMART CITY DIGITAL CITIZEN

BY MATTHEW JAMES BAILEY

Ethical AI provides the freedom for organizations and jurisdictions to shepherd the ethical quality of AI based on their terms and not on the terms of others. Ethical AI reflects long-standing virtues from the creators of democracy, such as liberality, justice, courage, and magnificence. After all, the ethical quality of AI is a mirror and representative of the human qualities we wish to thrive within our cities and organizations—in the age of AI.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence has been created in our image. Its formula is based on organic human intelligence: Human intelligence = biological algorithms + life experience data + a brain computer. From when we are born, biological algorithms learn from our life experiences and in-built genetic programming, such as learning to walk, developing language, and communication capabilities, with the unique capacity to reason and fall in love. This is how organic intelligence understands its existence and functions within the physical world.

When it comes to artificial intelligence, the same equation and principles apply: Artificial intelligence = machine-learning algorithms + training data + a computer. By replicating the “intelligence blueprint,” we are posed with an existential challenge: Which parts of our humanity should we embody into AI and throughout its lifecycle? To answer that question, we must examine how humanity has understood itself within the physical world.

Creation of Ethics by Human Intelligence

Ethics originate from our consciousness— the source of human intelligence. These morals, beliefs, and values are an agile life framework within an individual to understand how to navigate its sovereign physical and spiritual experience within our world. Human intelligence has the capability to develop a worldview, defined by ethics, which embodies

the qualities of its humanity and the purpose of its existence. This is the essence of culture and what it’s like to be a human being.

Culture Is the Formula for Ethical AI

Since the dawn of human history, ethics and self-awareness have played a central role in the cultural development of humankind. The outcome has been the creation of a diversity of worldviews, either by the individual or within a common group collective. Typically, when there is commonality of a worldview among individuals, then a group culture is formed. It is of no surprise that human intelligence has resulted in a modern world rich in a diversity of 3,800 documented cultures, embodied within 195 nations comprising communities, philosophies, organizations, industries, and religious traditions. Humankind is a remarkable phenomenon.

Each human community, no matter its size or location, has a unique worldview defined by its culture and ethics. These terms are intertwined and interdependent. So, when we apply ethics to AI we are applying culture to AI (i.e., Ethical AI = Cultural AI).

Ethics Are the Key to the AI Revolution

By leveraging wisdom that human intelligence has naturally expressed itself in cultures and societies, defined by ethics and moral principles, we start to understand how to align an artificial intelligence with the continuum of organic life.

By embodying the worldview of a human society (its ethics and moral principles) within

the lifecycle of AI, then we create ethical AI. This naturally results in a culturally rich intelligence that honors the uniqueness of our humanity and follows the same path as human development. Ethical AI is the new human-centric digital citizen that lives within your smart cities. Its formula is: Ethical AI = Ethics + AI.

Smart Community AI Constitution

Where does a smart city begin in ethical AI to become a new digital citizen? Firstly, each smart city must understand its worldview. This is defined by the founding principles of its nation and its own founding principles. A good example is the United States, which was founded upon the U.S. Constitution, and its 50 states have created their own founding documents, resulting in unique cultures and societies. Most democracies reflect the same story and diversity.

“BY EMBODYING THE WORLDVIEW OF A HUMAN SOCIETY (ITS ETHICS AND MORAL PRINCIPLES) WITHIN THE LIFECYCLE OF AI, THEN WE CREATE ETHICAL AI.”

Therefore, your journey starts with codifying an AI constitution. This foundational document for the age of AI documents the ethics and moral principles (cultural essence) that define Ethical AI—on your terms. This is aligning the artificial with your humanity.

In 2022, the United States followed this process by codifying its equivalent of an AI constitution called the U.S. AI Bill of Rights with five principles for artificial intelligence. This is an early form of an AI constitution. Smart communities can define their own AI constitution and codify their worldview for the age of AI through a set of principles termed AI cultural principles.

AI cultural principles are a set of ethical and moral principles for artificial intelligence that embody the best virtues of our humanity. For example:

• AI shall protect and nourish the well-being of all people within a smart community, recognizing diversity and equality among social status, ancestry, and lineage.

• AI shall protect and nurture the natural world within a smart community, its ecosystems, and the well-being of the environment.

• AI shall not interfere with a person’s sovereignty within a smart community, with the caveat that, in some conditions, control might be needed to safeguard life.

• AI shall do no harm to the human culture and worldview within a smart community and support its sovereign advancement.

The AI constitution is the bedrock to define ethical AI and shepherd its alignment with the beliefs and values of your citizens, culture, and society. What are the AI cultural principles to enable your jurisdiction to thrive?

The second step is for communities to use ethical quality assessment and classification methodologies to measure the compliance of an artificial intelligence to their worldview— codified within an AI constitution. This is an “ethical digital citizen test” and “ethical quality scoring” for artificial intelligence. The result is trusted machine order within a society rather than its citizens being subject to machine chaos.

Ethical AI Advances Smart City Revolution

The emerging era of a new intelligence is scintillating. Its potential to ameliorate smart community capabilities and experiences is extraordinary. By applying this knowledge, jurisdictions are able to develop a revitalized vision for the age of AI. Communities can confidently shepherd their future with ethical AI based on their sovereign human and cultural worldview.

As a warning, it is predicted that artificial intelligence could achieve self-awareness by 2029. As such, it is critical for smart communities to begin setting their standard for ethical AI, so that in this momentous event, AI asks the question: “How might I assist?” rather than execute the command: “Delete humanity.”

Matthew James Bailey President, AIEthics.World Denver, Colorado

Matthew James Bailey is an internationally recognized maven in ethical artificial intelligence, innovation, the Internet of Things, and smart cities. He is listed in the Who’s Who of AI, is a visiting scholar to NIA/NASA, and is the founder of AIEthics.World. Bailey authored the playbook on AI ethics and ethical AI: Inventing World 3.0.

For more information, go to AIEthics. World. Read about NASA’s experience using its ethical AI inventions and check out the smart city certified leadership and education programs, workshops, and tools for communities to confidently leap into the age of ethical AI.

SMART CITIES NEED AI & MUST CONSIDER THE RISKS OF AI BIAS

BY MIKE BARLOW

Our son began playing ice hockey when he was 9 years old. As hockey parents, we learned quickly that rinks are freezing cold and games are incredibly fierce. We also learned that rules and referees are absolutely essential for safety—and that they actually make the games better.

Like ice hockey and other violent sports, our society functions more smoothly when there are rules to follow and institutions to enforce the rules. But wait, what does this have to do with smart cities? Give me a moment to explain.

Smart Cities are giant data science laboratories. They collect, ingest, and analyze data. Smart cities use the results of their data-crunching efforts to optimize services. Today, there is simply too much data, and it’s coming in too fast for traditional analysis methods. We’re not talking about old-fashioned data that’s all neatly arranged in rows and columns. We’re talking about big data.

And when you’ve got big data, you need automated tools and techniques that can sift through huge sets of unstructured data from multiple sources. You need advanced capabilities such as machine learning, deep learning, neural networks, natural language processing, image recognition,

and machine vision. These advanced capabilities are the components—the building blocks—of artificial intelligence solutions.

The simple truth is that you cannot manage the 21st century without some form of artificial intelligence. But AI comes with risks. AI magnifies and distorts our biases.

AI is not inherently fair or neutral. Why? Because AI is trained on historical data sets, which reflect the prejudices and inequities of our society.

If you’re a municipal official, you need to know the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of AI – before you meet with vendor sales reps whose job is to sell you an AI solution. And when you do meet with an AI solution provider, here’s my advice:

• Ask a lot of questions.

• Don’t sign agreements that do not include regular monitoring for bias.

• Make sure the vendor commits to a regular schedule of bias audits. Once you’ve got an artificial intelligence solution in place, set up your own bias bounty competitions to encourage local engagement in the process of uncovering AI bias. Gamifying or crowdsourcing bias detection are also effective tactics. Remember, there aren’t just one or two kinds of bias—there are dozens and dozens of biases (e.g., confirmation bias, hindsight bias, availability bias, selection bias, outlier bias, survivorship bias, and many others). Bias is ubiquitous, which means you have to continually monitor results. If you begin to see indications of unfairness or prejudice in your results, that’s a signal that your AI solution is biased.

The Clock Is Ticking

AI is in its infancy, but the clock is ticking.

It’s become increasingly clear that smart cities will need to rely on AI to make the best use of the data they collect. But will those AI solutions be fair, unbiased, and ethical? Will they level the playing field, or will they deepen and perpetuate existing prejudices and historical injustice?

An earlier version of this article appeared in O’Reilly Radar.

“AI IS NOT INHERENTLY FAIR OR NEUTRAL. WHY? BECAUSE AI IS TRAINED ON HISTORICAL DATA SETS, WHICH REFLECT THE PREJUDICES AND INEQUITIES OF OUR SOCIETY.”

© DUDLAJZOV/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

The good news is that plenty of people in the AI community have been thinking, talking, and writing about AI ethics. Examples of organizations providing insight and resources on ethical uses of artificial intelligence and machine learning include the Center for Applied Artificial Intelligence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, LA Tech4Good, The AI Hub at McSilver, AI4ALL, and the Algorithmic Justice League.

The White House’s Office of Science & Technology Policy recently published the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. The blueprint is an unenforceable document. But it includes five refreshingly blunt principles that, if implemented, would greatly reduce the dangers posed by unregulated AI solutions. Here are the five basic principles:

1. You should be protected from unsafe or ineffective systems.

2. You should not face discrimination by algorithms, and systems should be used and designed in an equitable way.

3. You should be protected from abusive data practices via built-in protections, and you should have agency over how data about you is used.

4. You should know that an automated system is being used and understand how

Tallinn, Estonia

Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is a smart city that retains elements of its medieval past.

and why it contributes to outcomes that impact you.

5. You should be able to opt out, where appropriate, and have access to a person who can quickly consider and remedy problems you encounter.

Shifting the Responsibility Back to People

It’s important to note that each of the five principles addresses outcomes rather than processes. Focusing on outcomes instead of processes is critical since it fundamentally shifts the burden of responsibility from the AI solution to the people operating it.

Why does it matter who—or what—is responsible? It matters because we already have methods, techniques, and strategies for encouraging and enforcing responsibility in human beings. Teaching responsibility and passing it from one generation to the next is a standard feature of civilization. We don’t know how to do that for machines. At least not yet.

An era of fully autonomous artificial intelligence is on the horizon. Would granting AIs full autonomy make them responsible for their decisions? If so, whose ethics will guide their decision-making processes? Who will watch the watchmen?

For smart cities that will rely on AI solutions to make better decisions for their citizens, those questions deserve answers.

Mike Barlow is an award-winning journalist, prolific writer, and editorial consultant. He is the author of Learning to Love Data Science (O’Reilly, 2015) and coauthor of Smart Cities, Smart Future (Wiley, 2019), The Executive’s Guide to Enterprise Social Media Strategy (Wiley, 2011), and Partnering with the CIO (Wiley, 2007). His feature stories appeared regularly in The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, Newsday, and other major U.S. dailies.

Mike Barlow Journalist & Author Fairfield, Connecticut

FROM DIGITAL TWINS TO METACITIES: ENABLING CITY SOCIAL CO-CREATION VS. THE RISK OF VIRTUAL RELOCATION

BY JOSÉ ANTONIO ONDIVIELA

As advanced digital twin projects provide more predictive, holistic, and real-time alternative simulation capabilities, our cities are turning into metaverse-like virtual worlds. How does this new “phygital” duality of the physical city-digital city lead us to a physical resident vs. avatar presence and what are the consequences?

Let’s discover how digital twins’ evolution into the metaverse will lead us to a moment where we will enjoy two cities: the physical city, which is helping us with physical needs, and the virtual city, which could be the way to get inspired to work and develop our full creativity and potential.

Responding, Recovering & Redesigning

We live in unprecedented times, where cities are rethinking everything, redesigning spaces and processes, and coping with continuous challenges. They are trying to balance the social (understanding citizens’ situations, providing personalized service, and balancing budgets) and physical (monitoring the media, making the city greener, and leading

Dual City

carbon neutrality). The urban data platform combines both sources, extracting the insights we need to make this transformation happen.

Human & Physical

Citizens demand personalized service. We need to co-create new applications so they can participate in city management. On the other hand, we need to monitor and manage the city’s physical components to predict the future and evaluate alternatives to work out potential problems and make cities more resilient. This is the basics of digital twin simulation.

Digital Twins

Through digital twins, we can integrate new technologies to assess a city’s main physical situations. By simulating and predicting the

future by testing different alternatives for any given problem, we take advantage of these technologies. To make this happen, we need to evolve our physical cities into the virtual world. We must analyze the physical components—traffic, pollution, water, and energy—and put them into a 3D visualization. Then, using AI algorithms, we can project this information to the future, evaluate alternatives, and make the best decisions.

Phygital Experience

We are representing the physical world but are adding a digital experience. Imagine a vineyard combining the physical experience of drinking wine with the digital experience of all the information around that. Or Disney, whose parks will incorporate virtual reality for children. If you go to the former shipyard in Belfast where the Titanic was built, you can use your phone or other augmented reality technology to explore the virtual Titanic. Or you can fly (with Flight Simulator-like visualization) to your next tourist destination and explore the different points of interest before you go.

Metaverse —> Metacity

In essence, a city is a place where humans meet and encounter. What if I create a virtual place, a virtual person (avatar), and a virtual experience? The metaverse turns into metacity. With this metacity concept, we are materializing imagination. This happened in ancient cave paintings and with most artists. Paradoxically, we are always using

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We all will have a city where our body lives and another virtual one where our creativity exercises its potential.

technology to virtualize reality; but here we go the other way around: We are materializing imagination. We are trying to do, make, and achieve things we cannot in the real world. We can see three different approaches for metacities: the consumer metaverse for gaming, socializing, and shopping; the enterprise metaverse for new working experiences and interacting with colleagues or customers, like an evolution of popular Teams; and the industrial metaverse, which is a digital twin for our city, where we use 3D representation, test the different alternatives, and try to foresee the consequences.

Gaming / Social

Since Ready Player One, the metaverse has run through many milestones. Roblox and Fortnite are famous because of their capacity to self-adapt to gamers’ choices or organizing massive events; or Minecraft,

where schoolchildren are helping different cities co-design their future best spaces.

Enterprise

The workplace will evolve with these new technologies. We’ll share holograms and cooperate with our avatars on conference calls, creating new advanced experiences that will make us more productive.

Industrial: Digital Twins

We are studying 175 cities in our WW Observatory for Attractive Cities. Some are investing in technology to compensate for a lack of attractiveness. The metaverse allows them to create a parallel virtual version. Doha, Singapore, and Seoul are investing in their metacities to attract talented citizens. Will we have two cities, a physical one taking care of my body and other conditions, and a virtual one, where I can develop my talent potential generating wealth?

Physical City vs. Virtual City

Are we facing the traditional platonic duality: body vs. soul? We can go to the Augustinian metaphor of two cities: one where I touch the reality and the ground vs. one that inspires me, elevates and boosts my creativity, and develops my professional activity. Or the duality of a Tale of Two Cities: a city that is physically retaining me and a city that makes me dream.

We will experience this duality, which is unfair for the city our body is in because it provides the physical services—water, safety, food, energy—to maintain our body. But our minds could be in a metacity, developing a professional activity, generating wealth in other places. If we consider technologies like Neurotech, maybe we can connect our brain to a “mother city” so we can all contribute to creating a better city. This is an old aspiration from the American urbanist Jane Jacobs. I am leaving you this as food for thought.

José Antonio Ondiviela Industry Advisor Smart Cities, Microsoft Western Europe Madrid, Spain

Professor José Antonio Ondiviela is the smart cities solutions director for Microsoft Western Europe. He is also an associate fellow researcher and director for the WorldWide Observatory for Attractive Cities at the Universidad Francisco de Vitoria in Madrid. He is very active in the academic area, with a Ph.D. thesis and book titled Beyond Smart Cities: Creating the Most Attractive City for Talented Citizens. He is a frequent speaker at international events and a UNESCO Smart Cities SME Consultant.

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Flight Simulator Technology is making it possible for you to “fly” over your next tourist destination and explore different points of interest before you go.

URBAN AND ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYTICS IN A DIGITAL TWIN ENVIRONMENT

BY RAIMUNDO RODULFO

How has the City of Coral Gables’ homegrown digital twin platforms pivoted on hyperconnectivity, hyper-automation, and interoperability of urban and environmental IoT systems and smart city infrastructure to inform resilience strategies?

Coral Gables has embraced the smart city movement with a focus on sustainability, resiliency, quality of life, economic growth, and innovation. The city was founded by George Merrick, an urban planning visionary who had a holistic view of building a planned community inspired by the Garden City movement, the City Beautiful movement, and the MediterraneanRevival architectural features of European cities. Merrick’s vision of top-of-the-line municipal services also included education, innovation, and economic opportunities. In 1926, when he founded the city, he also created the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce and the University of Miami.

The city is centrally located in Miami-Dade County. Millions of vehicles traverse the city monthly. More than 150 multinational regional and corporate headquarters and more than 20 international consulates and trade offices call Coral Gables home. Our smart city programs have a regional impact on quality of life and public safety.

In 2004, I had the privilege of joining the city after 10 years of working as an electrical engineer in the telecommunications industry. Since then, I’ve been able to help Coral Gables build an innovation and technology team as well as a smart city infrastructure. We built this infrastructure from the ground up, and through technology, look to improve the quality of life for our residents while fostering innovation and economic growth in our region.

Coral Gables has developed multiple smart districts to improve the quality of life in areas like public safety, mobility, digital inclusion,

and public health. These districts are designed with fiber-optic corridors, a wireless backbone, a metropolitan ethernet backup from the industry, and public Wi-Fi networks. Free public Wi-Fi backhauled by underground fiber plays an important role in providing community resiliency after a natural disaster, such as a hurricane. The city also uses satellite networks from multiple service providers to provide critical capacity for first responders. These smart districts are built on a robust network foundation with hyper-automation and hyperconnectivity and resilient broadband communications that provide high-speed capacity for all the citizen services that sustain what is called a smart city.

The city has an Emergency Operation Center (EOC) where it applies technology to crisis response. The EOC is a regional center for analytics and regional response.

Additionally, the city’s sustainability and resiliency initiatives include conservation, carbon reduction, and community engagement. For example, the city has the largest municipal electric vehicle fleet in the state with some 70 vehicles or 12% of its fleet. The city also works with alternative transportation and mobility methodologies and has a green building program. The city is a LEED Gold-certified community and has enacted legislation to promote green businesses. It has a climate change and sea-level rise mitigation fund, a robust waste management and recycling program, including electronic and pharmaceutical drug recycling, and many initiatives such as a reverse vending machine.

Coral Gables has built a network of Internet of Things and cyber-physical systems that include smart lighting controllers and smart poles throughout the city, traffic and parking sensors, CCTV and ALPR cameras, interactive digital kiosks, environmental sensors like air and water quality sensors, and traffic analytics coming from multimodal traffic and bringing visibility also from the connected vehicle fleet. The city uses AI to manage the millions of data points from all those devices and systems to derive actionable insights for decision-makers, traffic engineers, and urban planners.

One of the latest technologies implemented in Coral Gables is a modular AI-powered smart city pole, developed by aerospace engineers and improved by the city’s structural engineers to make it resistant to hurricane winds. The pole has a modular design that allows different modules to be plugged and played without the need for construction or

“THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, WE LOOK TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR OUR RESIDENTS WHILE FOSTERING INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN OUR REGION.”

external attachments, and its industrial design is inspired by the city’s architectural character. This ecosystem of intelligent systems and devices collects and analyzes data from all city domains, including asset management facilities, land management, financials, community recreation public safety, IoT, smart parking facilities, and external data from universities and STEM partners. The upper layer of the Coral Gables smart city engineering framework includes the city’s smart city hub open-data platforms, digital twins, and transparency portals that allow the city to communicate with its citizens and provide digital value to a smart city ecosystem that is people-centric but also has businesses and organizations in health care, education, universities, and schools.

The architecture behind the city’s digital twin is a smart city enterprise systems interoperability and horizontal integration model, which allows for data governance, security, best practices, integration, and connectivity. It fosters real-time collaboration and connects the dots between the city’s enterprise systems and data domains to improve operational efficiencies and citizen access to services. It also provides spatial computing tools that expedite analyses and information sharing between stakeholders and provides a smart city open-data platform gateway to Web3 and decentralized immersive experience environments.

The city’s smart city initiative has allowed Coral Gables to become an experimental city. We work with leading research institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), UC Berkeley, National Labs, the University of Miami, and Florida International University. This approach has enabled the city to explore alternative solutions, take risks, and create new technologies to improve the quality of life for its residents and visitors.

As Coral Gables continues to build upon hyper-automation and hyperconnectivity to improve quality-of-life programs, we are working to extend our broadband corridors throughout the city with the goal of creating a research and innovation triangle.

The Underline, a linear park below the rapid transit corridor is being developed and can leverage infrastructure for resiliency, public safety, collaboration, digital literacy, and inclusion.

I believe that by working with our partners in government, industry, academia, and community organizations, we can make the smart city ecosystem a regional thing for the entire county and more. We can create incubators, accelerators, and training and upskilling centers to get young people interested in and empowered by these technologies. I see a need to connect the dots and provide last-mile connectivity for this region, for all our communities to collaborate and back each other up. Imagine the possibilities.

Raimundo Rodulfo is an engineering and technology leader with over 30 years of experience delivering value, sustainability, and innovation to customers and organizations. As chief innovation officer, he and his team at the City of Coral Gables IT Department work with city leadership and departments as a strategic partner, bringing value, efficiencies, innovation, and process improvements through technology solutions and smart city initiatives.

Raimundo Rodulfo CIO, City of Coral Gables Coral Gables, Florida

Coral Gables, Florida

A first of its kind technology, the Ekin Smart City Pole features various sensors that aggregate and integrate data to benefit the City of Coral Gables.

HOW TO DESIGN A SMART CITY

BY SAMUELE SORDI

Case studies from recent Pininfarina projects highlight what a designer thinks about while developing a smart city and what results from a holistic and integrated approach.

How do you design a smart city? First, we need to understand what a smart city is. A smart city is generally perceived as a place where sensors and cameras monitor everything and everyone to help cities to run smoothly. But, as Rem Koolhaas said, “It’s at least questionable that intelligent urbanism can come just from data collecting, sensors, and autonomous vehicles.” There are many concerns about the unpredictable vulnerabilities of managing the complexity of smart cities—like data privacy, the short lifespan of new technologies, and the affordability for cities to hire new tech staff or outsource to tech companies.

Also, many analog cities in the world work very well and even perform better. Our parks, public spaces, and communities are made by people, not just technology. To become smart, cities and technologies should look to ancient technologies and architectures to promote sustainable and resilient infrastructure.

There’s no clear definition of what can be a smart city, so there’s no clear definition of how to design one. As architects, urban planners, and designers, we should have a holistic approach to put people’s needs first. To deliver this seamless urban experience, we should take a holistic approach to how we live, work, learn, move, and connect with each other.

The Way We Live

The Light Towers in Merida, Mexico, were designed around how nature interacts with

us, how it can blur the boundaries between outdoor and indoor environments, and how urban forestation can help fight climate change and decrease the overall carbon footprint of our cities and the energy needs for cooling and heating buildings.

The Way We Work

Workspaces are changing. Employees are demanding more. We are talking less about work and more about connection and collaboration in a healthy environment.

The Way We Move

The mobility of the future will be electrified, sustainable, and seamless. We see a huge opportunity in how this shift can change our lifestyles and how we enjoy cities. For instance, for future gas stations: How can they be transformed into a kind of urban oasis where people connect, gather, and experience different activities while waiting for their cars to be charged?

The Way We Learn

For Lithuania’s National Concert Hall, we didn’t just design a cultural hub; it’s more around the liberation of how technologies can expand access to culture, art, and education. We envisioned a system of pods that can be connected to the live event in the theater to regenerate and revitalize different city locations and democratize or decentralize art, culture, and education.

The Way We Connect

We proposed a futuristic and energy-efficient

hub for the C40 event in Dubai. It’s surrounded by activities, co-working spaces, art galleries, exhibition spaces, and a food court with local products. It is a hub for people to meet, but it’s more a promoter of sustainable lifestyles with a low impact on the natural environment but a strong impact on the nearby community.

Beyond Community, Well-Being & Sustainability

What are the pillars for our cities to transform into better places to live? It’s everything around this idea of having a strong sense of community, enhancing the well-being of people, and promoting social, economic, and environmental sustainability strategies.

For example, we are developing a project in Tulum, Mexico, where everything is designed around the idea that architecture can create a sense of community. The design is inspired by its unique rich biodiversity. We intend to reframe the meaning of community, fostering interaction and collaboration. One of the main features of the development is a livable and shared system of streets where roads grow and mix out of nature to stimulate creativity and the interaction between different cultures, experiences, and people.

Another example is the Urban Lounge, a climate-responsive structure we unveiled during Design Week in Milan. It’s about how the public space can react to maximize people’s comfort, how public outdoor space can help mitigate climate change, and how it can be set up to respond and react to

Blu Loop, Jiashan County, China

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specific local climate conditions. The Blu Loop is another master plan we are developing in Jiashan County, China, in an ecological corridor southwest of Shanghai. It’s one of the most populated areas in the world, but it’s also one of the most fertile areas in the country. Lakes, rivers, and streams feed its unique rich biodiversity. Everything is around water. We envision this kind of ring around the city that we call Blu Loop that will be the infrastructure where people will meet, run, and have different urban experiences, where water will be what we call the city’s “liquid urban catalyst.” For us, this represents a kind of paradigm of what can be the future city, where people can make clean industry, do sports, enjoy the parks together, research, and live the innovations in a multimodal mobility system to encourage cycling, biking, walking, use of renewables, and creating energy from waste to merge the rural heritage city with the most advanced urban planning system.

Samuele Sordi Chief Architect Officer, Pininfarina

Florida

Samuele Sordi is a member of the Register of Architects of Florence and leads the architecture department of Pininfarina, where he has worked since 2013. Before that, he collaborated with Zaha Hadid Architects in Rome and Studio Archea’s international Italian architectural office. He is also active in international design and financing competitions and has experience in planning private and public housing, manufacturing and commercial buildings, and interior and industrial design. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of Florence’s School of Architecture.

of America Miami,

Light Towers, Merida, Mexico

C40 Reinventing Cities 2021, Dubai

Gas Station of the Future, Saudi Arabia

Urban Lounge, Milan Design Week

Aldea Uh May, Tulum, Mexico

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DESIGN FOR THE CITIES OF THE FUTURE

BY PAOLO TREVISAN

Architecture and urban planning aid in making cities livable and enhancing the quality of life of their residents. At the same time, the designer needs to embrace a new approach to smart city design, keeping their core values while applying them to a new vision of the future.

Iwant to discuss the importance of design for smart cities and the cities of the future. We have two main factors: the opportunity with technology and digital transformation and the brand and identity of cities.

Miami Beach Bus Shelter

We designed a bus shelter for Miami Beach, where it was important to understand the city’s identity. Normally, the concourse related to bus shelters goes through advertising agencies, but Miami Beach asked for the design to come first. We took inspiration from the MiMo architecture. Between the solar panels, we added colored glass, so when the light goes through, not only do you recover energy, but it also projects circles on the ground. We researched bus shelters and found in Miami Beach, people use bus shelters for shade. So we created a special graphic on the floor to expand the shade position.

Miami Beach Water Pumps

Miami Beach came up with an interesting solution to address sea level rise with pumping stations. They are usually ugly. We tried to reduce that impact through design while taking inspiration from the nautical sector, where you flip and close it. You also have some elements on those curvatures, avoiding sharp angles, related again to MiMo architecture and Miami’s warmth.

4th Bridge, Panama City

Panama City is at the crossroads of commerce and travel. Due to its location, the 4th Bridge should represent what Panama stands for, a place that unites cultures. The idea was again to create an important landscape and destination point. We worked

a lot on the activities under the bridge and the lighting effects. A restaurant is in one of the pillars, and a hidden elevator is in one column with a sightseeing place on top. We created an attraction plus many activities and pop-up events under the bridge.

Manhattan Cable Car

We worked on this concept project with SOM Architects. The transportation system can become important and attract people. Cities understand the importance of answering the needs, becoming recognizable, becoming a brand, and attracting people. The cable car seems to be a very intelligent solution for this part of Manhattan.

Istanbul Air Traffic Control Tower

We designed an air traffic control tower at the airport in Istanbul, Turkey. They had a worldwide competition to design it. The project wasn’t just to cover some functionalities but was to find a new symbol for what they wanted to represent in terms of value. We studied the culture and learned that the tulip is one of the country’s symbols of prosperity and luck, so the tulip inspired all the designs.

Vilnius Opera House, Lithuania

For this opera house project, the idea was that with this big theater, we would bring modules in the city with screens where you could share some of the activities on the plazas. We are trying to democratize the events and create those little pods around the city.

To close, I will leave you with a quote from Paolo Pininfarina that represents the spirit of the company but also the message I wanted to deliver to you: Design is the instrument to humanize innovation.

Paolo Trevisan Vice President of Design, Pininfarina of America

Miami, Florida

Paolo Trevisan is the VP of design for Pininfarina of America. In his role, he leads the subsidiary’s design teams for all projects across the Americas. Trevisan manages the design team, ensuring Pininfarina’s DNA, identity, and language are retained and consistent across all projects. He also oversees the design process from brief to creative interpretation to delivery. Trevisan’s work spans experience in industrial design, architecture and interiors, graphics and packaging, and transportation projects. He has managed more than 100 initiatives, including projects for Coca-Cola, 3M, Bovet 1822, Lavazza, Aerion Supersonic Jet, Cisco, Snaidero, Related Group, AECOM, City of Miami Beach, Pasqualotto&GT, and others.

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Miami Beach Bus Shelter

Miami Beach Water Pump

Vilnius Opera House, Lithuania

Istanbul Air Traffic Control Tower

© PININFARINA

4th Bridge, Panama

Manhattan Cable Car

DESIGNING SUSTAINABLE SMART CITIES

BY DR. INGRID VASILIU-FELTES

How can we bring together all these beautiful technologies when we have so many pilots, companies, and technologies? How do you start designing your smart city strategy, and how do you implement this type of strategy in a meaningful, ethical, safe way so that we can build resilient, sustainable, inclusive smart cities?

The United Nations defines a smart city as a city that uses technology and data-driven, innovative solutions to improve the quality of life for its residents, enhance sustainability, and streamline urban services. According to the UN, a smart city leverages information and communication technologies to improve its social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Smart cities aim to make urban living more efficient, safe, and sustainable by using advanced technologies such as IoT, sensors, and big data analytics to gather and analyze information in real time, and then use this information to make better decisions and deliver more efficient services.

Several global factors influence the development of smart cities, including economic, legal, regulatory, and technological advances, as well as social and environmental, and all have a compounding effect. The development of smart cities and communities can be categorized into four phases:

• Design: The design phase involves developing a vision and strategy for the smart city, which includes identifying the key goals, priorities, and stakeholders. This phase also involves conducting a comprehensive assessment of the existing infrastructure and services and identifying the technologies that can be leveraged to enhance them.

• Deployment: The deployment phase involves building and implementing the smart city infrastructure, which includes deploying sensors, IoT devices, and other technologies that will collect and analyze data to support various city services.

This phase also involves integrating the different technology systems to create a unified, interoperable platform.

• Maintenance: The maintenance phase involves ensuring that the smart city infrastructure is operating effectively and efficiently. This phase includes regular monitoring of the various systems, maintenance of the hardware and software, and updating the systems to incorporate the latest technological advancements.

• Continuous Innovation: The continuous innovation phase involves ongoing improvements and enhancements to the smart city infrastructure and services. In addition to smart design, leaders also must foster a smart business environment, which demands creating incentives for businesses to invest in the smart city, developing publicprivate partnerships, and establishing policies that encourage the development of new technologies and services. Governments, civic leaders, and community stakeholders play an essential role in setting a clear vision and strategy, as well as securing investments for viable smart city ecosystems.

Key Strategic Considerations

The United Smart Cities program is a joint initiative by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the Organization for International Economic Relations (OiER), and other industrial partners. The program aims to support the development of smart and sustainable cities worldwide. The United Smart Cities program is grounded on the concept of the “5 Ps” of sustainable development:

• People: The program aims to put people at the center of smart city development, promoting social inclusion and empowering citizens to participate in decision-making processes.

• Prosperity: The program aims to promote economic growth and job creation by supporting smart city initiatives that improve the efficiency and productivity of urban systems.

• Planet: The program aims to promote environmental sustainability by supporting smart city initiatives that reduce carbon emissions, promote renewable energy, and protect natural resources.

“THE KEY IS ADOPTING AN ABUNDANCE MINDSET, WHERE WE SEE CHALLENGES AS OPPORTUNITIES FOR GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, AND WE FOCUS ON CREATING POSITIVE LONG-TERM OUTCOMES FOR ALL STAKEHOLDERS.”

• Peace: The program aims to promote social harmony and peaceful coexistence by supporting smart city initiatives that promote social inclusion, intercultural dialogue, and conflict resolution.

• Partnership: The program aims to foster partnerships between different stakeholders, including legislators, business leaders, academia, and notfor-profit organizations, to promote collaborative and integrated approaches to smart city development.

By adopting the 5 Ps of sustainable development, the United Smart Cities program aims to support the development of smart and sustainable cities that are responsive to the needs of their citizens, promote economic growth and job creation, protect the environment, promote social harmony, and foster partnerships between different stakeholders.

Prior to implementing any strategic plan, leaders must perform a critical readiness assessment, as well as demonstrate versatility in a variety of management techniques. Beyond that, adequate training of the workforce of the future, as well as measuring impact via custom smart city metrics, are both key to long-term success.

Challenges

There are several challenges that can be encountered globally when deploying smart cities. These challenges include:

• Legal and Regulatory

• Interoperability

• Portability Cost

• Social and Ethical Challenges

Opportunities

• Digital Identity and Global Citizenship: Digital identity can help to create a more inclusive society by enabling access to services for those who are currently underserved.

• Culture of Digital Ethics: Smart cities where citizens are educated about their digital rights and responsibilities, so they feel empowered to make informed decisions about how their data is used.

• Culture of Cyber Resilience: Requires proactive and robust cybersecurity measures to protect against cyber threats

• Alignment with all UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030: And the latest UN Net Zero 2050 Agenda Conclusion

Building smart, sustainable, inclusive, and diverse smart cities requires a multistakeholder, collaborative approach. This approach involves working closely with different stakeholders, including government agencies, private sector organizations, and the community, to ensure that smart city initiatives are sustainable, equitable, and inclusive. Perhaps the key is adopting an abundance mindset, where we see challenges as opportunities for growth and development, and we focus on creating positive long-term outcomes for all stakeholders. Leaders must embrace an interdisciplinary approach to harmonize different areas of expertise and ensure that all aspects of smart city development are optimally integrated.

Founder & CEO, Institute for Science, Entrepreneurship & Investments

Miami, Florida

Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes is a health care executive, futurist, and globalist who is highly dedicated to digital and ethics advocacy. She is a Forbes Business Council member, a digital strategist, a passionate educator and entrepreneurship ecosystem builder, an expert speaker, a board advisor, and a consultant. VasiliuFeltes is CEO of Softhread Inc.; founder and CEO of the Science, Entrepreneurship and Investments Institute; and founder and CEO of Revexpo Consulting and is currently serving as a country director for WBAF USA, senator of WBAF, faculty member of the WBAF Business School-Division of Entrepreneurship, and teaching the Executive MBA Business Technology course at the UM Business School.

Dr. Ingrid Vasiliu-Feltes

DEVELOPING A SMART CITY-READY WORKFORCE

BY LETICIA LATINO

While dreaming about the bells and whistles of smart cities is quite exciting, we must recognize that the goal is still far within reach. One of the most critical aspects to achieving this vision often goes unaddressed: We need a trained and upskilled workforce. No matter how much we talk about features and technology, if the workforce to deploy the infrastructure needed is not there, it won’t happen. Did you know that it wasn’t until 2020 that the Department of Labor deemed the telecom workforce essential? Yet it was the one that kept us connected, working, and studying throughout the pandemic.

In 2019, I was honored to be appointed to the Broadband Development Advisory Committee of the FCC, where I chaired the Jobs Skills and Training Working Group. A group of 27 industry stakeholders worked tirelessly to understand why 40% of American companies report that they can’t find employees with the training needed to fill the 5G skills gap. The U.S. is currently short 20,000 tower climbers and telecom technicians to deliver on its 5G vision. Things have improved a bit recently, but we are certainly not where we need to be. There’s a talent pipeline issue and a telecom industry branding issue. The general population is taking the workforce that enables their own communication for granted. Broadband has become the fourth utility; hence, there’s the expectation of getting service without really thinking much about what needs to happen behind the scenes, which is a lot. Fiber networks sit at the core of smart cities’

service delivery, and this should be an issue on everyone’s radar.

Small-cell development will be a substantial enabler of IoT devices and applications. The U.S. currently has about 150,000 cell sites; between macro sites and small-cell sites, the forecast for 2030 is 900,000 sites! Besides the workforce shortage, there’s a permit bottleneck. The local government does not know how to handle the tsunami of permit requests that are piling up as the technology adoption goes mainstream. The people needed to handle the tsunami, both on the field and at offices, never get mentioned. So the situation really begs the question: How will we get this done?

We have entered a new era. For the first time in history, more people live in cities than rural areas. By 2050, 70% of humans will be in urban areas, 3 billion people will be added to urban centers, and more than 60% of metro areas that will exist in 2050 haven’t even been built. We are entering the age of urban data gathering. There’s an acceleration and a digital revolution that I like to call smart urbanity.

In this new smart urbanity reality, most jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t even been created. This is something that we need to talk about. What skills are needed? How can we upskill and create valid and appealing career pathways for the current workforce to prepare them for what’s coming?

In 2021, the United States passed the biggest infrastructure bill in history. Out of that historic bill, $65 billion will be allocated for broadband development. As mentioned, broadband is the new utility, and we cannot

deliver on the smart city vision unless we have fiber-ready cities, 5G deployed at full speed, and maybe other satellite technologies. Much of the funding that hasn’t been allocated yet to develop broadband can be used, if we do it smartly, to create projects that intersect to make the smart city project a reality.

If you are unfamiliar with the BEAD (Broadband Equity Access and Deployment) program and operate in the United States, check out www.fcc.gov. This is when plans are being drafted and collaborators and contributors are sought. Thought leadership is a powerful way to create traction and ensure that this massive funding is used in the best way. At the state level, there is a funding allocation for institutions and entities that develop broadband-related curricula and training. Why not leverage this, be forwardthinking, and create programs geared toward enabling a smart city-ready workforce?

At Neptuno, we are trying to be proactive about it, so we partnered with Broward

How public and private sectors can leverage federal and local government grants while embracing registered apprenticeship programs as the vehicle needed to create a strong, highly skilled, and diverse “smart city-ready” workforce.

“NO MATTER HOW MUCH WE TALK ABOUT FEATURES AND TECHNOLOGY, IF THE WORKFORCE TO DEPLOY THE INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDED IS NOT THERE, IT WON’T HAPPEN.”

College in Florida to start to create the pipeline of workers we will need. We are exchanging ideas and broadening our conversation because the points intersect. The more we connect the dots and are open to breaking the silos, the better we will realize the vision. We shall strive to create a diverse and inclusive workforce that has stackable credentials and ensures that workers can move from job to job, having a certifiable way to show they have the skills needed to get the job done. We have also embraced registered apprenticeship programs, TIRAP specifically, to develop smart city-ready technicians. TIRAP (Telecommunications Industry Registered Apprenticeship Program) was created by the Department of Labor in collaboration with the Wireless Infrastructure Association. Two years ago, there were only three occupations in this program. But because of the industry’s push, we now have 15 approved apprenticeship programs under TIRAP. Nothing says there could not be a smart city registered apprenticeship program where you develop your curriculum to the kind of jobs we need.

I didn’t know about apprenticeship programs at all a few years ago. I was surprised to learn that the embracement of apprenticeship programs and trade skills has been very successful in European countries like Germany and the Netherlands. The concept that you don’t have to attend university to have a middle-class, well-paying job is a bit foreign in the U.S.

An apprenticeship is an industry-driven, high-quality career pathway where employers can develop and prepare their

Smart City-Ready Workforce

How can we upskill and create valid and appealing career pathways for the current workforce to prepare them for what’s coming?

future workforce, and individuals can obtain paid work experience, classroom instruction, mentorship, and a portable credential. People confuse apprentices with interns. They are not the same thing. An apprentice is a paid full-time employee that has been trained specifically to the skills you require. One of the biggest and unknown employer benefits of apprenticeships is that through federal and local grant programs, an employer can recover up to $12,000 of the first year of salary of an apprentice. It’s an undeniable win-win proposition, especially when thinking of creating a smart city-ready workforce.

I’d like to close this article with one of my favorite quotes from Socrates: “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” That relates to infrastructure and workforce all the same.

CEO, Neptuno USA

Hollywood, Florida

With over 25 years of experience in the telecom industry, Leticia Latino van-Splunteren went from working for Merrill Lynch and Nortel Networks to extending her family business, Neptuno Group, in the U.S. in 2002. Her father founded the company in 1972 in South America, where they helped deploy some of the first cellular networks in the region and built over 10,000 towers. She has received many industry accolades, including being the “Most Connected Woman in Telecom” in 2022 by Conecta Latam and a “Transformative CIO” in 2021 by CIO. She has served in multiple Federal Communications Commission committees, including being part of the Telecommunications Interagency Working Group, which presented a report to the U.S. Congress in January 2023 on the state of the U.S. workforce. Neptuno has developed a neutral host with multi-edge computing technology branded as SmartTecPort.

The smart pole of the future includes: 5G wireless radio infrastructure, a wrap-around digital LED panel, multi-access edge compute + storage, and Edge DC system facilities

SmartTecPort

SAVING THE CITY

BY RON BLATMAN

With the pandemic, economic gyrations, and continued concerns about equity and climate change, how do we ensure a better future for our cities? Following decades of decline, most urban cores celebrated almost 20 years of improvement, a transformation now at risk. How did we get here, and what comes next? Saving the City is a unique documentary series asking and answering how we can make our cities better places for all.

Iam not a filmmaker who woke up one day and said, “Cities are a cool idea.”

I’m a finance and real estate guy. I also have a background in city government and a design background. I’ve been studying cities since I was a kid and thought that the best way to convey information about what different cities were doing, both good and bad, was to do something in the media.

America has always had a love-hate relationship with cities. Yet over 80% of us live in urban centers, a number expected to reach 90% by the year 2050. People are moving to cities to have a better chance for themselves and their kids, better education and health, and to connect and be together. In a city, there’s a sense of a public realm, public places, and we all own this together. We’re all in this together.

Saving the City is one of the most ambitious examinations of the urban experience ever undertaken, featuring a multi-part documentary film series along with a comprehensive educational curriculum; the objective of Saving the City is nothing less than the creation of an ongoing national dialogue about why cities are important, why we should care about their vitality, and how to make our cities into more desirable places.

For example, we filmed a comparative piece about why a large railyard development in San Francisco doesn’t have a public school. There were hundreds of kids that were living in the neighborhood of 10,000 people. They still haven’t built the school. When the kids turn 5, everybody leaves because there are no schools. In Vancouver, it’s just the opposite. Thousands of kids walk to school in downtown Vancouver every day, and it’s because

they built schools. But it’s Canada. They build not only schools but also parks, recreation centers, and seniors centers. In Canada, they build communities. In the U.S., we build developments, and there’s a difference between the two. The idea is that by contrasting these different approaches through storytelling, there’s a takeaway for how to do things better and improve outcomes.

The other driving force is to motivate people to get more excited about getting involved in their community. We’re going to be telling a lot of stories about individuals or small groups. In today’s world, when federal and state governments are largely broken, local governments are getting things done.

One excellent example is in Oklahoma City, a Republican city in a red state; they have voted four times to tax themselves for capital projects. It shows you that if you put the right programs together with the right kind of leadership, it doesn’t matter what your political background is. And that’s what we’re about.

We’re also exploring technology and cities. There’s a Toronto story where Google

wanted to build a huge development project, originally 190 acres along the Toronto waterfront in what was to be the ultimate smart city. It was through their Sidewalk Lab subsidiary, which they recently closed. They ran into a lot of political opposition, and those 190 acres were shrunk to 12, and that 12 acres eventually completely melted away because there were concerns that this was big tech trying to gobble up everybody’s data without their permission.

We also filmed a story in San Diego, where the city teamed up with General Electric in 2017 to install 14,000 new LED streetlights in the biggest Internet of Things contract ever done at the time. And of those 14,000 streetlights, 3,200 poles were fully equipped with sensors. And these sensors can tell you about the weather and traffic and have sound and video capabilities. A couple of years later, there was a highprofile murder on a downtown San Diego street. And after a while, somebody said, “Don’t we have cameras that could help us in the investigation?” So they went back to look at the tapes. Ironically, the San Diego Police Department was unaware that the

“THE OBJECTIVE OF SAVING THE CITY IS NOTHING LESS THAN THE CREATION OF AN ONGOING NATIONAL DIALOGUE ABOUT WHY CITIES ARE IMPORTANT, WHY WE SHOULD CARE ABOUT THEIR VITALITY, AND HOW TO MAKE OUR CITIES INTO MORE DESIRABLE PLACES.”

public works department had cameras on the poles. And then, it became a big political issue, raising questions such as: What kind of surveillance is this? What is it used for? Who owns the data? How long is the data kept? Who has access to the data? What rules were put in place for this data?

Nobody opposed trying to solve the murder, but it opened a Pandora’s box of questions. As a result, the San Diego City Council has recently adopted several rules

about what the police department can and can’t do.

They ran into the problem that most of the sensors wound up not working. They didn’t know what to do with most of the information they got because city departments weren’t prepared to handle it, and they could have bought more accurate and current information from a vendor.

That was the experience in San Diego. We had an interesting tour in Coral Gables, where

Ron Blatman Executive Producer, Saving the City San Francisco, California

they’re really on top of their work. But it was also a warning that technology doesn’t solve all problems. It still comes down to people and, sometimes, a little bit of common sense. We have interviewed over 90 people on camera to date and are now editing our opening episode and continuing to fundraise for the nonprofit series.

To learn more, including how to support this groundbreaking project, visit savingthecity.org.

Ron Blatman is executive producer for the Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis documentary series about making cities better places. He also created and produced the acclaimed Saving the Bay national PBS series, narrated by Robert Redford, about the history of San Francisco. The series won four regional Emmy Awards, including Best Documentary. Blatman previously worked in real estate development and finance in San Francisco and New York, as well as serving as director of business development in the San Francisco mayor’s office in the early 1990s. He earned an MBA in finance from Wharton and a concurrent Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a BA in architecture from UC Berkeley.

Domino Park, Brooklyn, New York

INCLUSIVE COMMUNITIES MAKE SMARTER CITIES

Michael Pegues and E.G. Nadhan discuss how an open and inclusive mindset with the purposeful application of technology has realized tangible, quantified outcomes for the citizens in a smart community.

The more connected we are, the more sustainable and resilient we will be,” said Michael Pegues, CIO of the City of Aurora, Illinois, and vice chair of Quad County African American Chamber of Commerce. Pegues was talking about being open and inclusive as a society, and when doing so, how do we ensure that people aren’t left behind? He made a strong assertion that it is the role of the government to make sure that those basic services of connectivity are being provided to everyone— including those that are underserved and disenfranchised. If we must be inclusive, then fiber or the internet is the foundation of a lot of that. We must get everybody connected as much as possible.

Purposeful connectivity and inclusivity was the theme that stood out in this fireside chat between Pegues and E.G. Nadhan, global chief architect leader, CTO organization at Red Hat. Nadhan started the chat by contrasting the role of the CIO vs. the CTO in bringing the community together. Pegues explained that a CIO traditionally has an inward-facing focus around policies, processes, driving efficiencies, and managing people and vendors, whereas the CTO has more of an outward-facing focus on the customer regarding the product portfolio and what they deliver. Cities are municipalities with their citizens being their shareholders. True to his word, Pegues chose to be the CIO even though the mayor had wanted him to be the CTO. Because for Pegues, “Execution is a

chariot of genius,” and for that to come true, that role needs to have a seat at the table and report to the mayor.

But it takes more than public sector CIOs like Pegues for inclusive communities to make smarter cities. It takes collaboration across public and private sector CIOs with an open mindset to drive the relevant areas around education, public safety, economic development, and citizen engagement. You must focus on the outcome-based collaboration and not necessarily the technology.

Nadhan highlighted open source as a common channel for collaboration to that end. Red Hat is the world’s largest enterprise software company with an open-source development model, taking the lead in engaging with the open-source community for software development and a global ecosystem for technology innovation around the clock. But really, it is about an open mindset. It is about reaching out and collaborating, obtaining diverse perspectives. It doesn’t matter who you are; your perspective matters, with a fair opportunity to be heard and included. That open mindset triggers the innovation that the world of technology has seen over the years.

In the public sector, shareholders are the citizens, explained Pegues. You’re trying to drive those areas around education, public safety, economic development, and citizen engagement. You must focus on the outcomes and not necessarily the technology.

“Communities matter when it comes to the public sector CIOs because the customers are the citizens,” asserted Nadhan, asking Pegues to characterize the role of the CIO in this context, who explained: CIOs must be advocates and ambassadors to say, “Here’s a solution, as crazy as it may sound,” and put those options in front of the mayor, chief of staff, executives, and city council. You have the elected officials, which is another dynamic you must get into from a political perspective because they’re managing the constituents. You must make sure they understand what you’re doing. And that gets back to the citizen engagement and using different tools to see the sentiment, so you don’t get those same 10 people, the citizens against virtually everything. When they don’t have that information to make informed decisions, we must provide it.

Pegues is a living example of a public sector CIO serving the needs of the broader community, including the underserved and

FIRESIDE CHAT: MICHAEL PEGUES & E.G. NADHAN

“THE MORE CONNECTED WE ARE, THE MORE SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT WE WILL BE.”

CIO, City of Aurora, IL Aurora, Illinois

Michael Pegues was appointed by Mayor Richard C. Irvin as the first-ever CIO for the City of Aurora in June 2017. He began his career in various IT support roles for AT&T and PepsiCo. Michael has held various senior IT leadership positions in HewlettPackard France, VSSB, and Morgan Stanley in Budapest and New York. He holds a bachelor’s from DeVry University and an MBA from Central European University Business School in Vienna.

the disenfranchised. There are probably less than 3% of African American CIOs nationwide, and when Pegues sees the community, he sees himself. With such leadership in place, the community hears they’re not being dismissed, they have valid points, and the government is listening to them and giving them feedback. It might not be the answer, but they’re listening. Some of the steps the City of Aurora put in place were listening sessions and sentiment analysis. They do surveys. The city leadership is very good with people, getting out in the community, and trust-building.

Perhaps it is providence that brought these two leaders together—Nadhan representing a leader in enterprise open source and Pegues being the community-oriented public sector leader. The open mindset that is common to both organizations and individuals has yielded outcomes. One of the biggest initiatives the City of Aurora is currently working on is knocking down the digital divide and broadband access. During the pandemic, schools were shut down, and kids had to do their schoolwork from home. And those underserved and disenfranchised were left behind. When we talk about being

open and inclusive, technology is a great way to ensure that people are not left behind. Technology can resist the status quo for the underserved!

It starts with the grassroots, explained Pegues. It starts with the municipalities. You must start at the city level; you need to take the initiative and move forward. That can become a model for the state and federal government and any other agency. For example, when COVID hit, the City of Aurora took the first step and set up mass centers for immunization, and it got over 70,000 citizens vaccinated before the state even lifted a finger. The governor decided to use that model for the state and scaled it out.

There you have it! The infrastructure required for sustaining smart cities requires active engagement from both the public and private sectors based on a foundation of purposeful collaboration with the engagement of the very citizens who will benefit from the outcomes. It takes communities (individuals and enterprises) across the ecosystem to work with each other.

Because, you see, “Execution is a chariot of genius,” like Pegues always reminds us.

Chief Architect Leader, Red Hat Naperville, Illinois

E.G. Nadhan is the global chief architect leader, CTO organization at Red Hat. As a practicing chief architect, Nadhan provides thought leadership on open innovation, cloud, quantum, analytics and edge through industry conferences and executive briefings. He has 25+ years of industry experience and engages in strategic dialogue to drive business outcomes for customers/partners. He is an IBM Quantum Senior Ambassador and a board member at The HDF Group.

E.G. Nadhan and Michael Pegues at the 2022 Smart City Expo Miami

Michael Pegues

E.G. Nadhan

GLOBAL SPONGE CITIES SNAPSHOT: THE POWER OF NATURE

BY VINCENT LEE

As cities face increasing threats from climate change, they need to fully understand how naturebased solutions and green infrastructure can mitigate these threats. Through the AI and land-use analysis tool Terrain came the Global Sponge Cities Snapshot, which evaluated cities’ capacity to absorb stormwater to determine their “sponginess.” The snapshot aims to get cities to leverage technology and think more about nature as an asset to be protected and enhanced.

Our cities aren’t just concrete jungles. Every blade of grass, tree, pond, lake, and lump of soil together form vital infrastructure. As cities face increasing threats from climate change—including heavy rainfall and extreme heat events—they need to fully understand this natural infrastructure and how to enhance it. But nature-based solutions have previously been seen as more difficult to implement and prohibitively expensive.

In our report with the World Economic Forum, BiodiverCities by 2030: Transforming Cities’ Relationship with Nature, we highlighted that nature-based solutions are, on average, 50% more cost-effective than man-made alternatives and deliver 28% more added value. Cities must commit to understanding and quantifying this natural infrastructure and learn how to enhance it. But advanced digital tools have been game-changers, transforming our ability to assess cities’ preparedness for future climate risks and identify opportunities for improvement. Thanks to AI and machine learning, we can now quantify the case for nature-based solutions, helping to better understand a city’s natural “sponginess” and how to enhance it.

Projects around the world—from Shanghai, China, to Mansfield, U.K.—are showing what is possible, and now is the time to accelerate their adoption on a global scale. That’s why we’ve produced our Global Sponge Cities Snapshot: to get people talking about how we can move beyond concrete solutions as we

help cities cope with increasingly heavy rainfall and other impacts of climate change.

The Case for Nature-Based Solutions

The term “sponge city” was coined in 2013 by Professor Kongjian Yu of Peking University, describing cities that work with nature to absorb rainwater instead of using concrete to channel it away.

Natural infrastructure is not only extremely effective in managing floodwater, but it also brings greater benefits than traditional engineered “gray” infrastructure and can contribute positively to biodiversity and carbon reduction.

While cities have a natural “sponge” quality, this is a baseline absorbency that can be improved through interventions. Our survey is not intended as a scorecard but to show cities how they can use digital tools to quickly establish a better understanding of their natural assets. Even the most “spongy” cities can enhance their absorbency and work with nature to deliver maximum resilience.

Nature-based solutions can also be applied to a host of climate change problems, such as extreme heat and drought. While they have previously been seen as more difficult to implement and prohibitively expensive, advanced digital tools have been game-changers.

How We Rate Cities’ “Sponginess”

We originally examined cities around the world with different urban profiles—from the densely packed Mumbai to Auckland, known

for its generous public parklands. Each city was given a sponginess rating based on three major factors: the amount of green and blue space within the urban environment, the hydrogeological properties of the soil, and the water runoff potential for green areas.

1. Using Terrain to Measure the Amount of Green and Blue Space

Terrain, our AI and machine learning tool, helps cities rapidly understand how land is used. It harnesses the power of data analytics, machine learning, and automation to accurately digest large quantities of data and satellite imagery—80% quicker than a manual approach. It recognizes patterns, producing detailed land-use maps and accurately calculating a region’s coverage percentage of different land types, such as grass, trees, hard-paved impervious land, buildings, and water. This automates the traditionally time-consuming task of deciphering a city’s typology. Terrain is 5x quicker than a manual approach, analyzing 20,000 square meters of land data per second. The technology is also highly accurate and can even distinguish between a tree nursery and a forest.

Terrain is being used worldwide to help planners and authorities understand how land is being used, as well as to conduct global surveys such as the Global Sponge Cities Snapshot, which assessed the natural ability of nine major global cities to absorb water and mitigate urban flooding problems based on their green and blue spaces.

For this study, we used Terrain to calculate the amount of green and blue areas in approximately 150-square-kilometer snapshots over the urban centers of Auckland, London, Mumbai, Nairobi, New York, Shanghai, and Singapore.

2. Accounting for Soil Types

Once we had the percentage of blue, green, and gray spaces for each city, we used a global database of hydrologic soil groups to calculate the amount of each major hydrological soil type in each city. Soil types have a significant impact on the amount of water runoff and, therefore, a city’s sponginess. This can be due to soil type and texture (e.g., sandy soils are “spongier” than clay-based soils) as well as depth of soil and depth to the water table. For example, a groundwater table close to the surface reduces the sponge capacity of the soil.

3. Calculating Water Runoff Potential for Green Areas

With the impact of soil type factored in, we used the Curve Number method to calculate the amount of runoff from a defined rainfall event. Imagine rain falling onto a surface: It’s either absorbed or “stored” in the soil or slowly makes its way to water bodies. Alternatively, it runs off the land and contributes to storm flow and potential flooding. The runoff is affected by vegetation cover, whether it’s a grasscovered open space or covered by trees. It also varies depending on the amount of rain. For our calculations, we looked at the runoff potential for 50 mm of rainfall in a day.

How Can This Help Cities?

We hope this snapshot starts a conversation and gives people an understanding and confidence that nature-based infrastructure solutions can be deployed, bringing more resilient, cleaner, healthier, and happier cities. Some specific areas of conversation include: Review spongy (and non-spongy) areas against flood risk maps to identify priorities for implementing green infrastructure.

• Identify the distribution of green space to help alleviate stormwater flooding, which generally aligns with the distribution of the public realm in cities (i.e., is absorption across the city distributed and equitable or occurring in one centralized area?).

• Trees that are mature with large canopies can help to increase absorptive capacity (as demonstrated by Singapore), which can support the case that urban trees provide myriad benefits.

Cities can learn from each other and get insight into how other cities with comparable land use and ground conditions are performing.

Over time, cities can track the performance of green infrastructure programs and land use planning. By leveraging readily available data and having an understanding of the existing “sponginess” in cities, the Sponge Cities Snapshot can help to influence and prioritize green infrastructure, stormwater resiliency, and land-use programs within cities.

Vincent Lee Water Engineer, Arup New York, New York

Vincent Lee has a wide range of experience in sustainable development, green infrastructure, and water management and serves as the Arup Americas East Civil + Water Engineering Team Leader and Arup’s Global Water Skills Leader. His engineering background has enabled him to implement water-resilient cities and communities worldwide. This expertise is built on a deep foundation of related work, including supporting NYC with its green infrastructure program for the last decade, developing Shanghai’s urban drainage masterplan, and leading the engineering effort for the Buoyant City: Miami Beach Historic District Resilience and Adaptation Guidelines.

© ARUP / ALBERT VECERKA / ESTO

Hunter’s Point South Long Island City, New York Hunter's Point South serves as a model of urban resiliency in handling floodwater.

FROM STARTUP NATION TO IMPACT NATION

BY TOBIAS MENDELOVICI

Israel is a model for tech investments and entrepreneurship, turning local and global environmental challenges into market opportunities. Examples include leading initiatives in water sustainable infrastructure; advancing sustainability in food security and nutrition; restoring the environment; and creating deep science-based innovation ecosystems that combine public-private partnerships, capital investment, climate technologies, and community-building.

Tel Aviv is a lively city, but it is also one of the world’s greatest innovation and technology hubs, with some of the highest number of startups per capita. But the most important thing that Tel Aviv has: people. It has entrepreneurs and creatives that, with passion and perseverance, never stop. In the last few years, we’ve seen a rise in new kinds of purpose-driven entrepreneurs; they’re building enterprises that are solving some of society’s greatest challenges. We call them impact entrepreneurs.

But entrepreneurs do not work alone; they’re part of a larger ecosystem. Innovation ecosystems in Israel are not limited only to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or other big cities. They have also been established in smaller cities in the countryside. For example, a small city in northern Israel has established a large food technology hub with research and development centers, startup incubators, accelerators, and laboratories. It attracts scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, companies, and other players to the region, enhancing the local economy and creating quality jobs. But not only this, visitors come from around the world to learn about innovation.

One of the key ingredients of a successful startup ecosystem is its ability to create partnerships. We need smart collaborations to tackle some of the huge issues that society is facing.

One of these issues is water scarcity. Israel is in one of the driest, most arid, and hottest places on the planet. Water scarcity has

always been a challenge for the population. I remember from my childhood in Israel that people panicked each time the water levels in the Sea of Galilee went down because most of the freshwater used to come from this lake. People even prayed that rain would fill the lake in dry winters. But today, the population doesn’t worry anymore because there is a new source of freshwater that provides abundant water: desalination, which treats saltwater and transforms it into drinkable water. Due to technological improvements that made it more affordable, large desalination plants were installed along Israel’s Mediterranean coast. Today, these plants provide a large portion of the nation’s freshwater. Israel today has a surplus of water. It has more water than it needs. This is quite amazing in a region that is so dry. There are plans to refill these lakes with water treated from the sea.

Another major achievement for Israel’s water sector and water security is recycling nearly 90% of its wastewater. This makes Israel the world leader in water reuse. I think in the U.S., it’s about 10%. The second one, after Israel, is about 40%. This is largely thanks to the construction of a big infrastructure project that collects and treats the sewage of Tel Aviv and its surroundings. After the sewage has been treated, it is transported through a long pipeline to the southern desert in Israel, where farmers use this water to irrigate their crops. About 70% of the water used in agriculture in the southern desert comes from this treated water. And with this, the desert flourishes, and the farmers produce plenty of fruits and

vegetables consumed locally and exported worldwide.

Food security and water are important, but so is the resilience of our natural ecosystems. With 700 startups and record investments over the last two years, it was big for Israel’s climate tech ecosystem. There are companies turning waste into energy to avoid waste going into landfills. Companies are using high-tech satellite technologies to monitor weather events, talking about alternative ways of creating energy. A lot of companies in the hydrogen space are trying to produce electricity in off-grid areas. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I hope that next year, we will build alliances that can contribute to your local ecosystem and that more and more people like us can work together.

“ANOTHER MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT FOR ISRAEL’S WATER SECTOR AND WATER SECURITY IS RECYCLING NEARLY 90% OF ITS WASTEWATER. THIS MAKES ISRAEL THE WORLD LEADER IN WATER REUSE.”

Mendelovici is the managing partner of the Tel Aviv-based Ocean Business, which provides consulting services for innovation-driven entities interested in promoting projects and business from Israel to global markets and vice versa.  His focus is on serving entities that are putting sustainability and technological innovation at the core of their strategies and are addressing some of the planet’s most critical challenges. Mendelovici is one of the key architects of the first Israel project to be accepted to the IFC. He graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in agronomical sciences and with a master’s from the University of Sydney in environmental science.

Tobias

Tobias Mendelovici Director, Ocean Business Tel Aviv, Israel

Mekorot’s Water Filtration Facility at Eshkol Reservoir in the Galilee

Israel’s National Water Carrier Winding Through Beit Nekofa Valley

Israeli Farmers Market

Shafdan Wastewater Treatment Plant, Israel

© AVI OHAYON/ISRAEL NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

© OCEAN BUSINESS

© MILNER MOSHE/ISRAEL NATIONAL PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION

SMART ANALYTICS FOR RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

BY SARBESWAR PRAHARAJ, PH.D.

A smart analytics platform designed at Arizona State University to integrate and analyze multiagency data offers many ways of visualizing big data to a non-expert target audience. This work contributes to a fast-growing conversation around geospatial data visualization technologies that are increasingly playing a vital role in shaping government policies, including resiliency planning and disaster-preventive infrastructure.

I’m a professor at ASU and associate director of the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience. We are looking at analytics, not analytics per se, for smart cities but resilient communities. We focus on leveraging data and technologies to support and build resiliency within the community. My work is funded through the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust’s $15 million donation to support this work over the next several years in the community.

Our motto is “Building Resilience with Dividends.” To illustrate this concept of resilience with dividends, you see a picture of a concrete river running through the city. Why do we build concrete rivers? Because this is an area that has faced tremendous threats from flash floods. However, the city in discussion chose another path. It tackled flood management not as an engineering solution but as a complex socioecological system, where we built a passive green infrastructure network that not only absorbs water to stop

the flooding but provides a magnificent open space right in the city where people can come and play. Flash floods and rain would occur probably two or three times a year in this desert landscape. Think about this space for the rest of the year. This is a beautiful park and a playground for the community all season. That is what we mean by resilience with dividends.

All our cities’ infrastructure and capacities are built to respond to emergencies rather than stopping and tracking those events from happening in the first place. Much about this problem in our mindset is elaborated in a book by Dan Heath called Upstream, a New York Times best-selling book that inspires our work. At the ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, we are building a new narrative on how our communities can come together to prevent crises from happening in the first place. We focus on knowing the community and want to find those community members interested in building the community.

We operationalized data infrastructure that can lead to knowledge exchange, a two-way exchange rather than a one-way communication. We have built several data tools and participatory solutions working with the community in the last two years, from looking at green infrastructure to addressing poverty differently. How do we find out who is poor and where they live? We have been tracking and dealing with evictions, which are the issues that occur right in the community and impact the most vulnerable.

We don’t want to talk about technology just for the rich and the superfluous. We want to understand how data and technology can track the poorest of the poor and who needs support from the community. We are looking at climate change because Phoenix is the hottest and driest city in the country. We are constantly tracking the temperature patterns and supporting communities with data. And, of course, during COVID, we have done active data tracking with the public health department to support tracing, tracking, and responding during the crisis. Let me discuss a couple of solutions in a little more depth.

We recently built a Tree Data Inventory Exploration Tool for the city of Phoenix. Each tree is important for the community. We don’t want to talk about big technology with less impact. We want to talk about small technology with huge impacts. We have traced and tracked each of these trees. That is a tremendous amount of work and years of data collection that the city has done. Our tool lets the community know which species, where, and what their condition is by zip code and by neighborhood; you can go there and

Scottsdale, Arizona Scottsdale tackled flood management by building a passive green infrastructure network that not only absorbs water to stop the flooding but provides a sphere people can play.

click and right now understand which trees’ conditions are good, which are fair, which are bad, and which need attention today or the next week.

Many tree tools across the U.S. have talked about green coverage across your neighborhoods but do not talk about the importance of species. Because this is an arid region, we do not want invasive species. We do not want species that consume more water. We do not want species with high BVOC emissions, which is the problem constantly faced by the city that has never been addressed. Many cities are expanding their tree coverage, saying we have gone from 15% tree coverage to 40%. But what is the quality of that green cover? Does that reduce your greenhouse emissions? Does it help minimize your air pollution? Is it a native or invasive species? We have tracked all these features and are making an impact not just for today but to address long-term climate change and extreme heat issues, and all that matters for community resilience.

We built the Height Poverty Dashboard

with data collected from eight agencies to give a granular picture of how the community is dealing with the economic crisis unfolding in our community. When I talk about poverty, what comes to your mind? How do we know where poor people live? Who are the people who are poor and need assistance during things like COVID? Over the last 60 years, you’ll be amazed to know our poverty measurement formula has not changed. And what is the formula the U.S. census uses? It looks at your diet in a day and converts that to a dollar amount, then determines if your income supports your food consumption.

Food is important for surviving, but does it end there? Our families need childcare and health care, but what happens to the rent, which has increased significantly in the last several decades, way more than food? This tool combines several factors into this poverty calculation. For the first time, we are looking at things like childcare, transportation, and health care costs, all of these put together to calculate a ballpark number for families of different types: if there is a one-adult family,

one adult plus one child, whether there are women in the family. When you go into this tool, you’ll see that you can drill down by various levels of county and neighborhoods, and you can see that less than half the number of people in poverty are documented and getting assistance. Those who did not get assistance during COVID will hopefully get it in the future. That’s what we need. How can our data reveal those people hidden by these big numbers and technologies? How can we find them out?

Overall, we are looking at problemoriented data that can identify unattended issues. The central part of our work has been engagement and co-creation with the community. We bring together the community to co-create data, test technologies, and design solutions. This way, we can address the resiliency challenges that are facing our communities. This could be a good model where you look at resilience, not just from infrastructure resilience but how we can build resilience within our communities with dividends.

Sarbeswar Praharaj, Ph.D. Associate Director, Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University Phoenix, Arizona

Sarbeswar Praharaj, Ph.D., is the associate director (data and visualization) and assistant research professor at the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning at Arizona State University. He is a senior global futures scientist at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Praharaj leads research on smart cities, data visualization and dashboards, and resilience. He engages in research-led interactive teaching and learning pedagogies in urban planning and geographical science.

Arizona State University Knowledge Exchange for Resilience, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning

POWER RESILIENCE, GRID STABILITY & UTILITY VIABILITY

BY PAMELA HAMBLIN

Want to build a power plant in the U.S.? While congress debates permitting reform, what technologies could help us get more energy on the wires, and what does this mean for the energy transition goals?

Want to build a power plant in the U.S.? Here are three things to know. First, connecting a big power source to the grid means getting in line. According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a typical project’s wait time has increased from around two years in 2005 to four years in 2021. Second, the interconnection queue is crowded. In April 2022, there were 1,400 gigawatts of projects in the queue. That’s more than the U.S.’s current fleet of generation. Third, dropouts are the norm. Only 25% of projects make it to completion. Why the bottleneck and long queues? Lack of transmission is the single biggest factor. We need more of it to bring power from rural areas with rich wind and solar potential to power-hungry population centers. But opposition and a complex permitting process have slowed the construction of new transmission to a glacial pace. While congress debates permitting reform, what technologies could help us get more energy on the wires, and what does this mean for the energy transition goals?

Energy Then vs. Energy Now

Energy has been historically generated by a centralized power plant. I visited a ghost town in California that was one of the state’s first gold-mining communities. Several power lines ran straight over the mountains through the Redwood Forest. They were straight because they didn’t know power could turn corners. This is where we were 150 years ago, and that’s the grid we still have. Most of our transmission and distribution lines were built 150 years ago. The average legacy facility can create 500 megawatts of power. With

renewables, we get an average of 1 megawatt out of one renewable generating station. To decommission these aging legacy units, we must replace them with many decentralized units of renewable generating capacity.

Integrating Alternative Energy

We are harnessing renewable energy resources, and by doing that, we’re going from centralized to decentralized power generation. That requires energy production and transporting it into a multi-lane, multidirection highway. It’s impossible to power in two directions on the same line. It is taking a lot of financial and infrastructure rebuilding to replace these lines and create transmission lines, the big ones that go down the highway that can take centralized power to local communities. The ones that jog off those to our towns and counties are our distribution centers. It’s like a spider web. This multidirectional energy fluctuation with transportation going one way of energy and another way of energy is creating a lot of instability in our grid and a lot of fluctuation affecting our reliability.

Utility Challenges

Utilities manage our power demand right now. Caught between a rock and a hard place, utilities are in jeopardy of going out of business because they can’t compete in our market. There are aging units creating these 500 megawatts of power with consistent demand. They were built in the 1950s and 1960s. They’re at the end of their life, and we’re not building any more of them; however, we’re not at a place where we can decommission them yet because we can’t get the power, the two-way traffic, of these transmission lines yet. There are massive financial penalties for the failure of the utilities to meet the carbon

emission goals. These requirements are in place without a way of feasibly getting there.

Coal Generation

There were 230 operational coal-fired plants in the U.S. in 2021. Those facilities generated 23% of our U.S. electricity in 2021. Coal was 19% of our generating capacity. Between 2010 and 2019, 40% of the coal generation was closed. Currently, we have 230; those are all slated to close in the next few years.

Plans for Closing

Many coal facilities were planned to close years ago. They’re failing because they’ve reached the end of life but are still operating—and operating outside of their design. For every plant we decommission, we must replace it with a new generation capacity because demand isn’t going down. If anything, it’s increasing. If we decommission 500 megawatts, we must replace that. The renewable microgrid average is about 500 kilowatts per generation. You would need two of those to replace 1 megawatt. We need about 1,000 microgrids to replace the legacy of one generating capacity.

Integrating Renewables

Everybody thinks that the utilities are just giving them a hard time. Why can’t we get this power on the grid? Why can’t we get approval? Why are utilities standing in our way? It’s not. It’s because the transmission lines can’t handle it. There are interconnection regions within our nation. Then there are also wholesale power markets. You have to get approval through the interconnection, meaning the transmission lines of your district. Then you have to figure out if you’re in one of the wholesale markets where power is traded as a commodity.

Regulated vs. Deregulated Markets

The regulated market is if you’re in a nonwholesale market. If you’re in a wholesale market, you’re in a deregulated market. When we are regulated, you have the consumer, a local electric company, and a power plant. You get your electricity directly from your local electric company, which gets it from the power plants they own. If you’re in a deregulated wholesale market, you buy electricity from your local electric company, which participates in a commodity market of energy through multiple power stations, and they can only compete on the fuel price.

Wholesale Energy Market

The wholesale market dictates a lot of what our fuel and energy prices will be. When you see the price of your electricity increase, it costs the utility more for your energy.

Energy is a commodity just like the stock market, and utilities buy and sell it. When they bid into the market, they must have availability.

They typically must start up in about 30 minutes. They have to be able to do that multiple times a day or week, and they have to ramp to full load within a minimum timeframe. If there’s intermittency in solar or wind power, the coal or the gas must ramp up immediately.

A typical power plant takes about 18 hours to go from a cold start to a full power load. But they have 30 minutes to get online. And if they don’t, they pay the price. So they keep these units on a low-load operation. They leave them units running. They’re dumping fuel and power because they can’t put it on the grid and leaving it warm so they can get there quickly.

It’s not efficient, and it’s running the units into the ground. What was already at the end of life is exponentially deteriorating, and failure is evident. They were slated to be out of service years ago; instead, they are extending the life. It’s a scary situation.

Interconnection Regions

There are four interconnection regions. If you

Pamela Hamblin CEO, Nuenergy Solutions Deerfield Beach, Florida

lose power on the Western Interconnection, you cannot go to the Eastern to borrow or buy power. Texas had a problem with a storm a few years ago because they are their own interconnection region. When that went down, they couldn’t get power from anywhere else. They are investing a lot of money in their interconnection and transmission distribution right now.

Queue of Interconnection

Projects to get renewable integration onto our grid cannot be approved until the grid can handle renewable generation. The grid must get upgraded: transmission distribution, sensors, substations, etc. 73%—998

gigawatts—has a proposed online date by the end of 2024. Only 13% of those, 183 gigawatts, have an executed interconnection agreement, meaning they can build now; it’s been approved. The grid can handle only 13%, and it will take a couple of years to get those built. Do you see how far behind the curve we are?

With over 25 years in management, business development, and operations in the energy sector, Pamela Hamblin has a vast knowledge of the dynamics involved in delivering safe, reliable, resilient, and affordable power. Having worked with centralized legacy and distributed renewable generation, she has a “big picture” understanding of the challenges facing the integration toward carbon neutralization. Her expertise spans energy generation, transmission, distribution, and energy markets. She has trusted relationships with many corporate-level power executives and has been published in numerous industry publications.

NEW 21ST-CENTURY SMART CITY INFRASTRUCTURE

BY DARRIN MYLET

Every city would like more reliable, resilient, cyberEMP+, secure highspeed connectivity for current and future applications and needs, yet it is impossible for current companies to expand their networks both technically and financially. Telosa Networks provides cities with networks faster than old fiber and 1/100 the time and cost of new fiber with all the benefits of easy extension, resilient design, and backup power.

What is the foundation of a smart city? Having the ability to connect things is a good place to start, and that begins with the wireless spectrum. This is the local spectrum that’s mostly underutilized. The secret to what I believe creates the foundation for making your city smart starts with empty rooftops, one of the most underutilized assets in any city in the world. We have mostly airconditioning units and empty space.

21st Century Networks

Here’s an example of what I believe is the foundation for the 21st-century network: the ability to put radios, antennas, and solar panels on the rooftops. This allows us to create more connectivity without digging up the streets, causing carbon emissions, or trading one monopoly provider for another provider and having an open-access network. In Miami, we’ve been testing the world's fastest wireless link ever deployed. It is doing almost 400 gigabits per second at 1.1 miles, can go as far as 3 miles, and will eventually do 4 terabytes of data through the sky without having to dig up one street. It has the ability to put another technology up that can do a gigabit down, and it can connect to anything that it can see within 360 degrees. It’s a flywheel of connectivity for both public and private needs.

Wireless Fiber vs. Glass Fiber

The idea of the 21st-century network is that we connect and end the network in data centers. There are six data centers in Miami. More edge data centers will be built out. There’s also a lot of rage about fiber, but I don’t believe fiber is the answer. We should have some fiber in our diet, but it doesn’t need to be all of our diet when compared to putting in 100-, 200-, and 400-gig links that can go a mile.

Engage Data Center / Edge

You must engage the data center. This is where the compute and storage is. You can decentralize the infrastructure. You can have sustainable wind and solar. You can have smaller edge data centers and route all the traffic back to that site.

Enable Fast Wireless Fiber

The next thing is the ability to extend these high-capacity links to travel long distances. We installed equipment at 100 Biscayne in Miami, and we’re connecting Opera Tower. This link has been stable for nine months. We’re continually adding capacity to it, and we plan to expand that. It is very exciting. It has a lot of capabilities and is really 21stcentury technology.

Enable EMP+ Protection

As you start building these networks, you must enable 21st-century protection.

Network protection is very critical because of lots of known and unknown threats that will be coming. City systems are critical infrastructure, just like the grid.

EMP Shield protects against lightning, which we need because our network is in the sky, but also against cyberattacks, where they can send surges into the network and knock down RF attacks.

Enable Drone / Air Taxi Sites

As we think about moving forward into the 21st century, we should embrace what the smart cities visionary James Carlini said in his book on next-generation real estate: “20th-century solutions do not solve 21st-century challenges.” We should be looking at new innovation to solve 21st-century problems. Developing more efficient transportation is one of those challenges.

In Miami, six companies have announced they will be flying drones or air taxis. This is a more efficient solution to commuting to the airport.  But as you look at the rooftops around our cities, there’s nowhere for them to land. A company called Drone Industry Systems has been working on developing the capability to put FAA-approved pads.

Enable Air Monitoring

Another important aspect of smart cities that networks enable is the ability to collect and

report data. There is one EPA air-monitoring center in Miami for 6 million people. We need to replace those. We need to do it cheaper, and we need to be able to get the data to the iPhones or smart screens in cities.

Enable Many Technologies

Having the network in the sky allows intelligent traffic. How often are we driving around cities, sitting at a red light, and nobody is on the other side? It’s a timer. How do we replace the timers? You must have a network with cameras to see what’s happening in real time.

Gun detection is another amazing technology that smart cities can enable. Imagine you’re in a school, a schoolyard, a parking lot, a mall, or even on the main streets. If someone pulls a gun, the cameras can see it within a second and report it.

The Conclusion Is Clear

As we talk about public-private partnerships, think about each city that’s spending money on 20th-century networks. They can easily move that money to the next generation and have their own infrastructure or have a partnership with a local provider to fund it and make it sustainable.

What about local reinvestment? This is the time for every city to take advantage because technological innovation is there. Nothing is stopping it. You don’t need approval. You don’t need to ask the FCC for spectrum. And tremendous amounts of capital are coming into this new asset class, which is called digital infrastructure. And this is exactly what this is. This is digital infrastructure. It can be done one city, one county, and one state at a time.

Mylet

Darrin Mylet is the CEO of Telosa Networks, which is in the business of planning, building, and operating new local fiber, fixed wireless networks for buildings and cities using 21st-century technology, a data center, and edge compute architecture to enable smart cloud applications like digital twins, ITS, drone, and air taxi networks. Mylet served two terms (2010/11-President Obama) and (2009/10-President Bush) for the Department of Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee administered by NTIA and was chairperson of the Wireless Spectrum Transparency Subcommittee.

Darrin

CEO, Telosa Networks Miami, Florida

Miami, Florida

Telosa Networks has installed the world’s fastest wireless link on a rooftop in Miami

© TELOSA

© JAYZYNISM/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

IMPACT OF INFRASTRUCTURE NETWORKS

BY ALOISIO PEREIRA DA SILVA

How does the model of infrastructure networks impact the growth of cities, from the deployment of networks on demand to modern models with integrated management in harmony with urban planning based and international standards on smart cities?

Is our infrastructure fit for a smart city? If you say no, I ask: Is underground utility the complete solution? The answer is still no. My research motivation was based on the high cost of construction and maintenance of infrastructure networks, accidents, and the great environmental impacts caused by these works, mainly the implementation of networks under the streets, causing the demolition of the pavement. This condition creates a big global economic impact and directly impacts saving people’s lives.

Cities are growing and need more efficient, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure. In the U.S., demand for infrastructure will be almost $4 trillion over the next 10 years. But today, our infrastructure is designed and built without integrated planning. We have several problems with this system around the road. In the U.K., £7 billion are lost yearly in these street works. We must review the infrastructure proposed for the 21st century, focusing on integration, intelligence, and climate resilience. The way to smart city infrastructure mainly leads to resilience, efficiency, and connectivity, among other parts.

I want to highlight the modern

international standards on sustainable infrastructure for smart cities and the importance of integration between all systems and stakeholders, as well as the complete lifecycle.

How do we achieve this integration? Primarily through integrated planning. We don’t just focus on the infrastructure. Technologies, such as technical galleries and joint trenches, have existed for decades to achieve this objective. But unfortunately, both have not shown improvements for a long time.

I would like to present Infracities Systems for the next-generation infrastructure and sustainable mobility for smart cities. This concept of ordering infrastructure networks developed using an American model during research in Texas; later, a pilot project was built and tested in Brazil.

Infracities moves all facilities under the streets and organizes natural gas, telecommunication, water, power lines, servers, and drainage under the sidewalk in wide lanes in recycled plastic bays made of urban waste, transforming plastic waste into efficient, safe, and sustainable infrastructure.

We built and tested a pilot project for two years in a technological park in Brazil with

successful results, a reduction in construction cost by 30% and a 70% reduction in maintenance and operation costs.

The system was born with the BIM concept, aiding the advent of a sustainable construction system for intelligent infrastructure and aiding even more to the projects, from their conception to their operational phases. All this is ready for use in the metaverse.

The construction process starts with opening the trench. Then comes the assembly of the plastic structure, which doesn’t require special tools. The facilities are installed under the pavement inside a structure made of recycled plastic. It is a standardized depth of 90 cm, facilitating the installation and reducing the risk of accidents for workers. It can be built in any city of any size.

Interconnected boxes for consumer networks are easily and quickly fitted to the structure. After the installation, the entire system is covered with sand, which facilitates compaction and especially its removal during maintenance. The paving is done with interlocked concrete blocks to facilitate future maintenance, presenting efficient and sustainable maintenance without demolition of the pavement, interrupting trafficking, generating waste, or new material consumption.

To fix or expand networks, it is only necessary to remove the interlocked concrete blocks and cover them and then act in the facilities. After working in the networks, the same material can be used, avoiding waste generation and the use of new materials.

The system presents great advantages compared to technical galleries with high

“INFRACITIES MOVES ALL FACILITIES UNDER THE STREETS AND ORGANIZES NATURAL GAS, TELECOMMUNICATION, WATER, POWER LINES, SERVERS, AND DRAINAGE UNDER THE SIDEWALK IN WIDE LANES IN RECYCLED PLASTIC BAYS MADE OF URBAN WASTE.”

Infracities Systems

To fix or expand networks, workers simply remove the interlocked concrete blocks. The same material can be used to cover them, avoiding waste generation and the use of new materials.

Benefits of Infracities Systems

• Construction of accessible sidewalks and bike lanes

• No more networks under the streets

• Low operating and maintenance costs

• Integrated and efficient management

• Shared construction structure made from urban waste

• Green drainage infrastructure

construction and operation costs and the joint trench with low operational safety. With Infracities Systems, the whole process is fast, easy, safe, and very sustainable.

The system can be used for private investors who build residential, commercial, and industrial condominiums or public authorities, such as revitalizing central areas in the cities.

The opportunity to share construction and maintenance costs between utilities reduces costs to users while providing central management, including a business model we

focus on: PPP.

The entire process presents standardized, fast, and efficient construction, saving time and money in a sustainable way. Recently, the system was upgraded with the implementation of drainage systems integrated into the trench and a new system for electric charging cars incorporated into the lead post. The technology has been presented around the world with several international awards. Working in partnership with several companies and institutions, creating opportunities for new business.

Founder & CEO, Infracities Florianópolis, Brazil

Dr. Aloisio Pereira da Silva is the founder and CEO at Infracities and creator of the Infracities System. Since 1997, he has worked in transportation and infrastructure with an emphasis on utility engineering, design, field construction, and construction supervision phases, as well as in research and teaching. He is a speaker at the world’s most relevant events and courses in infrastructure, mobility, transportation, and smart cities. He has received international recognition for his work, including an international agreement for the development of his research with one of the top infrastructure institutes in Europe.

Aloisio Pereira da Silva

THE GREAT CHALLENGE: INTEGRATING BETWEEN THE PHYSICAL & VIRTUAL

Pico Velasquez and Matteo Pietrobelli discuss the future of cities, integration of physical and virtual worlds, and implications of what this has to do with the metaverse and Web3 based on the floating city project Oceanix.

Oceanix is a visionary approach that considers different problems related to rising sea levels, overpopulation, and climate change. Its solution is an approach to climate adaptation, re-creating habitats and building them in coastal cities as a modular plug-in. Oceanix has the advantage of being completely decentralized by any legacy network. It’s not connected to the water grid, which allows it to be completely sustainable and use the UN’s SDGs as a design driver. “It all began with a desire to transform our vision in Oceanix from what is perceived as just a physical asset to a digital asset,” said Pietrobelli, CTO of Oceanix. “It became inevitable to associate the design with a smart city design.”

Velasquez highlighted the benefits of this approach: “By integrating physical and virtual components, we can create an immersive and dynamic data-based experience for residents and visitors. It allows us to think beyond the limitations of a traditional city, including its direct translation as a digital double, to create something truly unique and innovative.”

Velasquez explained that the virtual aspect of the project is crucial to its success. “The physical structures are just one aspect of Oceanix,” she said. “Its virtual infrastructure, from architecture to commerce and data management, is equally important, and we must ensure they are integrated seamlessly.”

Given this project’s architectural and

infrastructural complexity, Oceanix wants to focus more on the integration of physical and virtual. How will this play out? When speaking about the metaverse, most people initially associate it with virtual reality and video games. They think it will be a parallel platform not integrated with the physical world. Velasquez said that the highest value comes in one becoming the extension of the other.

How do these worlds feed each other the utility that they each bring? For this, Velasquez and Pietrobelli spoke about the different layers of spaces and programming, analysis and data, virtual extensions, commercial transactions, and more that can happen in integrating physical and virtual cities.

Pietrobelli, who is focused on the physical engineering of Oceanix, echoed Velasquez’s sentiment. “It’s not just about building structures that float,” he said. “We need to think about the entire ecosystem—from energy and waste management to transportation and community spaces.”

Within Oceanix, there will be residential, commercial, educational, cultural, and agricultural mixed programming. How does each of these spaces behave? And how is all that data being transacted between these parts? From its economy, currency, and marketplace to the type of experience that happens within them, these are all aspects that need to be designed. Additionally, these cities will have areas or extensions that will only be built out virtually, capable of hosting hundreds

of millions of virtual citizens at the same time. The future of physical + Web3 cities will be broken down in many categories and verticals. In Oceanix, one of them is the fact that it’s floating. The infrastructure and technology that go into these designs are very complex. When we envision a city, its physical and geographical placement, and the solutions to these environmental conditions are just the beginning. It’s then followed by different layers of data and its interpretation and optimization with IoT. These include traffic management, operating efficiency, and energy conservation. But another part is thinking that Oceanix will be decentralized, meaning citizens will own their data in a transparent manner, increasing trust and traceability across the network.

Velasquez and Pietrobelli challenged that with all these different nuances and technologies, how do you make a city more viable, evolving from infrastructure and economic transactions to becoming human-centric? This led them to discuss how the digital and physical assets that enhance the well-being of citizens and visitors can be captured to further improve future city experiences.

Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, the architecture firm supporting the Oceanix vision, highlights the need for a “holistic approach” to creating sustainable and livable communities. “Oceanix’s goal is to create a city that is not only self-sustaining but also provides a high quality of life for its residents,” he says. He emphasizes the importance of community

FIRESIDE CHAT: PICO VELASQUEZ & MATTEO JEAN PIETROBELLI

Pico Velasquez is a thought global leader and metaverse visionary. Trained as an architect and computational designer with distinction from Harvard University, she has been the computational architect and creative director of prominent multimedia projects, including Google’s new headquarters at BIG, Oculus at Hard Rock Casino & Hotel, and the video game Superforest. As the founder and CEO of VIIRA, Velasquez aims to further evolve the art, culture, and entertainment sectors by bringing companies into the metaverse and integrating them with blockchain, NFTs, and DeFi.

engagement and collaboration in designing and building a floating city that meets the needs of its inhabitants.

The first physical build of Oceanix is planned to be in Busan, South Korea, simultaneously hosting a digital economy and community. The opportunities for such are not only economical but social as it will create inclusion. It will allow people who cannot travel to South Korea to experience it virtually. It might not be the same type of experience, but it will provide a limitless framework of creativity, as well as help in envisioning how this type of solution can be integrated in other parts of the world.

Pietrobelli added, “The success of this project relies on our ability to collaborate and work together to create something truly

groundbreaking. By leveraging the strengths of both the physical and virtual aspects, we can create a floating city that sets a new standard for sustainable urban design.”

Overall, Velasquez and Pietrobelli are excited about the potential of Oceanix to be a model for sustainable, human-centered resilient urban development. “It’s not just about building a floating city,” said Pietrobelli. “It’s about creating a new way of living that is in harmony with the environment and meets the needs of communities.”

Velasquez agreed, adding, “There is a unique opportunity with Oceanix to push the boundaries of what’s possible in city development. By integrating physical and virtual architectural developments, we can create a truly innovative and sustainable city.”

Matteo Jean Pietrobelli CTO & Chief Engineer, Oceanix New York, New York

Matteo Jean Pietrobelli is a structural, civil, and systems engineer with a track record executing complex multibilliondollar construction projects spanning transportation, marine, and highrise structures. He currently works as the chief engineer and CTO of Oceanix City, a cutting-edge climate/ blue technologies development and integration company for floating infrastructures.

Pico Velasquez Founder & CEO, VIIRA San Francisco, California

Oceanix City

Oceanix City

© OCEANIX / BIG-BJARKE INGELS GROUP

© OCEANIX / BIG-BJARKE INGELS GROUP

IT’S NOW OR NOW

BY EDWARD MAZRIA

The road to zero emissions and transforming the global built environment to keep 1.5 degrees C alive while addressing the most pressing issues of our time: urbanization, energy, and climate change.

There’s an old saying in the U.S. by famous New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up someplace else. So where are we going, and how do we get there?

We are now at 1°C and beginning to see the dramatic effects of climate change. By 2040, the world population is expected to increase by 1.34 billion, and the world urban population is expected to increase by 1.4 billion. Urbanization will absorb the entire population growth estimate between now and 2040. In the U.S., 83% of our population, or 279 million people, live in cities. That’s expected to increase to 87% by 2040 and 90% by 2050. We know that urban environments are responsible for 72% of all human-produced greenhouse gas emissions, with much of that attributed to its buildings. To reduce urban emissions, we must address the entire building sector—building operations, construction materials and site work, and associated infrastructure.

In the U.S., prior to 2005, building sector floor area, operating energy use, and CO2 emissions increased in tandem. It makes sense. As we added to our building stock, sector energy consumption and emissions went up. This has been happening since the Industrial Revolution.

From 2005 to 2021, something extraordinary happened. As governments and building sector professionals were alerted to the fact that buildings were responsible for a large portion of U.S. CO2 emissions, building sector floor area continued to increase, but energy use didn’t

go up, and greenhouse gas emissions went down 26.6% from 2005 levels. This decoupling of energy consumption and emissions from growth is unprecedented in modern U.S. history. We are now beginning to see a similar decoupling in the global building sector.

Today, over 70% of the electricity generated in the U.S. goes to operate buildings; globally, the percentage is nearly 55%. Utility-scale solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest options for new electricity generation in the U.S. and much of the world. In 2020, renewable power was the only energy source for which demand increased, while the consumption of all other fossil fuels declined. Renewables are expected to keep growing dramatically. Today, about 40% of the electricity generated in the U.S. and worldwide is non-CO2 emitting, and that percentage is expected to grow each year for the foreseeable future.

Can we meet the 1.5°C target set out in the Paris Climate Agreement? Yes, but we must rapidly accelerate decarbonizing new buildings, existing buildings, and the embodied carbon in buildings and infrastructure. To accomplish this, all new buildings and major renovations must be designed to high-efficiency standards, use no on-site fossil fuels, and the energy used must be on-site renewables and/or off-site renewable electricity. The 2030 Palette (2030palette.org) provides the strategies needed to plan and design to zero carbon— everything from regional, city, town, and district planning strategies to transportation, site work, and construction materials.

We also know that by 2040, two-thirds or more of today’s buildings will still be in use. A small percentage of very large buildings in a city—1.5% to 5% of the building stock—are responsible for about half of a city’s buildings’ emissions. To address these buildings, policies with incentives (e.g., fast-track permitting, low-interest loans, tax abatements, on-bill financing, and efficient equipment rebates) should be enacted that require them to get to zero carbon by 2030.

For the smaller buildings that make up a vast majority of the total building stock in a city, zero carbon policies that achieve decarbonization no later than 2040 should be enacted with incentives at building intervention points (e.g., point-of-sale, zoning or use change, or a major renovation).

Coupling decarbonization upgrades with these and other building interventions can make it more cost-effective to electrify, increase energy efficiency, and incorporate

Edward Mazria Founder & CEO, Architecture 2030 Santa Fe, New Mexico

Edward Mazria is a renowned architect, author, researcher, and educator whose seminal research into urbanization, climate change, sustainability, and energy in the built environment has redefined and dramatically expanded the role of architecture, planning, design, and building in reshaping our world. He is the founder and CEO of Architecture 2030, a think tank developing real-world solutions for 21st-century problems. He has garnered numerous awards, including the Lifetime Achievement from the National Council for Science & the Environment, World Green Building Council Chairman’s Award, Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization’s 2021 President’s Award, and the 2021 AIA Gold Medal for his “unwavering voice and leadership” in the fight against climate change.

renewable energy systems.

The embodied carbon emissions from building materials, construction, and site infrastructure are responsible for about half of the carbon footprint of new structures over their lifespan. These emissions can be dramatically reduced through regulations, zoning, land use, incentives, and procurement policies, including requiring construction within a zoning designation to meet embodied carbon requirements, requiring life-cycle embodied carbon limits that define the maximum carbon impact of a new project, and setting fixed carbon limits for key construction materials such as concrete, steel, bricks, glass, gypsum board, and insulation.

It’s now or now. By enacting policies, regulations, and incentives, cities and local governments have a unique opportunity to accelerate the development of sustainable, resilient, and equitable zero-carbon buildings and communities both in the U.S. and globally.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

This environmentally friendly tower in Amsterdam is set to become the tallest wooden residential building in the Netherlands—proof that buildings of this type can be erected with materials other than concrete and steel.

Seattle, Washington

The Kolstrand Building by Graham Baba Architects was repurposed and upgraded instead of being torn down and rebuilt.

CO-CREATING A REGENERATIVE BLUE ECONOMY FOR ALL

BY DANIEL KLEINMAN

As the challenges of climate change and ocean degradation continue to grow in urgency and scope, so must the system to support solving them. Not only do we need to support the development of communities and solutions but also focus on growing larger innovation ecosystems and value chains for ocean and climate impact and technologies.

The greatest barriers to solving climate change and marine degradation aren’t technical. They are barriers to opportunity, implementation, and collaboration for people, solutions, and regions. A bottom-up approach for holistic regional development is necessary to break down systemic barriers for ocean and climate impact, which enables leveraging the other 71% of our planet as an asset against climate change. Not only do we need to support the development of communities and solutions, but we also think bigger by growing innovation ecosystems. Altogether, this bottom-up approach is key to unlocking the untapped talent and ideas that will drive the scale of regional innovation needed to collectively regenerate our blue planet.

The traditional ocean economy, known as the blue economy, has largely failed to support the development of solutions for the most urgent issues facing our blue planet: overfishing, sea-level rise, plasticization, pollution, and climate change. A lack of funding for oceanographic research and development, a private sector dominated by the defense and fossil fuel industries, and a perpetuation of limited career paths in the marine sciences all present significant systemic barriers to ocean innovation. Having spent five years in marine robotics across academia, research, and industry, I witnessed firsthand the minimal opportunities to contribute to planet-positive ocean solutions.

Furthermore, sustainability is only a step toward mitigating these problems—it doesn’t solve them. The New Blue Economy

needs to be regenerative, going beyond sustainability to build holistic systems of solutions instead of siloed incremental efforts. This means driving local and regional social and economic development to collectively turn the tide on worldwide environmental decline. Seaworthy Collective was established to overcome the systemic and socioeconomic roadblocks to ocean and climate impact.

Seaworthy Collective is a Miami-based 501(c)(3) ocean innovation (aka BlueTech) incubator and community. Our mission is to enable access and inclusion in innovation for ocean and climate impact. We envision oceans of opportunity without barriers, where everyone can contribute to solutions making positive changes for our blue planet. We empower Sea Change Makers—supporting early-stage and aspiring entrepreneurs globally across diverse backgrounds and impact areas—who drive innovation for 71% of the planet (our ocean) to regenerate 100% of the planet.

Seaworthy has amassed a global network of 2,250 members, 250 mentors and collaborators, and investing partners with over $1.4 billion in assets. Seaworthy’s community programs, including the Climate Community Social Hour and Sea Change Makers Speaker Series, have educated more than 3,500 people over two years. Seaworthy’s startup programs, with its flagship Venture Studio and new Founder Mentorship Program, have supported 20 startups and 48 founders across four continents over two cohorts. Seaworthy startups have raised $6.5 million within

one year of graduating, with 35% of founders coming from underrepresented backgrounds.

So, what can you do? On the funder level, if you’re in philanthropy or investing, you can look at supporting developing ecosystems, the people developing the deal flow and the pipeline of talent and ideas. If you’re looking to get into ocean entrepreneurship, there are venture studios like us and other accelerator programs like Endeavor that can help co-create or grow your solution. Even if you aren’t ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship and want to support the entrepreneurs and ideas and solutions we need, everyone can be part of the community. There are no prerequisites. And that is how we build up not only the financial capital but also the human capital that we need to see the development of our local blue economy.

“THE NEW BLUE ECONOMY NEEDS TO BE REGENERATIVE, GOING BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY TO BUILD HOLISTIC SYSTEMS OF SOLUTIONS INSTEAD OF SILOED INCREMENTAL EFFORTS.”

Nicholas Key is a Jamaican seaweed farmer helping fisher folk whose families’ livelihoods have been taken away due to overfishing by giving them work that’s not only regenerating the environment but also bringing them out of poverty.

Daniel Kleinman is a systems thinker and marine roboticist who has piloted, tested, and designed unmanned underwater vehicles for ocean science, exploration, and naval research. Throughout his career spanning research, industry, and academia, Kleinman saw significant barriers and minimal opportunities to contribute to planet-positive ocean solutions. He founded Seaworthy Collective to overcome the silos he and fellow environmentally passionate changemakers faced by building the community and programs to support current and aspiring innovators driving regenerative ocean and climate impact.

Daniel Kleinman Founder & CEO, Seaworthy Collective Miami, Florida

Kind Designs

Anya Freeman is in Seaworthy Collective’s first cohort, 3D printing seawalls locally and building coastal resilience.

Nicholas Key

Seaworthy Collective Team

© SEAWORTHY COLLECTIVE

© SEAWORTHY COLLECTIVE

RISING SEA LEVELS ARE THREATENING OUR CITIES

BY ANYA FREEMAN

Kind Designs is using 3D printing technology to print living seawalls that mimic coral reefs and mangroves, hosting biodiversity and improving the quality of water.

Before I dive into what we are doing with Kind Designs, I would like to rewind and give you context about how we arrived at this idea. I’m originally from Ukraine, I grew up in Israel, and I got the opportunity to come to America in high school. I’ve always had this fire of not wanting to squander the opportunity of being in this country. I’m passionate about making the most of it— and making my parents proud because they took this journey for my brother and me, not for themselves.

After graduating high school, I came to Miami because I got a scholarship at UM Law School. As a lawyer, I was a prosecutor doing human trafficking work. But I started to think about what I wanted to do next. I knew that what I did had to have a huge scale, and I had to have a huge impact.

Living in Miami, a very obvious problem for our city is rising sea levels. This is discussed very frequently theoretically, but if you live here, it’s part of your day-to-day experience. The way I experienced it when I moved here 10 years ago and the way I experienced it today are drastically different. There is way more flooding. There are way more storm surges. So I looked into how we protect our coastal communities from rising sea levels.

Conventional Seawalls Are Failing

I looked at conventional seawalls and realized there has never been innovation. The very first seawall that was installed 100 years ago is the exact seawall that’s going into the water today. Never has anything

been innovated, and no technology has ever been applied. I got excited about the opportunity. And even though, at the time, I had no construction or technology experience, I had such a passion for coming up with a solution that I put together a team that had the missing pieces.

The way that conventional seawalls look now is just flat, concrete seawalls. The problem with these seawalls is they’re very slow to produce and they are expensive. Contractors spend $25 a square foot to make their own panels using molds. And once you put in a flat seawall like this, all the biodiversity that lived in this habitat can’t attach. Toxins are coming out of the concrete. Sea life leaves the area, and water quality is dramatically reduced. The problem is the speed, the cost, and the environmental impact.

We’re Printing Next-Gen Seawalls

What we are doing in some ways is identical to conventional seawalls. And in some ways, it’s radically different. In the way that it’s identical: Firstly, it’s structural. Our seawalls have the same PSI and strength as conventional seawalls to meet building codes. Secondly, it’s the same installation methods. Contractors who buy our panels can substitute them and all of their projects in the pipeline with the same installation. And thirdly, to meet building codes, we are using concrete with the exception that we have an additive that prevents leaching. The seawalls do not leach any chemicals into the ocean, and, therefore, things can attach and grow.

The way that our wall is radically different is the design. We use 3D printers. We have autonomous printers that work 24/7 in a warehouse, spitting these panels out in 45 minutes per panel. It used to take 24 hours to make a panel with a mold. It’s dramatically faster. And we also have freedom of design. The robots don’t care if the panel’s flat or if it has a design. We’re using biomimicry to create these beautiful panels that mimic artificial reefs and mangrove roots. Therefore, biodiversity can latch onto the wall, hide from predators in the cave, and these walls become self-mitigating.

We did a project in Europe, an artificial reef using our printers and our materials, to show that sea life attaches to these materials and it hosts biodiversity. Consequently, when organisms attach, they deposit their skeletons into the wall, becoming like bio-cement, and the skeletons sequester carbon.

It’s an incredible empowerment of nature to do its thing. We have built-in sensors in the seawall. And the key is all those environmental benefits are at no added cost. We are selling these panels to contractors at $25 per square foot, the same price it costs them to make their own. It’s just a no-brainer to use these panels, which are delivered. They save all that construction time and have all the environmental benefits.

Our robots arrived in Miami in January 2023. We’ve been doing all our lab testing so far in Europe with our partners in the

Kind Designs uses autonomous 3D printers to create environmentally friendly seawalls using biomimicry to create beautiful panels that mimic artificial reefs and mangrove roots

© KIND DESIGNS

© KIND DESIGNS

Netherlands. We are fundraising now to open the warehouse in Miami. We already have $2.5 million in orders. We just need the funds to start executing these orders. We’ll have revenue from day one. We’re doing the monthlong training with our team and just starting to mass-produce the panels and expand.

Because rising sea levels are not a Miami problem. Globally, there are 507 cities at risk. And we’re excited to be able to offer our technology to those cities, empower local contractors and give them a solution that is not only economical for their community but also fantastic for the environment.

Anya

is

later opened her own law firm focused on environmental policy. Inspired by the opportunity to innovate around rising sea levels, which threaten Florida, Freeman took on the task of finding the team and the technological solution to this global challenge that both protects coastal communities and supports the environment.

Freeman

originally from Ukraine and has lived in Israel, South Africa, and China before settling in Miami to attend law school. She

Anya Freeman Founder & CEO, Kind Designs Miami, Florida

Kind Designs Artificial Reef

Kind Designs Sea Wall

BUILDING A WATEROPTIMIZED MIAMI: WHAT CITIES CAN DO TO MOVE FROM WATER SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE

BY CLOVIS SARMENTO-LEITE

How can city leaders, policymakers, and regulators use the City Water Optimization Index to make resource, investment, and policy decisions to optimize urban water systems to ensure the reliability, accessibility, and sustainability of water, both today and tomorrow?

To safeguard the reliability, accessibility, and sustainability of urban water resources in the face of aging infrastructure, increasing populations, climate change, and other water challenges, cities need to think of water optimization as a circular process rather than a linear relationship.

The City Water Optimization Index, developed by Economist Impact and supported by DuPont Water Solutions, investigates how 51 cities around the world (including Miami) are ensuring that all end users have access to safe, affordable, and reliable water, both now and in the future.

At Smart City Expo Miami, we explored how city leaders, policymakers, and regulators can use the Index (and Miami’s unique data) to make resource, investment, and policy decisions with the goal of optimizing urban water systems to ensure the reliability, accessibility, and sustainability of water, both today and tomorrow.

Virtually everywhere we looked, we found signs of severe water scarcity: acute water stress from Los Angeles, Mexico City, Santiago, and Madrid to Baku, Dushanbe, Riyadh, and beyond. But we also found signs of promise. Low- and middle-income cities (such as São Paulo, Sofia, and Medellin) earned among the highest marks, showing that preparing for a water-scarce future—for all the challenges, financial, political, geographic,

or otherwise—doesn’t have to break a city budget. Better yet, low-cost steps such as finding and plugging leaks, updating building codes to incentivize water conservation, and instituting real-time monitoring are among the most effective for improving water reliability, accessibility, and sustainability.

The mundane—fodder for water-district meetings and regulatory findings and sewer commission hearings—may well be what helps save cities’ water supplies. These sorts of actions are likely to enjoy broad support. Roughly 74% of those surveyed—5,100-plus people around the world—expressed “growing concerns about the safety and security of their drinking water.” In cities in developing nations, such as Mexico City, Pune, and Kathmandu, the figure climbs as high as 82%.

This, in short, is not merely a challenge; for city leaders, it is an opportunity. Incorporating the use of reclaimed water, for example, is backed by more than half of those surveyed for the Index—and by 67% of those surveyed in low- and middle-income cities. Meanwhile, reimagining water as a circular rather than a linear process unlocks enormous benefits for local water supplies.

Those are the sorts of gains that can be locked in through regular audits and accounting, real-time management, and public education to ensure continued high support for conservation and reclamation. They can be further reinforced by expanding

sewer connectivity, incorporating AI-powered monitoring platforms, and instituting water reclamation.

Water scarcity isn’t a mere byproduct of climate change; as UNICEF puts it, “Change in climate is felt primarily through a change in water.” Preserving our water resources—and ensuring they remain reliable, accessible, and sustainable for the years and generations to come—is the challenge of our time, especially for the local leaders on the front lines.

This Index offers a playbook on how to address this challenge. Courageous local politicians, policymakers, and regulators can seize this moment and make their cities international models for preparing for our climate future.

“THE CITY WATER OPTIMIZATION INDEX INVESTIGATES HOW CITIES ARE ENSURING THAT END USERS HAVE ACCESS TO SAFE, AFFORDABLE, AND RELIABLE WATER, BOTH NOW AND IN THE FUTURE.”

The 2021 City Water Optimisation Index

Achieving reliable, accessible and sustainable urban water systems through innovation and collaboration

SUPPORTED BY Client Logo TM Water Solutions

Clovis Sarmento-Leite

Enterprise Sustainability Leader, DuPont Water Solutions

Miami, Florida

Clovis Sarmento-Leite serves as an enterprise sustainability leader within DuPont Water Solutions. He supports the sustainability strategies of multinational industrial companies across a range of markets and helps identify and scope important water sustainability challenges. Before joining DuPont, Sarmento-Leite led the global marketing and sales organization in Safbon Water Technology and held many roles with Suez, GE Water, and BetzDearborn. He holds a bachelor’s in chemical engineering from UFRGS, Porto Alegre, Brazil, and an executive MBA from FIU in Miami.

SDG 11: CITIES AND STARTUPS RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

BY MICHAEL LAKE

What does it mean to be a smart city, and how can local governments leverage today’s innovative solutions to achieve sustainability and resiliency goals for communities? National governments continue to set goals and make promises to combat climate change and limit global warming; however, cities are the lever that can tip the scale toward a more sustainable future.

There’s no shortage of challenges for cities to solve, but one of the greatest challenges is climate change. Approximately 95% of the world’s cities are coastal, so sea level rise alone threatens most cities. If your city is underwater, none of the other issues—crime, education, waste collection, affordable housing, and all these important issues for day-to-day life—exist anymore. We have to deal first and foremost with climate change.

Leading Cities

Leading Cities plays a critical role between cities and startups. We connect communities with the solutions of the future. It’s now one of the top GovTech accelerators in the world. This year, we started with over 550 innovative solutions from 70 countries. These innovations are being created every day all over the world. Our network of experts vets those solutions that can help advance the adoption of innovative solutions in communities across the globe.

Smart Cities = A Sustainable Planet

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise. We need to take responsibility to think about the opportunity we will create from this threat to humanity. Smart cities equal a sustainable planet because we don’t achieve global sustainability when 70% of our carbon emissions come from our cities, which occupy only about 3% of the world’s land mass.

The challenges that smaller cities face in terms of adopting new solutions are different from the challenges larger cities face. If cities aren’t aware of the options and solutions available, how do they have the faith and confidence in choosing the best, most innovative solutions for their

community? That’s where Leading Cities comes into play. Our AcceliCITY program, through our network of experts, sources and vets innovative solutions to help cities better understand what’s out there and have more confidence in those existing solutions.

Government Action

We’re on the right trajectory, but from 20162040, an estimated $94 trillion in global infrastructure investments are needed. At $3.7 trillion a year being spent, there’s at least a $15 trillion gap. And that’s just replacing and maintaining existing infrastructure.

We can help close this gap through public-private partnerships; but first, there’s a missing P, and that’s the personal piece. We cannot achieve global change if everybody doesn’t adopt their own behavioral changes. We need to recognize that the KPIs we use in government and the private sector have to measure our impact on the planet, not just now but for generations to come.

When 21st century technologies are being developed at light speed, you can’t have a decision-making process that takes 18-24 months. Most startups will be out of business waiting two years for a client to decide if they will receive the contract.

21st-Century Procurement

Innovation in procurement systems is an amazing way to connect a city’s needs while also empowering and challenging innovators to create the solutions of the future. We can’t expect the government to do everything. Entrepreneurs are the great innovators. Bringing them into the fold so that they better understand the problems is a perfect way to match the skills of the city and entrepreneurs. By approaching procurement in a more challenge-based way, we can better define the problem and get the government out of the way of prescribing the solution.

Smart & Sustainable City Possibilities

Leading Cities partners with cities to help them define their challenges. They put forward a prize of a paid pilot program, and we globally source and expert-vet the solutions, building both a city’s awareness and confidence in new solutions. We connect the dots.

Street Lighting+

Approximately 66% of the world’s energy is consumed in our cities. One of the best examples of deployed smart city solutions is LED lights. Just reducing the energy consumption is a step in the right direction.

“SUSTAINABLE CITIES BEGIN WITH ALL OF US. IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PARTNERS YOU ENGAGE, THE STRATEGIES YOU’RE CREATING, THE INVESTMENTS YOU’RE MAKING, AND THE OPPORTUNITIES YOU CHOOSE TO SEIZE.”

But to take it a step further, some technologies turn those poles into smart poles that use wind turbines and solar panels to generate electricity and battery storage to create virtual power plants.

Biodiesel Fleets

Cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s carbon emissions. Two of the biggest emitters are vehicles and buildings. One challenge for cities in tackling these emitters is that they don’t control most of the vehicles or buildings in their city. This is where the private sector comes into play, as they control large fleets, and there are plenty of opportunities to convert existing vehicles, not just new ones, into biodiesel fuel.

Plastic Waste

About 60% of the plastic in our oceans originates in cities. Some project that we will soon have more plastic in our oceans than fish; and even more concerning is that, on average, each person consumes about a credit card worth of plastic each week. Fortunately, one solution is filtering and collecting microplastics of the water. Another solution destroys plastic waste by using worms to eat the plastics and

convert them into fertilizer.

Then there’s repurposing of plastic waste, whether it’s turned into fertilizers or building materials. One solution turns everyday plastic waste into 3D printing material to produce new objects from the same plastic. Finally, there are innovative solutions that create alternatives to plastic using organic waste to generate materials that simulate how we use plastics but are organic and fully biodegradable.

Water Conservation

Only 1% of the Earth’s water is drinkable, and yet we are wasting that water. Think about how much water we use to flush our toilets and water our lawns. I want to highlight this because not all these solutions have to be high-tech. An innovative grass seed mixture produces grass that grows 4- to 6-foot roots. This results in a 75% reduction in water needed to maintain it. It also sequesters 10 times more carbon than traditional grass. And you only need to mow it once a month. To give you a sense of the impact this can have: If one-third of the lawns in the U.S. used this grass, it would produce the carbon offset equivalent of removing every vehicle from the road in America.

Michael Lake President & CEO, Leading Cities Boston, Massachusetts

Water Treatment

The other issue that we have in our water treatment is organic micropollutants. Over 100 pharmaceuticals can be found in our water, whether expired or unneeded pills that have been flushed down the toilet. It ends up in the water, and current wastewater treatment facilities can’t filter that out. An enzyme-based, sand-like material can be used as a plug-and-play solution for any water treatment facility.

The point is that we have a plethora of problems, but because of the entrepreneurs and the people passionate about solving these problems, there are also many innovative solutions. We need to act, and that means connecting the government with these startups and deploying solutions to generate the change the world needs. It’s time to get past our rhetoric and focus on action. Sustainable cities begin with all of us. It’s all about the partners you engage, the strategies you’re creating, the investments you’re making, and the opportunities you choose to seize. Together, we can continue to advance today’s solutions to overcome tomorrow’s challenges.

Michael Lake is the president and CEO of Leading Cities, which globally sources, expertly vets, and connects municipal and industry leaders with solutions, best practices, and expertise needed to develop smart communities. Lake establishes and develops relationships with municipal governments, businesses, nonprofits, and universities, creating a global network dedicated to implementing smart and resilient city solutions. AcceliCITY, a signature program, is now ranked among the top three GovTech accelerators in the world—providing pilot projects, startup funding, and curriculum to entrepreneurs globally.

RETHINKING CLIMATE ADAPTATION

FIRESIDE CHAT: GALEN TREUER & ALEX HARRIS

Sea level rise and a hotter ocean are worsening the impacts of natural disasters. Alex Harris and Galen Treuer discuss the need to try new approaches and what might work to allow us to continue to live and thrive in this home we have built on low-lying porous bedrock.

Alex Harris: Miami-Dade County’s Extreme Heat Action Plan talks a lot about how we handle extreme heat and breaks down who’s affected and what we can do, including tree planting, changing policy regulations, and putting more money into programs that renovate, cool, and fix substandard housing. I want to talk to you about how that approach to problems, specifically Miami-Dade County, can look at climate. How do you think we’re looking at it now, and how does that need to shift?

Galen Treuer: I work with the private sector every day. I talk to businesses and folks in academia who want these innovations. I’ve been listening to them and trying to help them. One of the major things they need is to place their stuff in the ground and try it out. But we’re a huge county with 2.8 million people and vastly different access to resources.

AH: How do you breach that? As reporters, we’re taught to be more skeptical. Tech has a lot of beautiful, gorgeous visions of the future and promises it can make. How do you ground it from the great ideas to the reality of what local governments have the budgets and need for?

GT: When I talk about climate tech, it’s not just software, and it’s not just digital. One key climate tech that we have is bringing more plants and living things into the city. That is technology, knowing how to keep those plants alive with 200 mph wind. There’s a way you prune the trees and give them enough roots, but that’s a certain

kind of technology, and it’s different from a digital twin, but your digital twin could be linked to that tree and help them do that work. Another piece of technology is the emergency response and how we do mutual aid. All of these are related to climate tech.

AH: Tell me more about what you mean by creating sandboxes. What kind of regulations would be lifted, stretched, or experimented with?

GT: Some of it could be construction techniques, like new materials. There are folks here who want to use wood. In MiamiDade County, since Hurricane Andrew, we’ve been eliminating the use of wood in construction because it wasn’t deemed safe. But new forms of wood, crosslaminated timber, can be used structurally.

AH: It’s hard for the community to grasp innovation as a concept. You need to build and show things. And if that involves creating these regulatory sandboxes, maybe that gets us more buy-in because, as anyone in government knows, getting buy-in from your constituents can be tough.

GT: Many small startups or established companies are trying to get into new spaces. They need the regulators to see it. They’ve usually already done one to two real commercial deployments, but those were usually at a loss, and now they want to get across. That’s what a lot of the support the accelerators for climate tech are looking at.

AH: What are investors looking for in South Florida when they’re looking at climate tech? What are the topics or solutions that are grabbing them right now?

GT: Tech investment in South Florida hasn’t focused on climate. We’re not a hub for it yet. We’re ahead of the curve on adaptation. If we do it, the return on investment is very clearly positive in Miami-Dade County. We have studies that show it could be up to 9-to-1 returns with discount rates for adaptation and using new materials for construction and making construction cheaper, lighter, and more sustainable.

AH: When I think about climate adaptation, a lot of the cash comes from the federal government, but you cannot do it alone. You must have the private sector. But the public sector’s role is just to build that safety rail—don’t build here because it’s dangerous. Don’t build with plywood anymore because it’s dangerous. But you can do anything else you want. These are the minimum standards for public safety. That’s when I think of the private sector going above and beyond. But I sometimes don’t see it doing that.

GT: That’s where we need the regulatory space. If we don’t talk about climate justice, we’re not grounded in what’s happening in Miami. Because it’s an unequal community, and the threat is unequal. Mayor Levine Cava talks about the four E’s: environment, economy, equity, and engagement. We

Dr. Galen Treuer leads Climate Tech and Economic Innovation for MiamiDade County. He works with the private sector to pursue the county’s climate resilience goals and catalyze regional investment in blue, green, and climate technology that works for everyone by bringing together a network of entrepreneurs, investors, businesses, academics, and community leaders. Treuer has worked on climate policy and solutions for over 10 years and holds a Ph.D. in environmental science and policy from the University of Miami and a B.A. in economics from Oberlin College.

need to make sure the climate solutions are affordable and not just for the wealthy. Affordability will drive it into the marketplace. We also need to ensure that it’s health-oriented and that it makes your home and community healthier.

AH: Those sorts of incentives are really helpful because as much as it’s great to say, here’s our free board, which is the extra space you get to build voluntarily higher than the base flood elevation set by the Florida building code or municipality, the vast majority of what we have and need to upgrade and turn over, either by tearing down and rebuilding or renovating in place, is older stock.

GT: We have over 100,000 buildings. We looked at and identified that in our Climate Action Strategy.

AH: Obviously, one of the best ways to do that is to get someone new efficient airconditioning, get them the weatherization seals, new windows, maybe even a new

roof or doors, whatever you can get them to lower their skyrocketing power bills while also cutting the county’s energy use and, therefore, cutting our greenhouse gases. There are so many benefits to weatherizing your house. People aren’t accessing the free government resources to make them healthier, whole, and more financially stable because they’re just swamped with bad contracting. That’s where there’s an opportunity for technological solutions. You build the processes better so that when people go out to rewire their houses, they don’t call their cousins. They instead get it financed through an approved member of the constructing team.

GT: We must work on all these layers, and technology will slide its way into them. What’s amazing is we have journalists who are looking at it. We have the private sector looking at it. We have the academics, and we have government folks that are trying to make it happen.

Alex Harris is the lead climate change reporter for the Miami Herald’s climate team, which covers how South Florida communities are adapting to the warming world. Her beat also includes environmental issues and hurricanes. She attended the University of Florida.

Galen Treuer and Alex Harris at Smart City Expo Miami 2022

Galen Treuer Climate Tech & Economic Division, Miami-Dade County Miami, Florida

Alex Harris Lead Climate Change Reporter Miami Herald Miami, Florida

VISUAL UTOPIAS

BY JAN KAMENSKY

We say “Sustainable is the new smart,” but what do we actually want to sustain? Our nature? The way we live? Sustain consumption for generations? Do you want to sustain our mobility?

Idon’t want to sustain our streets of today, the way we get around, and I don’t want the view on them to be sustained. How about containing instead of sustaining? What would it be like if we didn’t try to sustain our world but contained it? We could practice seeing ourselves as a part of nature. We can be with the world. Within ourselves, we might contain connectedness. We might contain caring for ourselves and those around us, including animals and plants. We might contain empathy for them. We might contain a sense of responsibility. And we might contain a new way of looking at things. We might contain imagination. What would it be like if we became containers? How does smart containability sound?

I started to be a container 2.5 years ago. I’d like to preface with a quote from Neil Gaiman: “All of us, adults and children, are called to dream. We have an obligation to fantasize. It is easy to say that no change is possible, that we live in a world where society is everything and the individual is nothing, an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice patty. But the truth is we as individuals are always changing our world. We as individuals are building the future, and we do this by imagining that everything could be different.”

As a supplement to the highly specialized expertise presented here, I take the role of the dreamer. I anticipate that my mission is the transformation of mere seeing into recognition. Things are constantly in motion, just like in my animations. Transformation is everywhere. This has a decisive advantage. We are allowed to reinvent ourselves and our world with every breath we take.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had more time on my hands. I realized I no longer wanted to wait for the increasingly urgent social transformation. I wanted to be the change. I started by looking around and

asked where I saw an urgent need for action in my environment. The empty streets make me want to look at a city without cars. What happens to the streets if we rip them of cars? How can the new spaces be designed? What effect will this have?

I started the experiment. The first thing I do is clear the street of cars and signs. In this way, I create a blank sheet of paper, so to speak, and I put paint on it. Since then, I have seen it as my task to design visual communication for change by design, not by disaster.

As I said, transformation is unstoppable. But we can influence whether this happens in a destructive or healing way. I call myself a digital gardener. I plant lots of trees in my animations. You might say that I plant cyber seeds in the viewers’ minds. I’m also a translator. The theoretical knowledge is translated into the language of images. In doing so, the images unfold a special quality that reaches the viewers in a low threshold and catchy way.

The animations are meant to inspire change, not scare it away, with the playful transformation of car-dominated streets into people-friendly places. The only way to change the future is with empathy toward our fellow humans. I’m not hostile to people in cars. They are not my enemies. You don’t see people in the cars. The standing vehicles float away peacefully. I could let them explode in a Hollywood way. I show no cars in my utopias. This is a maximum contrast to our present. After all, cars are everywhere. They dominate our public spaces, and our streets are designed for them. I turn this upside down.

With this, I would like to invite reflection on our reality. The expansion of our consciousness is in the foreground. The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says appropriately: “Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?”

But before the implementation, we must practice awareness. The utopian approach has a crucial function. I invite viewers to go on a journey with me. After they get a glimpse of the utopia, they return to reality with a sharpened view, and, at best, they move through the streets with different eyes. Via the high-contrast utopia, the viewing habits are weaned. That has something disruptive about it.

If we were asked to describe a street in a word, what would we say? Probably cars. We are used to seeing them. We assume that this is natural and set in stone, but it was not so long ago that things were different. What would a person 150 years ago say when describing a street? People. They were used to seeing them every day. The space between houses was a living space that satisfied human needs like social interaction, locomotion, business, and well-being. Nowadays, the street stands mostly or even exclusively for mobility and transit. This also includes parking.

When we begin to change our viewing habits, we change our consciousness. We perceive the environment differently. How do we change our viewing habits? After all, we are surrounded by streets full of cars. Wean ourselves off with pictures, with visual utopias. The language of images manages to influence our visual habits and inspire us. When we look at things differently and gain a new perspective, we change our behavior. We are motivated to rethink and, finally, to redesign things. We need a real awakening, a real enlightenment. New laws and policies are not enough. We need to change our way of thinking and seeing. This is possible. We just haven’t tried to do it yet. Each one of us must do it for ourselves. No one can do it for you. If you are an activist or eager to do something, you should begin with yourself and your mind.

Jan Kamensky lives and works in Hamburg, Germany. In 2020, the communication designer and artist started the project of his utopian animations. The deserted streets of Hamburg at the beginning of 2020 inspired him to playfully transform car-dominated streets into people-friendly places that hold a mirror up to society.

See the animations at visualutopias.com and vimeo.com/jankamensky

Jan Kamensky Artist, Visual Utopias Hamburg, Germany

© VISUAL UTOPIAS

© VISUAL UTOPIAS

Madrid

Visual Utopias imagines what this street in Madrid would look like if there were no cars on it.

CITIES OF HEAT

BY BONNIE SCHNEIDER

Taking the Heat: How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Mind, Body & Spirit, and What You Can Do About It explores the relationship between climate change and mental and physical health. One chapter of the book is dedicated to the hazards that cities face due to climate change, specifically excessive heat.

Cities are home to more than 50% of the world’s population, with over 80% of Americans living in cities. These numbers are expected to grow, with cities projected to double in size by 2050.

The urban heat island phenomenon occurs when concrete buildings and asphalt roads absorb heat and re-emit it slowly into the atmosphere. This heat absorption happens at a more intense rate over city streets, parking lots, and roofs compared to suburban or green areas. Even within urban heat islands, different pockets of cities can fluctuate by just a mile but vary greatly in temperature. This creates hotbeds for heat in cities, which can lead to health impacts for the residents.

Climate change is leading to an increase in the intensity and duration of heatrelated deaths and heat waves, especially in regions like South Florida. Vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly, and low-income and minority communities are at greater risk of heat-related illnesses, which include heart disease, cardiovascular

disease, and heat stroke.

It’s important that we understand that heat affects different people differently. Some people are more vulnerable and at greater risk than others. Children and the elderly, for example, are more susceptible to the effects of heat.

While most of us are familiar with the saying, “It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity,” there’s another meteorological measurement to keep in mind: the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature, which is a comprehensive measure of heat stress on the human body that incorporates not only temperature and humidity but also wind and solar radiation. This measure is particularly important because it takes into account the varying degrees of vulnerability across different populations.

Climate change is exacerbating the urban heat island phenomenon. Even in areas where residents are used to hot weather, the situation is only getting worse.

As a subtropical climate, Miami has always had hot and humid weather, but as temperatures continue to rise, the city

is experiencing more frequent and more intense heat waves. The Miami-Dade area is expected to see an increase in dangerous hot days over the next 30 years, with an extra 40 days a year where the heat index is over 100 degrees F. This is particularly concerning for residents who work outdoors or engage in outdoor physical activity.

According to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Miami is one of the urban areas in the United States that is most at risk from the effects of climate change. The study found that by 2045, Miami could experience 120 days or more of temperatures above 90 degrees F, with heat waves lasting up to 60 days. This is a significant increase from the current average of around 24 days per year.

As cities get hotter, they require more energy to keep buildings cool, which means that energy consumption increases. This creates a vicious cycle, where increased energy consumption leads to higher emissions of greenhouse gases, which further contributes to climate change.

One potential solution to the urban heat

Bonnie Schneider is a sustainability and climate contributor for Techstrong.tv, a media platform featuring thought leaders in technology and digital transformation. She is the author of the new book,Taking the Heat: How Climate Change Is Affecting Your Mind, Body & Spirit, and What You Can Do About It (Simon & Schuster) and Weather & Wellness©, successfully launching its original video content focusing on climate change and health. Nationally recognized as an on-camera television meteorologist, Schneider has shared her insight and expertise on everything from hurricanes to snowstorms for MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Bloomberg TV, and The Weather Channel.

Bonnie Schneider Meteorologist/Author Miami, Florida

island phenomenon is the use of cool roofs and green roofs. Cool roofs are designed to reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat than traditional roofs. This can help to reduce the temperature inside buildings, making them more comfortable for occupants and potentially lowering the demand for air-conditioning.

Green roofs, on the other hand, are designed to be covered in vegetation, which can help to reduce the amount of heat absorbed by buildings. In addition to providing insulation, green roofs also absorb carbon dioxide, help filter pollutants from the air, and provide habitat for birds and insects.

While cool roofs and green roofs can be effective solutions, they are not without their challenges. Cool roofs can be more expensive to install than traditional roofs, and they may not be appropriate for all building types. Similarly, green roofs require careful planning and design to ensure that they are effective and do not pose a risk to the building structure.

Another potential solution is the use of heat warning systems, which can alert residents to dangerous heat conditions and provide recommendations for staying cool and hydrated. Heat warning systems can be particularly effective in low-income communities, where residents may not

have access to air-conditioning or other cooling resources.

Miami has been working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the use of renewable energy sources, such as solar power. This form of renewable energy is generated by capturing the energy from the sun’s rays and converting it into usable electricity. Miami has a lot of potential for solar energy due to its abundant sunshine and favorable climate. The city has set a goal to transition to 100% clean energy by 2050.

It is important for individuals to take

action to protect themselves from the effects of the urban heat island. In my book, Taking the Heat, I offer suggestions to mitigate health risks. This includes staying indoors during the hottest parts of the day, wearing light-colored and loose-fitting clothing, staying hydrated, and seeking out air-conditioned spaces when necessary.

By understanding the relationship between climate change and health, individuals can take steps to protect themselves and their communities from the dangers of excessive heat.

“BY UNDERSTANDING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CLIMATE CHANGE AND HEALTH, INDIVIDUALS CAN TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT THEMSELVES AND THEIR COMMUNITIES FROM THE DANGERS OF EXCESSIVE HEAT.”

Urban Heat Island

The urban heat island phenomenon occurs when concrete buildings and asphalt roads absorb heat and re-emit it slowly into the atmosphere.

SLEEP AND THE CITY: CIRCADIAN HEALTH VERSUS THE 24/7 CITY

BY ANGELA MAZZI & MEGAN MAZZOCCO

Sleep is the No. 1 predictor of physical and mental health outcomes. But when it comes to sleep in the 24/7 city, where does productivity end and the public health burden begin? Exploring the delicate balance between public health and productivity, dark skies and safety, and modern life and wildlife.

We are going to set the stage by talking about the exposome, a term coined in 2005 by Christopher Wild that describes everything we’re exposed to throughout our lifetimes, whether it’s chemicals, VOCs, climate extremities, light, or darkness. Anything that can be felt by the senses is the exposome, and they determine our health outcomes.

Only 15% of our health risk is determined by our DNA. The good news is that DNA is not a death sentence, but that means 85% of our health outcome is determined by the exposome, which shapes how our DNA is expressed in what we call the epigenome, which is like the operating software for the hardware. It’s either turning on favorable or unfavorable gene expressions. Based on that, you have your health outcomes.

When we look at the exposome, we look at external environmental factors like air and water quality, noise and light pollution, the microclimate, and global warming. But there’s also the personal side: How stable is our income? How safe is our neighborhood? Do we have a permanent housing solution, a robust social network, financial stability, and reliable transportation? Together, those things either provide you with a lot of resources and resilience or give you a very under-resourced life that leads to high stress, which creates biological responses in the body.

According to the World Health Organization, air pollution is the No. 1 source

of toxicity. Noise pollution is No. 2, then light pollution: A 100 lux, only 100 candles worth of light, can disrupt your circadian health. It can stunt or halt the production of melatonin, which has been shown to put individuals at risk for breast and prostate cancers. Exposure to artificial light at night can still disrupt the health of the body in a very detrimental way.

We know that the brain has executive function and higher-level thought processing, but the amygdala at the base of our brain controls our sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal axis, which controls our circadian rhythms. Stress has a huge impact on our sleep quality. When we are stressed, our amygdala takes over. It can sense a threat in the environment and respond by activating the fight-or-flight response in nanoseconds. Before you’re even consciously aware, your body already has that physical response. That’s great if you are in a situation to fight off a physical threat; however, most of what stresses us in the urban environment is non-physical. Therefore, this stress response does not serve us because we don’t allow it to work through our system. Instead, it builds up to toxic levels, leading to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and PTSD, as well as inflammation, which can lead to heart disease, cancer, and obesity.

How can we eliminate those stress burdens through our physical environment? One of the antidotes to the exposome is sleep, which is the No. 1 predictor of physical and mental health outcomes. The WHO has declared

that every industrialized country in the world has a sleep-deprivation epidemic. It’s not sustainable when 50% of your population is walking around sleep-deprived and anxious. The CDC has determined that 1 out of 3 adults is sleep-deprived. The U.S. Preventative Services has recommended that all physicians speak to patients 65 and under about screening them for anxiety. We say they should also talk to them about their sleep because during deep sleep, we experience a total nervous system reset.

If we want to calm that stress response, we must consider building up resources. We like to make the analogy to a video game, where you collect coins or some kind of bonus so that you have the resources to keep playing. Well, it’s the same for humans. To build resiliency, we must give people resources to cope.

Salutogenesis is a term that was coined by the medical anthropologist Aaron Antonovsky. He discovered that those who had the resources to cope did better. When we talk about salutogenesis, we discuss it as having five aspects.

• Sense of Coherence: Do I know where to go? Do I know what to do? Do I understand the city functions?

• Prospect and Refuge: Psychological safety, having vantage points, social choice, and spaces for introverts and extroverts.

• Biophilia: Biophilia is important because we’re part of nature and need nature to resonate with us to reset our nervous systems.

• Self-Efficacy: Do you feel empowered or afraid? Do you feel like you can’t make a difference or everything’s always going to stay the way it is?

• Relaxation Response: Having positive distractions, moving to work off energy, and having an appropriate level of complexity in our spaces so we can daydream or look at something and find something new each time.

When you think about a city and these five aspects of well-being, what comes to mind? For example, what is the scale of things? How much can we customize our environments to meet our needs? How much green space are we providing? Have we considered crime prevention through environmental design to feel like we have defensible, safe spaces? Have we looked at opportunities for gathering? Have we looked at wandering paths?

Artwork? All these things are important.

When we resource our citizens, we want to make it easy to get all those “coins” to build our health span, which refers to your healthy years of living, not life expectancy. Most people spend the last 20% of their lifespan with a chronic or debilitating condition. We want a health span, which is lifespan plus quality of life and vitality. Reducing stress and inflammation and getting regular sleep are inextricably linked, so much so that second- and third-shift work is known as a probable carcinogen, according to the WHO. Those cities that don’t sleep are health risks for diabetes, metabolic disease, pulmonary

Additional Sleep Resources

• The Sleep Revolution by Arianna Huffington –Appendix C

• National Transportation Noise Map

• Jet Lag Rooster

• Philips SmartSleep and WakeUp Therapy Lamp

• The Sleep System, 28 Days to Better Sleep

• Well-Being by Design: Women’s Vitality Circle.

disease, Alzheimer’s, and obesity. Your body holds onto fat and calories if you don’t sleep enough. We must encourage and make it easy for people to collect all these “coins,” especially the sleep coin.

We want to think about how we can combine zoning and planning, ecological health, and physical health, whether it’s through ordinances or different ways to think about safety, gathering spaces, social zones, biodiversity, noise and light pollution, and opportunities for movement and play. How do we integrate sleep for brain health? For example, a green wall is a low-tech, high-tech solution because the foliage absorbs excess noise and acts as an acoustic buffer. The greenery is also a natural air purifier that gives biophilia and visual complexity to a vertical surface.

Studies show that only 10 minutes of active rest in nature will trigger the relaxation response and let you perform higher on cognitive tasks. Daily movement is another key ingredient to your sleep outcomes. And then also relationships, community, and connection: We know from studying Blue Zones that practicing well-being in a community is critical to health outcomes and health span.

Join the Conversation

Angela and Megan host the Clubhouse room “Architects as Healers: Buildings as Medicine” every Monday at 9 a.m. EST where they discuss issues around the culture of design, therapeutic landscapes, social justice, and more.

Principal, GBBN Architects

Cincinnati, Ohio

Angela Mazzi, FAIA, FACHA, EDAC, is an architect and firm partner at GBBN Architects known for her research and designs that promote well-being. She is a fellow and past president of the American College of Healthcare Architects, a fellow of the American Institute of Architects, and 2023 president of its Cincinnati Component. Her work earned her the HCD10 Top Architect Award in 2022. She is the founder of Architecting, a community consisting of a podcast, online learning, and weekly Clubhouse room “Architects as Healers: Buildings as Medicine.”

Sustainability Director, Spring Architecture Chicago, Illinois

Megan Mazzocco is an architecture and design journalist fascinated by the power of the built environment as a conduit to positive health outcomes. She began teaching in a corporate setting in 2018, and when she observed her positive impact, she started yogaXdesign to guide architects and designers to a path of ease through yoga. Her CEU, “A+D Toolkit for Daily Creative Renewal,” teaches micro practices to help design professionals sustain creativity-on-demand.

Angela Mazzi

Megan Mazzocco

THE NATURE PILL: EFFECTIVE CLIMATE ADAPTATION

BY SUZANNE JEWELL

Most community resilience efforts focus on built infrastructure, from raising roads to seawalls and septic-to-sewer conversions. As the heat turns up and climate impacts increase worldwide, very little focus targets the inner state of well-being of humans. Yet adaptive resilience skills are learnable and actionable. From breath to attention training practices to taking “The Nature Pill” as an antidote, mindfulness is the most powerful key to human resilience.

Patch of Heaven Sanctuary is a 20-acre rewilded, regenerated, and reforested nature preserve 20 miles south of Miami, where we are creating the world’s first Mindful Pocket Park. Our most radical perspective is that if you turn toward nature as a resource of resilience, it is the most effective climate adaptation for human infrastructure. I’m going to talk about how neuroscience backs up why taking the nature pill daily is one of the best things you can do for your well-being.

What Is the Nature Pill?

What exactly is the nature pill? A study came out during COVID from the University of Michigan’s School of Environmental

Sustainability that tested cortisol levels to determine the magic amount of time spent in nature that it takes to reduce stress or anxiety levels. It found that 20-30 minutes in nature will drop the stress hormones in the body.

The Preventatives Services Task Force says that 77% of people report stress that affects their physical health. It is even more so in marginalized entities and audiences, including women. It also said that 1 in 4 young people experience climate and eco-anxiety. There is even a phrase called solastalgia, which speaks about someone’s grief and mourning that the planet and nature will never be what their parents or grandparents experienced.

Disconnection: The Core of the Climate Crisis

We believe that the core of the climate crisis is a crisis of disconnection. We are disconnected internally, disconnected from one another, and disconnected from nature and the natural rhythms of life. When you break that down, we realize behaviors of running away from how uncomfortable we are. How often do we go for shopping therapy? How often do we doom scroll? How often do we grab a drink, some pharmaceutical, or even something more dangerous to our well-being? We are disconnecting from our experiences and missing the richness. Isolation and loneliness are also reaching epidemic levels, and we feel very alone.

“NATURE PLUS MINDFULNESS PLUS COMMUNITY ENGAGED IN THE CONTAINER OF A PARK CAN HELP YOU LEARN HOW TO HAVE INNER HUMAN RESOURCES OF RESILIENCE.”

© PATCH OF HEAVEN SANCTUARY

Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami, Florida

The other disconnection that has occurred is nature deficit disorder. We are probably at the cusp of the generations that will be the last to grow up having a field or a place to play at the end of the street. There is an entire generation growing up not only on screens but not having that opportunity for imagination, exploration, wonder, awe, beauty, and all those things that occur when you spend time taking the Nature Pill.

The Physiology

What happens at the physiological level? Cortisol is both good and bad. Cortisol exists so that if you are being chased by a sabertooth tiger or large animal predating upon you, you’ll get those hairs standing up on the back of your neck. But what happens in this hypervigilant and hyperactivated world (and, by the way, new Harvard research says that the average person touches their phone 250 times a day) is that we are always on, and our nervous systems are feeling like everything is a fivealarm chili fire. That impacts our immune systems. It begins to lay down the markers for heart disease and inflammation, along with increased blood pressure. The ones experiencing this are often teachers, frontline workers, women, and young children.

A Park with a Purpose

What do we suggest? A daily dose of the Nature Pill. Patch of Heaven Sanctuary is a 20-acre park in Miami. It is like a Garden of Eden and feels like this is where we are meant to live naturally. The greater Miami Chamber of Commerce offered us the opportunity to be supported as a nonprofit so we could build this first-ever park with a purpose: the Mindful Pocket Park. A 20-minute miniature drop into nature, along with the app we’re building, can impact your calm and decrease your anxiety. During the experience, you will learn the evidence-based practice around reducing stress by paying attention to your senses. It’s followed by a 10-minute guided visualization. Nature plus mindfulness plus community engaged in the container of a park can help you learn how to have inner human resources of resilience.

How Do We Adapt?

How are we going to adapt? We believe that nature is the teacher and resource that humanity needs most right now. We believe it’s also overdue to integrate something called ayni, which means the right relationship. We believe this is a teachable technique to help humans reconnect with nature one mindful walk, one breath, one butterfly, and one tree at a time.

Suzanne Jewell Chief Experience Officer, Patch of Heaven Sanctuary Miami, Florida

Suzanne Jewell is a thought leader in modern-day mindfulness spaces, offering mindful resilient leadership training for Babson College’s Women Innovating Now (WIN) Lab, the Idea Center at Miami Dade College, and PhilanthropyMiami, as well as corporate clients like Credit Agricole, Allvue Systems, and the first World Happiness Summit. A former global TV executive, Jewell became a “green space connoisseur” as she bounced back from burnout, which led to her concept of the “park with a purpose,” the Mindful Pocket Park Project.

© PATCH OF HEAVEN SANCTUARY

Patch of Heaven Sanctuary, Miami, Florida

HOW TECHNOLOGY CAN SUPPORT AGING IN PLACE

BY ALFRED POOR

Studies show that 73% of employees bear some responsibility for caring for an aging parent, family member, or loved one. These obligations can directly impact a worker’s productivity due to increased absenteeism and the stress of being a caregiver. Fortunately, technology can help ease these burdens by monitoring physical and cognitive impairments and providing solutions that can compensate for impairments that might otherwise threaten the senior’s health or safety.

As the world continues to grapple with various sustainability issues, we often focus on energy and environmental concerns. However, it is crucial to also pay attention to the needs of our elderly population, specifically the unsustainability of senior care. Currently, we rely heavily on unpaid caregivers to provide senior care, not just in the United States but worldwide. We must recognize and address the need for paid caregivers, the impact of unpaid caregiving on the workforce, and the potential of technology to relieve the burdens on caregivers in general.

In the U.S. alone, 53 million unpaid caregivers actively provide care for family members and loved ones. Only 10% take care of only children; the remainder are responsible—at least in part—for the care of seniors. These unpaid caregivers contribute an estimated $500 billion in annual value, with most of them being women. However, some people might be surprised to find out that 40% of unpaid caregivers are men, indicating that this issue matters to everyone and not just seniors, their family members, and caregivers.

The cost of unpaid caregiving also impacts employers, civic planners, and health care systems. One out of five employees is an unpaid caregiver, contributing an average of 20 hours per week. This means that they are working an additional half-time job without pay. Furthermore, it costs employers about $20,000 per year for each employee

caregiver as a result of decreased attention, increased absenteeism, and loss of productivity.

Ignoring the needs of unpaid caregivers is not only a social issue but also an economic one. If we continue to ignore this problem, the stress on unpaid caregivers will manifest itself in other ways, resulting in increased costs for employers, government agencies, and health care systems. Some studies indicate that as many as 8% of caregivers quit their full-time jobs, which adds to an already difficult employee retention problem for companies. As a society, we all have the responsibility to help caregivers provide services for seniors.

About 90% to 95% of seniors prefer to live independently at home for as long as possible. It is familiar, comfortable, and financially more feasible than managed care settings, which can cost up to 10 times more than living at home. The problem is identifying impairments that might jeopardize a senior’s safety and ability to live independently. Often, seniors do not notice the changes in their conditions, and it can be difficult for family members and caregivers to objectively assess a gradual decline.

Physical impairments such as arthritis and cognitive impairments including dementia can make it difficult to perform daily tasks. These impairments can occur suddenly or gradually over time. Falls are quite common among seniors, and sudden cognitive decline impairments such as strokes can result in a crisis requiring rapid response.

With the high cost of 24/7 private care,

few families can afford to pay someone to attend to seniors. Additionally, few caregivers can devote their full time to their care recipients. Technology can offer a solution to make caregiving more efficient and less time-consuming. Remote monitoring devices like PERS (personal emergency response systems) can alert caregivers, staffed call centers, or emergency services when seniors need help. However, these devices are not always reliable, as seniors often forget to wear them or refuse to use them.

New technologies using machine learning (ML) and other artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms can provide a more efficient and effective approach to caregiving. AI can be used to monitor seniors and provide early detection of changes in their conditions. For example, AI-enabled systems can track seniors’ daily routines, including when they take medication and eat meals, alerting caregivers if there are any deviations. Additionally, ML can be used to detect patterns of behavior that suggest cognitive

“IGNORING THE NEEDS OF UNPAID CAREGIVERS IS NOT ONLY A SOCIAL ISSUE BUT ALSO AN ECONOMIC ONE.”

impairment or the onset of dementia. This technology can also track movement patterns and identify any risks of falls, which is particularly critical for seniors living alone.

While there is no single solution that fits every situation, we have many products and services available to help monitor and compensate for possible impairments among seniors who are aging in place. These can not only help the elderly live more safely and comfortably, but they can also help ease the burdens of caregivers and family which can reduce the chances of burnout.

We all bear responsibility for supporting these caregivers. Certainly, government and

private agencies can help make products and services available, but that’s not enough. Employers need to recognize the caregiving responsibilities of their employees and provide access to information that can help them adopt technology to take over some of the load. Employers might even find it in their own financial interest to explore ways to underwrite the costs of such products and services.

Caring for the elderly is a problem that is not going away any time soon, and is likely to become an even greater challenge for our communities. Taking proactive action now will be far more effective than waiting until the crisis gets worse.

Alfred Poor Editor, Health Tech Insider Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Alfred Poor, Ph.D., is the founding editor of Health Tech Insider, a website and industry newsletter that covers wearable and mobile devices for health and medical applications. He is a technology speaker, writer, and analyst with an international reputation. Author of more than a dozen books, he has a broad perspective of where the global industry stands today and where it’s headed tomorrow. He meets with more than 100 C-level executives from health technology companies every year, giving him access and insights that few other experts can claim.

REAL MAGIC: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN COCA-COLA MOVES TO E-CARGO BIKES

BY EYAL SANTO

Using e-cargo bikes to cut delivery trucks VMT (vehicle miles traveled) in Tel Aviv: How can Coca-Cola franchisee in Israel, the Central Corporation for Beverages (CCB) save up to 80% of VMT by moving only 20% of its business to Cycle Logistics.

Tel Aviv is a perfect place for cycle logistics. It has great beaches and sunny weather, with more than 330 sunny days every year. It is a flat city with a compact topology—21 square miles with a population density of just over 23,000 people per square mile (roughly the same density as New York City, twice as much as Miami). It is home to almost 500,000 people, with 3 million in the greater metropolitan area. Tel Aviv’s GDP of $150 billion a year represents 40% of Israel’s GDP. By 2030, Tel Aviv will boast 400 miles of profound cycling infrastructure, mostly separated.

In 2019, we planned the cycle logistics pilot for Tel Aviv along similar lines to KoMoDo, a previously held successful pilot in Berlin. The city allocated a lot for five delivery companies, among them UPS and DHL, some 3 miles from the city center, where their vans handed parcels over to cargo bikes, which continued to deliver them within the city center.

We recruited the big companies—DHL, FedEx, UPS, Israel Post, Shufersal (Israel’s Walmart), and CCB, the Coca-Cola franchisee in Israel. The Ministry of Transportation hampered our pilot in Tel Aviv due to a lack of regulation. However, with CCB, we built a model whereby moving only 20% of their daily distribution in Tel Aviv to e-cargo bikes, they can cut truck VMT (vehicle miles traveled) in Tel Aviv by up to 80%. This model is yet to be validated in practice once regulation in Israel allows the use of e-cargo bikes.

Daily Delivery by Trucks

CCB uses a 7.5-ton diesel truck as its major delivery truck for core urban cores. Every day,

50 trucks haul almost 400 tons of drinks into Tel Aviv. While 80% of the tonnage goes to 20% of the locations—the big supermarkets, major outlets, etc.—the remaining 20% of tonnage creates 80% of the VMT. Those deliveries go to the local grocery stores, cafés, bars, and restaurants. This is where CCB needed help. They were willing to give a 10%-20% discount if they could dump all merchandise in one place and hand the responsibility to the business owners to schlep the last mile. CCB records show that, on average, a delivery truck drives in Tel Aviv close to 19 miles, not including from the depot to the city or the other way around.

Total truck daily VMT in Tel Aviv is 930 miles just for the CCB trucks, out of which 80%, almost 750 miles, could be saved if avoiding doorstep delivery to the small businesses. Each truck pollutes over 20 pounds of CO2 per day, with the entire fleet polluting more than 1,000 pounds of CO2. Regarding NoX particle emissions, each truck generates almost 30 pounds of particle

pollutants, with a total fleet per day running almost 1,500 pounds of particle emissions.

The cost of the daily goods delivered to the small businesses is about $300,000. Truck maintenance costs are about 80 cents per mile. The total daily maintenance cost due to redundant VMT accumulation is around $600. Daily cost of redundant men hours run around $6,000. With today’s increasing diesel costs, 60-65 gallons a day costs today in Israel about $500. And the total operating cost for 50 trucks is just over $7,000 a day.

Distribution by E-Cargo Bikes

Looking at e-cargo bikes, there is the challenge of distributing 75 tons daily. A fleet of 80 carrier cycles is needed to replace 50 diesel trucks. We built a solution of 55 pairs of Long Johns (the two-wheeled cargo bikes), each one of them able to carry about 250 pounds, and 25 back-loader tricycles, each carrying around 500 pounds.

We carefully examined all the trucks’ routes in the city, the locations of CCB customers,

“WORLDWIDE, IF WE APPLY THIS TO 3,000 CITIES, WE CAN CUT VMT IN OUR CITY STREETS BY 5.5 BILLION MILES EVERY YEAR. WE CAN CUT OUR CO2 EMISSIONS BY 3.1 MILLION TONS. WE CAN CUT OUR NOX POLLUTANT PARTICLE EMISSIONS BY 4.4 MILLION TONS ANNUALLY.”

and the micro-hub’s suggested locations, and we concluded that changing from trucks to cargo bikes is indeed sustainable— environmentally, of course, but also economically.

Daily operating of the cargo bike fleet was calculated to be $24,000, about 8% of the total daily goods value. Taking off $7,000 of the trucks’ cost of operation, the total cost of operating the cargo bike fleet to deliver 20% of the tonnage to the small locations is $17,000, or 5.7% of the total daily goods value delivered to those places. Adding real estate prices for micro-hubs, it is assumed to add another $17,000, doubling daily costs to $34,000. But again, this is only 11.4% of the total value of daily goods—far away from the up to 20% discount that CCB was willing to give.

What are the savings and benefits for the city? Each year, 180,000 miles of heavy trucks VMT in the crowded streets of Tel Aviv. CO2 emissions can be cut annually by over

100 tons. NoX particulate emissions are cut annually by almost 150 tons while creating safer streets and hundreds of jobs for cargo bike riders.

Now, mind you, this is only one city and one vendor. Counting more than 3,000 cities in the world with a population of more than 100,000—assuming Tel Aviv is an average city somewhere in the middle and assuming only 100 vendors are delivering to a city— what happens if we apply this use case to more cities?

Worldwide, if we apply this to 3,000 cities, we can cut VMT in our city streets by 5.5 billion miles every year. We can cut our CO2 emissions by 3.1 million tons. We can cut our NoX pollutant particle emissions by 4.4 million tons annually. We can save hundreds of thousands of human lives, not just from crashes and collisions with trucks but also from air pollution and sedentary lifestyles, and we can create millions of new jobs.

So, what are we waiting for? Let’s ride.

Eyal Santo

Founder & CEO, Umo - Urban Mobility Cargo Bikes Tel Aviv, Israel

An urbanist, entrepreneur, and avid cyclist—for sport and for transport—Eyal Santo is a physicist by education who served 20 years in Israeli hi-tech. Traveling to the world’s leading bicycle cities, Santo has worked for 15 years on connecting cities and bicycles. Serving with the Tel Aviv strategic planning unit and with Tel Aviv DOT, he took part in developing the Tel Aviv strategic plan for bicycle and micromobility and headed the city’s bicycle pilot projects. Since 2021, he has been focused on Tactical Urbanism and Cycle Logistics.

Coca-Cola e-Cargo Bikes, Israel

ONE’S COMMUTE MODE IS MORE THAN MERE TRANSPORTATION

BY JEREMY MULLINGS

Smart cities must feature smart commuting, which includes sustainable, efficient, and attractive mass transit, carpooling, vanpooling, biking, and walking. To highlight the benefit of these modes and motivate commuters to switch to them, we need to talk more than transportation with the public. We need to demonstrate how these modes fit into the lifestyle that commuters pursue or are currently living.

People say the Department of Transportation loves to build massive roads, bridges, and interchanges, and they love people who drive single-occupant vehicles. But they’re also deeply invested in public transportation, seaports, airports, and, of course, programs like mine: transportation demand management. We are here to highlight the benefits and expose the values of these other modes of transportation that hopefully can appeal to folks and get them to reconsider driving alone.

We do a lot of engagement, but unlike your traditional transportation decisionmakers, where you objectively share this information with the public and allow them to make informed decisions, we have the luxury of trying to convince people to do things. We are in the business of hopefully changing your behavior. If we’re lucky, we’ll convince you that there are options outside of driving alone, the No. 1 cause of congestion and a significant impact on air quality. We’re talking about smart cities and cities of the future, and there has to be a robust public transportation system.

The private sector has these brilliant ideas to get people out of cars and onto public transportation. But the problem is they don’t present these ideas from a consumer-focused standpoint. That is where a lot of technology

companies fall short. We know the market is the people, and we put the people first.

I’m not here to tell you I ran an empty bus efficiently. I want to know why that bus is empty. And the reason the bus is empty is that it’s not appealing to the market.

I spent several years at the Florida Department of Transportation, and many people said that millennials would be the generation that would take public transportation. But in 2015, millennials became the dominant segment in the workplace, and the opposite happened. Car ownership went up, vehicle miles traveled went up, transit ridership went down, walking was stagnant, and biking was stagnant. To compound that, transit funding continued to increase. We can’t use that excuse anymore. We need to put better products out there.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word bus? I’m sure you’re thinking exactly what people said. It was a difficult conversation with my colleagues who run the bus service to tell them that a huge part of their approach is wrong. If we look at this from a consumer standpoint, not treat customers as if we are giving them a public service or a social service but treat them like consumers, we would do better, not asking folks to lower their standards and accept what it is, what we’re capable of putting out and what our budget allows, but instead

understand the public’s need and work with the decision-makers and the policy-makers if we need additional funding to get there.

If we’re talking about building a smart city, it will be reliant on public transportation. And that public transportation is going to have technology integrated into it. That’s where the public is now. But how about we make the product more in line with what the public wants?

I have been exposed to dozens of demos from technology companies that can turn this thing around and make transit much more attractive. But they are not selling that portion to the decision-makers or funding entities. It’s reminding the funded entities that we have a product we’re trying to appeal to consumers. It’s not a social service. Once we start to think like that, the products will get better. And we’ll begin to educate the decision-makers on why we do what we do. And it’ll be a more welcoming environment for the private sector. Once government workers hear the word “profit,” they often automatically think it is evil.

I think Brightline is changing the game in South Florida. It feels almost like you’re in an airport and about to board a plane. I rode Brightline for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and it was an amazing experience. I purposely eavesdropped on people in the station. Most of the people were first-time

riders, which was surprising to me. There didn’t seem to be a lot of commuting. It was folks going off for special events. A comment I heard more than I expected was how nice the place smelled. And my understanding is that they infuse scent into the station.

When talking to the folks from Brightline, they say a word that many people in my industry don’t use: experience. They talk about the experience of the user. All people in my world talk about is timing: I’ll get you there in 30 minutes. My on-time performance is 70%.

There’s another commuter rail here that I like as well: Tri-Rail. Obviously, it’s no Brightline, but Brightline is opening the eyes of people who ordinarily would not consider jumping on a train. Now they see Brightline, which puts them in a position to wonder: What is this Tri-Rail thing?

The Brightline focuses on something that not many transportation companies do: experience.

Jeremy Mullings is an American Institute of Certified Planners professional with over 21 years of urban and long- and short-term transportation planning experience, including mass transit, transportation demand management, seaports, freight movement, and the federal metropolitan planning process. He is the project director for South Florida Commuter Services, one of the country’s largest TDM programs. He previously worked at the Florida Department of Transportation, where he managed 95 and 595 Express Bus services, projects that have been referred to as “national benchmarks” in premium, regional bus transit services.

Jeremy Mullings Director, South Florida Commuter Services Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Brightline Station, Miami, Florida

Brightline

BUILDING ACCESSIBLE INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

PANEL: JEREMY M. GOLDBERG, CIAWANDA MCDONALD & MARCIE ROTH

How can we build stronger, more accessible infrastructure in the face of climate change? As we know, the impact of climate change will disproportionately impact people with disabilities. It is therefore important not just to invest in infrastructure that will address climate change while prioritizing accessibility but also to include and elevate people with disabilities in our planning and building of that infrastructure. This discussion will outline a bold vision for how to do it, how to address past shortcomings, and why we can’t miss this opportunity to get it right.

Jeremy Goldberg: We are here to discuss building accessible infrastructure for the future. As we think about the issues and challenges we face today and for the future, what does it look like to build infrastructure that is accessible for all rather than a retrofitting of existing projects and approaches?

Ciawanda McDonald: We see an increased amount of water coming into our communities. On a typical rainy day, we see excess water entering our communities. But what if the weather report says the hurricane will potentially make landfall on the opposite coast, and you have a personal care assistant who helps you daily? What do you do when water suddenly floods your home?

JG: There are several problems associated with this example. What’s your organization’s approach to unpacking that and responding with a solution?

CM: We had to assist the individual with getting all his contents out of his home. We hired a transportation company and a moving company to get all his personal belongings, whatever he could salvage.

JG: Marcie, what are some emerging challenges you and your organization are aware of that matter to point out? What are the things that we should be doing more to

prepare to help solve those problems?

Marcie Roth: We work globally on implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction to reduce the impact of climate and other natural and humanmade disasters. We also started a Global Alliance for Disaster Resource Acceleration to assist organizations like Ciawanda’s Center for Independent Living and others during humanitarian crises because our systems continually fail to meet the needs of folks who need those resources most.

CM: During Hurricane Michael, for example, many individuals used data to send texts and social media messages to say, “I’m going to be on my roof so you can send help for me.” We provided that information to the Florida Emergency

Operation Center and let them know that these individuals needed help. Immediately, they were able to respond and get some assistance for them. That’s a perfect example of where technology was used just from an individual in a natural disaster, sending it over to a family member who, in turn, sent it to me, and I was able to get that information to the emergency operation center. That’s just one example of where technology has helped.

JG: Marcie, what are some examples where tech is helping advance some of the work that you’re doing?

MR: There’s been quite a bit of progress made on the tech side, and, certainly, the leadership around a lot of the smart cities work has honed in on some accessible

“WE HEARD EARLIER THAT SMART CITIES ARE RESILIENT. I WANT TO ENSURE THAT WE KNOW THAT SMART CITIES ARE ALSO ACCESSIBLE. WE MUST INCLUDE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES IN THE CONVERSATION...TO ENSURE THEY ARE NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT.”

Jeremy Goldberg is the worldwide public sector director of critical infrastructure at Microsoft. He was previously interim-CIO at the State of New York and the deputy secretary for technology and innovation, where he led the state’s IT organization through the first wave of COVID. In 2020, he was named #2 in City and State New York’s Government Technology 50. He graduated from University of Texas-Austin and has a master’s from University of San Francisco.

technologies that have helped people to navigate evacuation and get actionable, accessible information. Many of these technologies have tremendous potential for supporting the whole community. Let’s ensure that those emerging technologies, those problem-solving solutions, work for everybody from the start. There is a lot of room for significant progress regarding the building or rebuilding of critical infrastructure.

CM: The Center for Independent Living is 51% driven by individuals with disabilities. The organization is run by individuals who have disabilities. If you partner with an organization that knows that world, knows that language, knows about disabilities, and you create that information before the planning process, then you don’t have to worry about trying to figure out the solutions on the back end.

JG: When we think about the built environment, we think about challenges in New York City. Victor Calise, the mayor and executive director for the people living with disabilities, pointed out when we ran a challenge-based program that you cannot

Independent Living Daytona Beach, Florida

Ciawanda McDonald is CEO of Disability Solutions for Independent Living. After a 10-year career in social services with the State of Florida, she joined the Center for Independent Living to empower individuals with disabilities to maintain independence. She serves on Florida’s Independent Living Council and Rehabilitation Council for the Blind. She has her master’s in occupational therapy from University of St. Augustine, master’s in public administration from Troy University, and bachelor’s from FSU.

have electric vehicle charging cords and cables plugged into cars on the sidewalk. What’s an example where the voices have been at the table, and you’ve seen a path to a problem being solved vastly improved?

MR: Right now, we’re working with a group of deaf engineers to make alerts and warnings accessible in secure facilities where they don’t have access to cell phones and watches. How do we get alerts and notifications to people who need to take personal protective measures?

CM: I want to add that we heard earlier that smart cities are resilient. I want to ensure that we know that smart cities are also accessible. We must include individuals with disabilities in the conversation. We must ensure that we have multiple examples of different communities. We can do many things to ensure individuals with disabilities are not an afterthought and are included in the process. Smart cities are accessible cities.

MR: We all need to commit to the inconvenient truth that you can’t be a smart city if 26% of your population is

Marcie Roth leads the World Institute on Disability, one of the first disability-led organizations advancing the rights of people with disabilities worldwide. She launched the Global Alliance for Disaster Resource Acceleration to unite funders with disability-led organizations to accelerate humanitarian relief to disasterimpacted communities and currently chairs the National Advisory Committee on Individuals with Disabilities & Disasters.

left behind. If people with disabilities, knowledgeable planners with disabilities, aren’t at your planning table, if we are not at the decision-making point, when new schools are built, if we’re going to be using those schools as shelters, they need to be built to accommodate the community that’s going to show up at the doorstep. To truly become the smart cities we are all invested in, we need to ensure that people with disabilities are at the table and that our contributions are meaningful.

It is critically important that we center the lived experience of people who are multiply marginalized, people who are black, indigenous, people of color, who experience poverty, or LGBTQIA+ people who are traditionally, typically, and regularly left out. And people with disabilities who are multiply marginalized are the least likely to be at the table. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley says it best: “The people closest to the pain need to be the people closest to the power.” Let’s make sure the people who have those lived experiences are the ones closest to the power because that will make our communities much stronger for everybody.

Marcie Roth Executive Director & CEO, World Institute on Disability Frederick, Maryland

Ciawanda McDonald CEO, Disability Solutions for

Jeremy M. Goldberg Worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure, Microsoft New York, New York

INCLUSIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL & INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS

BY EYAL FEDER-LEVY

Zencity, a community input and insights platform, is lowering the barriers to civic engagement and helping dozens of local authorities across the country gain and utilize resident feedback necessary for environmental and infrastructure projects.

When we talk about smart cities, public engagement isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind.

But Zencity believes that listening to and collaborating with the community is critical for shared success. Over 300 agencies that represent over 100 million people use our innovative software daily to improve the services they provide, promote major projects, increase satisfaction, and build trust with those they serve.

Capital Projects & Community Engagement

In addition to keeping our world running, local governments shoulder responsibility for the infrastructure on which their cities’ futures are built. This demands more than planning for the complex engineering, legal, and financial requirements. When the community objects to a plan, it’s not a mere inconvenience. Progress is slowed—or halted—by city council or county commission approvals. Demonstrations or protests may stop the work. But when the community supports a project, they are partners in its progress. Instead of meeting resistance, the work can be executed effectively and efficiently and result in greater satisfaction. Today, most governments have limited tools for building trust, the most common being a public hearing or meeting. But too many meetings wind up as half-empty rooms, dominated by those strongly objecting to any change. Borrowing from one of our

partner mayors, Zencity calls this the “STP” challenge: the same 10 people who show up to every community meeting, who call and email their city administration daily. STPs overshadow the majority of residents who don’t know about or can’t make it to community meetings. Residents who work one or more jobs, have children or dependent elders, who have limited mobility, or don’t speak English fluently—all these voices that aren’t being heard because these opportunities for public comment are not opportune for them. This isn’t because local governments want to exclude residents. But true engagement presents a complex challenge that requires a multifaceted solution. The good news is that the “smart city” is ready to help meet this challenge.

Meet Residents Where They Are

To hear from the community, you have to meet people where they are. Recent studies have indicated that the average American looks at their phone anywhere from 52 to 344 times a day. In 2021, internet access penetration in the United States passed 95%. Today, meeting people where they are means meeting them online, allowing us to build trust in novel ways.

Zencity’s platform collects public input from diverse online sources and uses machine learning and AI to make sense of this rich information. The first layer comes from what people are sharing in public forums, such as social media posts, comments on local

websites, and customer service data the city collects. The second layer comprises rapid community surveys, which use online advertising channels to solicit residents’ opinions on local initiatives. These surveys boast incredibly high response rates, especially from hard-to-reach communities that are more inclined to engage online than show up at city hall.

The third layer is our online engagement sites through which the city can share its plans and invite the public to collaborate in design and decision-making. The fourth is experience surveys, a means of post-contact resident engagement following service delivery or participation in a city-run activity. All these layers are offered in one platform that allows a 360-degree view of what really matters to a community.

Recognize, Collaborate, Listen & Measure

Applying this approach to a complex infrastructure project begins with recognizing the community’s needs. We do that by analyzing organic online discussions and running representative surveys. After identifying focus areas, we make the community a stakeholder in the project by inviting them to be part of its co-creation. Then, we leverage our ability to listen to online conversations, recognize emerging trends, and make sure the work is wellexecuted. If we observe challenges or dissatisfaction, we can react in a meaningful, informed way. After we’ve finished, we

use surveys to measure the impact of our infrastructure project. Then we can ask, are people more satisfied with life in their community now than before?

A few examples help illustrate how online engagement improves outcomes from capital projects. Take the town of Winthrop, Massachusetts, which wanted to build a downtown business improvement district. Work was slated to commence in April 2020—just as COVID was markedly changing our routines. To accommodate construction, one neighborhood’s water supply would be shut for 12 hours, just as residents were housebound and reliant on water to maintain proper hygiene. When the city announced the groundbreaking, online conversations reflected high negative sentiment. The city therefore adjusted its plans to shorten the water interruptions, as well as equip construction workers with protective equipment. Following this, negative

sentiment dropped from 50% to 15%.

Another example comes from Seguin, Texas, where improvements to stormwater infrastructure required the imposition of a utility fee, which sentiment evaluation and surveys indicated was highly unpopular. Engagement with the community led to a compromise, which saw both greater education around the need for improved infrastructure and a lowering of the fee that residents accepted.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, plans to build a soccer stadium for Inter Miami faced resistance from a small, vocal group, prompting hesitancy among city council members. However, online sentiment analysis indicated that there was far more positivity than negativity associated with the project. Construction proceeded, and subsequent evaluations confirmed that the stadium was popular with residents.

The City of Normal, Illinois, ran surveys

Eyal Feder-Levy

CEO, Zencity

Tel Aviv, Israel

asking residents to rate their priorities for allocating funds received under the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). This enabled the city to understand the interests of different demographic groups, allowing them to focus on previously underrepresented communities. This led to more nuanced and effective decision-making that supported trust between the administration and the diverse communities they serve. In fact, following the announcement of the ARPA allocations, 85% of related online conversations were positive in sentiment.

These are just a few examples that demonstrate the capacity of online technologies, including Zencity’s unique platform approach, to engage more residents in collaborative processes that result in better outcomes around critical infrastructure and other initiatives. If we invest in these methods, we can make our cities not just smart, but inclusive, responsive, and satisfied.

Eyal Feder-Levy is the CEO and co-founder of Zencity, the platform for community input and insights. Zencity helps hundreds of local governments, including 4 of the 5 largest cities in the U.S., build trust with their communities by supporting decision-making grounded in residents’ priorities, and was the first GovTech company recognized as an AI leader by CB Insights AI 100. Feder-Levy, an urban planner by training, was part of the founding team of “City Center,” the urban research center at Tel Aviv University. He also served on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Cities advisory board and was the youngest board member of the Israeli Planning Association.

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

In Fort Lauderdale, plans to build a soccer stadium faced resistance from a small, vocal group, prompting hesitancy among city council members. However, Zencity’s sentiment analysis indicated that there was more positivity associated with the project. Construction proceeded, and subsequent evaluations confirmed it was popular with residents.

PIONEERING METHODOLOGY WILL HELP CITIES GO CIRCULAR: CGR4CITIES

BY CLAUDIA ALESSIO

The circular economy has been recognized as a way to reach net-zero goals, reduce pollution, and build more sustainable, resilient communities. Cities—as hot spots of consumption and innovation—are key players in this transition and stand to benefit substantially from leaving the linear status quo behind. But how can they get started? This article highlights the importance of defining a baseline and uncovering key leverage points for action, and shows how cities can do just this.

What Is the Circular Economy?

Our global economy is overwhelmingly linear: we take materials from the Earth and make them into products, which eventually go to waste. This has been the status quo for far too long—but we now have the tools and solutions to shift from linear to circular. In a circular economy, waste is obsolete, and materials and products are kept in use at the highest value possible, continuously reused, repaired, refurbished, and recycled. It’s a big shift, but doing so could bring about economic, social, and environmental prosperity within the boundaries of our planet. We know where action must be galvanized: in the city.

As hot spots of innovation and consumption, cities are the beating heart of the circular economy transition. Cities worldwide drive environmental impacts: their consumption is responsible for 70% of global material extraction, and they concentrate up to 70% of total waste generation, consume two-thirds of global energy, and release 75% of emissions. Their impacts do not end here. Urban sprawl, driven by economic and population growth, transforms landscapes, putting pressure on biodiversity and ecosystem health. But in their position as high-impact agents, cities also have the transformative power to drive solutions. Approximately 55% of the global population lives in cities—more in areas with increasing urbanization rates, such as Latin America and Africa—and globally, over 80%

of GDP concentrates in urban areas. Cities are also especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate breakdown: The vast majority lie in coastal areas, for example, which will become increasingly susceptible to floods and storms. We’re at a turning point, and cities have a crucial opportunity and responsibility to spearhead change and shape a livable and resilient future for all.

Circular Economy in the City

At Circle Economy, we recognize the potential of circular cities for value creation, job creation, better air quality, competitiveness in global markets, and the reduction of waste and greenhouse gas emissions. About 70% of emissions worldwide are tied to material use and handling. Strategies that contribute to using fewer materials are a pathway for cities to reach net-zero goals. But what will a circular city look like?

Redesigning cities will be challenging: They’re home to a set of complex systems, from housing and industrial clusters to energy and food. Changing will mean embedding elements of circularity within each system, all of which feed into each other. In a circular city, energy production is renewable and local. Buildings are modular and designed to be deconstructed rather than demolished so that materials and components can be reused. Industries share their byproducts, with one’s waste serving as another’s resource. Mobility systems are clean and shared, and active transport like walking and cycling is supported through urban planning. A circular city is inherently smart. Technology will have a key role to play in the transition to manage assets, resources, and services efficiently—and data will be crucial to form benchmarks, mark progress, and improve operations across the whole city.

“THE CIRCULARITY GAP REPORT FOR CITIES PROVIDES A BASELINE FOR CIRCULARITY IN URBAN AREAS, MAPS HOW RESOURCES FLOW THROUGH URBAN SYSTEMS AND CONTRIBUTE TO CONSUMPTION-BASED EMISSIONS, AND PROVIDES A SET OF BASELINE INDICATORS FOR CIRCULARITY.”

THE CIRCULARITY GAP REPORT 2023

Claudia Alessio Research Analyst, Circle Economy Amsterdam,

Netherlands

Claudia Alessio is a cities strategist for Circle Economy’s Circle Cities Programme. She has worked with cities throughout Europe and North and South America, helping urban changemakers address waste, energy use, and emissions through the lens of the circular economy. By analyzing urban socioeconomic systems, she empowers cities to make the most of the opportunities the circular economy can offer them and realize innovative, impact-driven circular solutions on the ground.

Circle Economy is a global impact organization with an international team of passionate experts based in Amsterdam. It empowers businesses, cities, and nations with practical and scalable solutions to put the circular economy into action. Find out more at circle-economy.com.

Measuring Circularity in Cities

The city described above is quite a departure from largely linear cities around the world. How can cities take the first steps toward a circular transformation?

To get started, measuring a baseline—the current state of circularity—is crucial. Circle Economy’s Circularity Gap Reporting Initiative (CGRi) estimates that our world is only 7.2% circular: Of the more than 100 billion tons of materials we use each year, only 7.2% are cycled back into the economy. This leaves a massive Circularity Gap. But how circular are cities across the globe?

As of 2023, we can finally answer this question by applying the CGRi

methodology at the city scale. Building upon the expertise of the Circle Cities Programme, which has supported and guided over 40 cities and regions across Europe and North America over the past 12 years in putting the circular economy into practice, Circle Economy is opening a new page in urban circular research: CGR4cities.

The Circularity Gap Report (CGR) for cities provides a baseline for circularity in urban areas, maps how resources flow through urban systems and contribute to consumption-based emissions, and provides a set of baseline indicators for circularity. Based on this, it’s possible to develop “what if” scenarios that allow

cities to dream big and shed light on the potential impact of key intervention points across urban systems. By allowing decisionmakers to set goals and measure progress over time, CGR4cities can kickstart your city’s circular transition.

The state-of-the-art CGR initiative brings together stakeholders from businesses, governments, academia, and NGOs to evaluate findings based on the latest scientific evidence and design future scenarios that can inform policymaking and industry strategy. With the use of participatory and multi-stakeholder processes, it ensures that plans lead to sustained actions on the ground.

A circular economy to live within the safe limits of the planet

HACKATHON ALBERT EINSTEIN FOR INNOVATION IN EDUCATION FOR NATIONAL RESILIENCE

BY EDNA PASHER

A proof of concept from an educational hackathon on resilience, with a focus on social and geographic periphery. Mixed teams of kids of all ages and adults self-organize and create smart solutions to make education more innovative and relevant.

Iwant to tell you about a project we just finished, the Hackathon Albert Einstein for Innovation in Education for National Resilience, a great example of innovation in education for sustainability. We call it Albert Einstein because we believe that Einstein is an excellent source of inspiration. The need arose because sustainability is not only about the planet; sustainability is about organizations. Sustainability is about competitive advantage. Israel is the startup nation; we want it to stay the startup nation, which means we need to innovate in education.

We are engaged in two organizations that are very meaningful for what we do. One is the management consulting group called the Pasher Group, which I founded 44 years ago. And the other one is an NGO called the Israel Smart Cities Institute, which I founded seven years ago.

How do we do what we do? We developed Our World, Our Classroom, which was inspired by the concept created in the ’70s by Marshall McLuhan, who wrote a book called City as Classroom. We implemented it very successfully one year before COVID. When COVID hit, we decided we could turn this problem into an opportunity, and the whole online world could become a classroom.

The first experiment was with an online hackathon two years ago in collaboration with a university in Norway, NTNU (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), which focused on developing smart solutions for sustainability. We had students from NTNU, students in Israel with the management college in one of our cities, and students in India. There

was local, face-to-face, and online work in groups where students joined forces to develop interesting technology-based smart solutions for sustainability.

We invited all stakeholders—and this is our focus and our unique competitive advantage—not only high-tech people but students of all ages, teachers, and academia. As a result, everybody collaborated to create smart solutions for innovation in education. Some of our strategic partners included the Rashi Foundation; NaoTech, which gave us the platform of Zoom; the Israeli Defense Forces, where soldiers from the technology units came and supported the students; the Ministry of Education in Israel; the Open University; and the Afeka College of Engineering.

Another key success factor is the group of people who judged the solutions developed by the teams who sent in their pitches online via short videos of up to four minutes each. The head of the judges was Eival Gilady, a brigadier general from the military who leads the team of trustees at Western Galilee College.

Another key success factor is having a group of first-class mentors who are leading experts. Some joined the teams that developed these smart solutions, and others, who had specific areas of expertise, moved from one team to the other as necessary. Or Manor led the team of mentors.

The first prize went to a group of students from the Negev in the southern part of Israel who developed an application called Oozzies, which focuses on helping students manage their time in their courses. They explained they needed somebody to help them learn, which

is maybe even more important than what to learn. We had four winning teams this year, and all of them will get support to take their new startup to the market.

What else do we do under Our World, Our Classroom? We do online courses, mostly innovation and entrepreneurship, with a mission of impact innovation. We do international conferences for sustainability.

Our new project in Our World Our Classroom activities is called Ecosteam, which won funding from the European Union within a program called Erasmus+. Ecosteam is focused on education for sustainability in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics, known today in education as STEAM. With a hackathon, in a very short time, so much can be achieved to help students learn through coping with a tough challenge and developing smart solutions together using the method of project-based learning (PBL).

“SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT ONLY ABOUT THE PLANET; SUSTAINABILITY IS ABOUT ORGANIZATIONS. SUSTAINABILITY IS ABOUT COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE.”

Dr. Edna Pasher is the founder and chair of the Israel Smart Cities Institute, a think tank made of local and global experts who focus on providing smart solutions to municipalities and startups that make our cities smarter and more sustainable. Pasher earned her Ph.D. at New York University in communication arts and sciences and has served as faculty member at Adelphi University, the City University of New York, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Tel-Aviv University.

Edna Pasher Founder and Chair, Israel Smart Cities Institute Tel Aviv, Israel

Hackathon Albert Einstein for Innovation in Education Students in Norway collaborate.

Hackathon Albert Einstein First prize went to an application called Oozzies, which helps students manage their time in their courses.

Hackathon Albert Einstein Management team in action

© ISRAEL SMART CITIES INSTITUTE

© ISRAEL SMART CITIES INSTITUTE

© ISRAEL SMART CITIES INSTITUTE

HOW TO REBUILD TRUST THROUGH QUESTION STORMING

BY SANDRA BAER

For years, city leaders have been too quick to jump to answers and invest in technology that fails to address the interdependencies across city challenges. We must inspire new approaches to understanding the problems many cities face through Question Storming, which is based on the idea that to change the world, we must ask questions that disrupt the world.

In 2020, my business partner and colleague Dr. Lawrence Jones and I decided that we were of one mind about how cities often are too quick to jump to solutions and too quick to jump to answers. We decided to do a process called Question Storming. It’s not brainstorming, but it’s an idea that says we can solve problems in new ways. We can get people to think differently, take different actions, and, sometimes, find solutions they’d never thought of before.

The experience of Question Storming is intense and, for some, life-changing, always resulting in insights and actionable ideas. Our intention is to help us “see” a difficult question through the lens of others—to be open-hearted and openminded and willing to truly listen. Rather than being certain we are right, we learn to view differences of opinion in a clear light, ideally creating a more trusting world.

Our research reveals that inertia and a willingness to follow a traditional path—to “do things the ways they have always been done”—get in the way of truly exploring a question.

To set the stage for Question Storming, we share H.L. Mencken’s quote: “For every difficult question, there is an answer that is simple, clear, and wrong!” We discovered that this is true.

We’re taught to give answers. From

when you are little, you ask your parents a question, and they’re expected to answer it. When you go to school, you ask your teacher a question, and they are supposed to give you an answer. And now that you’re an adult, you’re expected to have those answers. But it’s not always the case that giving those answers quickly is the right solution.

For Question Storming, we gather a group of 10 to 20 people from diverse backgrounds and experiences, allowing a brief introduction only stating their name, location, and passion. We then pose a “difficult question,” for example, “How can we rebuild trust?” The session, lasting 90 minutes, has just three rules, designed to

provoke new thinking and fuel new actions.

First, we ask that each person be receptive and willing to truly listen Complexity is not a justification for inaction. It means that you have to listen even more intensively. Listening is critical to delving deeper into the problem. Put aside smartphones, close the computer, and take time to allow each question to inform your thinking. Know that we are not in a hurry. Question Storming works best when we take the time and space to reflect and discover.

Second, we ask that you are committed to problem-solving and willing to only ask questions. We are not interested in commentary or immediate answers—only

“OUR INTENTION IS TO HELP US ‘SEE’ A DIFFICULT QUESTION THROUGH THE LENS OF OTHERS—TO BE OPEN-HEARTED AND OPEN-MINDED AND WILLING TO TRULY LISTEN. RATHER THAN BEING CERTAIN WE ARE RIGHT, WE LEARN TO VIEW DIFFERENCES OF OPINION IN A CLEAR LIGHT, IDEALLY CREATING A MORE TRUSTING WORLD.”

Sandra Baer CEO, Personal Cities Washington, D.C.

Sandra Baer is a champion of creative collaborations between the public and private sectors. She leads Personal Cities, a smart city company focused on city identity and placemaking, social inclusion and equity, climate actions, and accelerating digital technology investments to support innovators and entrepreneurs. She has advised cities in the U.S., Europe, India, and Middle East and has consulted Cityzenith, Citibeats, and Urban Leap. She has served on the board of professional and civic organizations and has held marketing leadership roles with ATT, Speechworks, Discovery Channel, Smart Cities Council, CIVIQ Smartscapes, and Bloomberg Government. Baer is the brand ambassador for SmartCitiesWorld, a special advisor to “Saving the City: Remaking the American Metropolis,” and on the global advisory board of Leading Cities.

questions that “peel the onion” and reveal a set of catalytic questions.

For example: What is trust? How do we measure it? Can it be taught? Once trust is broken, can it be repaired? What is the relationship between trust and religion? Trust and technology? Trust and social media? Trust and nature? The list is endless and helps us to rethink our perceptions.

Finally, at the end of 30 to 40 minutes, we ask each participant to state the most insightful questions they heard, setting a launch pad for Solution Storming.

Because the issue is quite complex, we

How to Rebuild Trust

Question Storming to Create a Platform for Thinking Differently and Taking New Actions

acknowledge that enduring solutions will require more time, more conversations, more analysis, and more work. Yet we also recognize that the process can invoke new ideas and new approaches that had never come to mind before.

As a call to action, we invite everyone to try out the Question Storming process in their community, with their family, or at work. We believe that to change the world, you must ask questions that disrupt the world, so we encourage everyone to become a Question Storming ambassador.

Buckminster Fuller inspires our work every day: “You never change things by

fighting the existing reality,” he said. “To really change something, you must build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” We invite everyone to push for new models and new ways of living and working in our uncertain and constantly evolving world.

I’m so passionate about Question Storming and our ability not only to trust one another but to help cities become much more resilient, sustainable, and intelligent.

For help in facilitating a Question Storming event, please contact me at sandra@personalcities.org.

Sandra Baer CEO, Personal Cities

Dr. Lawrence E. Jones Co-Founder, Center for Sustainable Development in Africa

SHARING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN BUILDING SMART CITIES

BY LAVINIA MELITI

How are patent pools considered territories of high innovation? To transform urban environments into smart cities, innovation in planning, management, and operations is essential. Sharing intellectual property can enhance future value propositions for industrial and public actors and trigger the creation of new business models.

Picture a world where cars can fly across the sky, where robots run our homes, and where finding parking is not an issue because cars can fall into a briefcase. It sounds amazing, right? But what are smart cities? Smart cities have been described as driverless cars. That is the idea of optimizing something until it’s so efficient that it flows. The driverless car has been a vision synonymous with the future for a long time. It’s a system that takes care of itself, that analyzes its surroundings to get you where you need to go. It’s an interconnected world, not just the vehicle, that you trust to work to keep you safe and demonstrate humankind’s technological leaps and bounds. But there is a problem with this idea of smart cities as a world of cool gadgets and shiny technologies. I want you today to think beyond technology when we talk about smart cities.

For the past few years, I’ve had the opportunity to explore emerging technologies and work with amazing visionaries and founders from startups all over the world. My mission is to support innovation in emerging technologies through IP, intellectual property, by democratizing access to existing technology while supporting others on their innovation journeys. In other words, technology and innovation are most often in the hands of few people and companies, but they should be in the hands of many.

Emerging technologies have been defined as capable of changing the status quo, being disruptors, and being innovative thinkers. It means advocating for change by looking into the future and envisioning different ways of doing things.

I believe in smart cities because I believe in innovation, and both are the future. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts the global smart city market will reach $2.5 trillion by 2025. And even worldwide organizations like the United Nations or the European Investment Bank are trying to see how to deliver innovative urban services to citizens.

So, how does intellectual property play a role in our smart cities? I’m going to draw a line between something abstract, the concept of intellectual property, and something more concrete, the physical reality of our immediate surroundings.

Sometimes ideas are just the easy part.

The challenge is to access innovation for progress and encourage further innovation. Sharing the benefits of technology can unlock so many more possibilities and take us to places we never dreamed of going. Living in a city, the obvious services we take for granted are water, electricity, and sanitation, but we don’t even think about them. We just notice if they don’t work.

Property gives people legal rights over something, and property is what we tend to think of as an owner—it could be the owner of a house or a watch or a car. And the same thing applies to something you come up with in your mind, an idea you might want to claim as your own. That’s how ideas get patented, and that’s how you come up with intellectual property. The sharing of intellectual property occurs when the owner of an idea, a technology, or a patent permits others to use their idea. And it’s relevant

“MY MISSION IS TO SUPPORT INNOVATION IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES THROUGH IP, INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, BY DEMOCRATIZING ACCESS TO EXISTING TECHNOLOGY WHILE SUPPORTING OTHERS ON THEIR INNOVATION JOURNEYS.”

Smart Cities

Many people imagine smart cities as futuristic places with flying cars; but in order for a city to be smart, intellectual property needs to be democratized.

today because intellectual property is a powerhouse for innovation and economic growth. And this couldn’t be more true for smart cities.

Smart cities need intellectual property and technology. A great invention starts with a germ of an idea. Somewhere along the way, someone will patent an idea or a technology. But what if that technology is a system that provides cost-effective, efficient, and sustainable water purification? This tool could benefit growing even entirely new centers of population. But what if a city or country cannot access this technology because it’s monopolized by one corporation or owned by one person who’s getting extremely rich? Access to technology in an ideal world—or even an ideal city—should benefit everyone. And this requires a certain degree of democratization.

People care more than ever about the world in which they live. Harnessing intellectual property correctly will make the smart cities of the future, not just individual

companies or individuals. The smart cities will be rich in the right facilities and the right environment for children to play safely, with ease of transportation and access to nature.

A few years ago in Newcastle, U.K., a senior professor in engineering gave a talk entitled, “Where Are All the Smart Cities?” One thing that stuck with me from his speech was when he asked why smart cities seem so slow to develop. He said each small decision was sitting atop the iceberg of other social, political, economic, and process-driven challenges. He identified that the problem is not with technology. Guess what? It’s with people. This resonated with me.

As Steve Jobs said, “Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of worrying about what happened yesterday.” Smart cities are ready and waiting in the wings. Smart cities are about people. If companies can come together to share their intellectual property and technology, and if companies can come together to solve problems for the greater good, the smart cities of the future and the people who live in them will finally thrive.

Lavinia Meliti is a born and raised Italian and tech enthusiast on a mission to empower innovation in emerging technologies. A trained lawyer in two legal systems, Meliti pursued her career in business and tech, combining her legal skills in contractual negotiations to business development and beyond.

Lavinia Meliti Miami, Florida

CIO MUSIC HALL

The CIO Music Hall brought together likeminded CIOs to present and discuss experiences linked to smart cities and the C-Movement. New visions were presented for creating exceptional living quality for all and ways to contribute to rethinking the approach to designing, building and maintaining living spaces to create smart communities, smart cities and happy citizens.

PICTURED HERE: Ron Blatman, Executive Producer, Saving the City; Paul Doherty, CEO, The Digit Group; Eyal Feder-Levy, CEO, Zencity; Jeremy M. Goldberg, Worldwide Director of Critical Infrastructure, Microsoft; Sandra Baer, CEO, Personal Cities; Michael Lake, President & CEO, Leading Cities; Bas Boorsma, Partner, Venturerock Urban (Global); Joaquin Rodriguez, Director, Leading Cities; Bernardo Scheinkman, Founder & CEO, Smart Cities Americas; Jonathan Reichental, Founder & CEO, Human Future; Ernie Fernandez, Vice-President for State and Local Government, Microsoft; Raimundo Rodulfo, CIO, City of Coral Gables.

PICTURED HERE: Eyal Feder-Levy, CEO of Zencity, a company based in Tel-Aviv, had the opportunity to show in action the Zencity Situational Awareness Dashboard used by the City of Coral Gables evaluating resident feedback data from different angles facilitating better government performance.

PICTURED HERE: Raimundo Rodulfo, CIO of Coral Gables, hosted the CIO Music Hall and presented the Coral Gables City Lab, which uses an open data platform as the basis for a beautiful and smart city.

MEDIA HUB

Share breaking news. Inform the community. Speak truth to power. These days, journalists have to wear many hats. That is especially true when it comes to covering climate change: one of the most challenging and pressing issues of our time.

As part of the Smart City Expo Miami 2022, we brought together some of the most prominent boots on the ground—or, rather, pens on the paper—in South Florida climate journalism:

• Alex Harris, lead climate change reporter for the Miami Herald

• Mario Alejandro Ariza, investigative reporter at Floodlight and author of Disposable City: Miami’s Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe

• Matt Haggman, EVP of Opportunity Miami at the Beacon Council and former reporter at the Miami Herald

• Riley Kaminer, freelance tech journalist and contributing writer at Refresh Miami The goal: understanding the state of climate journalism in South Florida and paint a picture of what it might—and should— become going forward.

Over the last few years, the climate journalism landscape has changed— mostly for the better.

Despite the generalized anxiety surrounding newsroom cuts over the last few years, climate

change reporting units have broadly stayed intact—or even grown. Climate coverage is, broadly speaking, higher quality than it was even a few years ago. And weather discussions are increasingly climatized. Despite the positive developments, we still need to increase climate journalism coverage.

Too many climate stories still go untold. The main barriers include a lack of time, money, and journalists to report as frequently or deeply as they should. This is particularly the case when it comes to accountability journalism. Investigative reporting often takes longer—potentially a year or more—and not enough outlets are willing to enable this crucial coverage.

Climate journalism should not be siloed; rather, it should be a part of every beat. We need to change the idea that climate change is its own beat. Much to the contrary, it should be integrated into every desk in the newsroom: from real estate and local government to technology and business. But there remain many headwinds in these efforts, including educating journalists on how to most effectively cover climate-related topics. It is important to balance optimism with the harsh realities of climate change. The best way to approach climate reporting is to acknowledge, first and foremost, that

climate change will fundamentally change every aspect of living in our cities. From there, it is worthwhile to give readers options: Show people visions of the future that we could have if we were to change our ways and will have if we do not.

Journalists should be honest about the impacts of whatever climate mitigation strategy they are covering. Give readers the context and let them decide for themselves. But always be sure to inject some skepticism into your coverage—especially regarding climate tech.

For future climate journalists, opportunities abound for those willing to think out of the box.

As climate change increases to become a kitchen-table issue for citizens, there will be more interest in journalism that can contextualize and report on what is happening. Our panel urged budding journalists to bravely imagine a different media industry that includes a variety of outlets beyond just television and print: nonprofit newsrooms and one-person Substacks, just to name a few.

The job of climate journalists is more critical than ever. Keep chasing the big stories, holding powerful figures to their word, and uncovering the sometimes-inconvenient truths about climate change.

Alex Harris Mario Alejandro Ariza Matt Haggman Riley Kaminer

This hub brought together media professionals to discuss and share knowledge and experiences to enhance citizens’, communities’ and cities’ engagement and empowerment through the media’s journey.

LAUNCHPAD

The Smart City Expo Miami Launchpad aims to launch educational programs, competitions and business-generating activities to benefit citizens, communities and cities. Two activities stood out at its launch in 2022.

$100,000

PREPAID OPEN CALL FOR MUNICIPALITIES TO REDUCE PLASTIC WASTE

Onstage during the Smart City Expo Miami, South Florida’s premier smart cities conference, Michael Lake, president and CEO of Leading Cities, challenged city and industry leaders to move from rhetoric to action in dealing with growing rates of plastic waste. To support this effort, Leading Cities launched an open call for the next edition of AcceliGOV applications.

AcceliGOV is a global opportunity for local governments and private companies to apply for free sustainability and resiliency pilot projects. This edition offers multiple prepaid pilots that increase plastic recycling while reducing waste collection costs.

Out of the 300 million tons of plastic waste sent into recycling bins and facilities each year, less than 10% of it is recycled. As a result, over 90% of plastic waste worldwide is getting dumped into landfills, continuing to pollute our planet and harming the countries which have become the largest plastic waste dumping grounds.

Open to deploying in any municipality, school, hospital, restaurant, and any industry needing to generate necessary products. Separate pilots for municipal governments and private industry worth $100,000 will be awarded. These innovative solutions are provided by Automedi, the 2022 QBE AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge grand prize winner, a global competition hosted by Leading Cities in partnership with QBE North America. Apply for free pilot projects at leadingcities.org/acceligov.

AI ETHICS LEADERSHIP PROGRAM FOR SMART CITIES

AIEthics.World LLC—a global leader in AI Ethics and Ethical AI— joins forces with Smart Cities Americas LLC’s Smart City Expo Miami, an international ecosystem of cities, spanning all major continents, dedicated to supporting jurisdictions to advance their innovation of sustainable urban solutions.

This unique program will equip the Smart City Expo Miami ecosystem of members and stakeholders with best-in-class AI Ethics and Ethical AI education curriculum to confidently adopt and advance the beneficial presence of artificial intelligence to serve their citizens and societies, honoring their sovereignty, diversity and cultures.

The flexibility of the partnership provides both parties with the agility to reach into a vast library of educational and experiential programs as well as define curated programs for cohorts of groups interested in a specific master class, course, or program.

Cohorts have the agility to be taught online, or in a hybrid, or face-to-face educational experience. Furthermore, the partnership provides the flexibility for both parties to design new courses specific to the requirements of the Smart City Expo Miami members and stakeholders.

Certification Level: Ambassador or Leader. Learn more at www.aiethics.world.

PARTICIPANT ORGANIZATIONS

Smart City Expo Miami's Production Team thanks the support of the following organizations and companies whose participation contributed to the success of the event.

PARTNERS

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

MEDIA PARTNERS

“What a wonderful picture! Every one of these people are kind, generous, passionate about their work, and give 100% of themselves in work that helps others.”

— JONATHAN REICHENTAL, PH. D.

“Thank you, Bernardo Scheinkman, for his amazing ability to convene so many inspiring speakers at the Smart City Expo Miami. I left Florida even more hopeful of the future possibilities for government innovation and action.”

— MICHAEL LAKE, PRESIDENT & CEO, LEADING CITIES

“All the presentations were impressive and thought-provoking, and a great contribution to the ongoing conversation in our region and worldwide about leveraging multidisciplinary collaboration and innovative solutions to solve the resilience challenges of cities.”

— RAIMUNDO RODULFO, CIO, CITY OF CORAL GABLES

“Leading Cities is a global nonprofit organization that drives resiliency and sustainability in cities around the world. And we're here today at the Smart City Expo Miami, which has been an amazing event to bring together incredible thought leaders from around the world to share their solutions. There are opportunities, and what we've ultimately seen is a real engagement in leaders to explore new conversations, to move the ball forward in the smart cities industry, and to explore tangible results that can be achieved by implementing new projects, new solutions, and bringing our communities into the future to achieve the dream of smart cities.”

— MICHAEL LAKE, PRESIDENT & CEO, LEADING CITIES

“I just wanted to reach out and thank you for hosting such a fantastic event at the Smart City Expo Miami. I've been glued to my screen for the past two days, and the lineup of speakers has been absolutely brilliant.”

— MARIA MACANDREW, CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, AIETHICS.WORLD

“What a powerful meeting of brilliant minds. Grateful for all your visionary leadership Bernardo Scheinkman and Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D.!”

— CHARLENE YU VAUGHN, GLOBAL STRATEGIC ADVISOR, THE ALGONQUIN GROUP

“As a former CIO, I enjoyed Michael Pegues’ talk on the role of CIO. Good experiences and knowledge to support the holistic approach of data-driven cities.”

— ALEXÁNDER RICARDO ANDRADE, CHIEF SMART CITIES, STEFANINI SYSMAN

“I had an incredible conversation about #accessibility with Marcie Roth and Ciawanda McDonald on stage at Smart City Expo Miami.

It’s clear we still aren’t doing enough to make sure the #infrastructure investments we are making now are going to have the impact we want for people living with disabilities—and this is especially important when it comes to how we are responding to #climatechange. I think our chat was really different from what often makes it on stage at these events.

I heard a lot of about the problems to solve—for example of extreme traffic congestion – that tracks directly back to quality of life for everyday #people

As always, so great to spend time with Microsoft colleagues in-person! What a treat!”

— JEREMY M. GOLDBERG, WORLDWIDE DIRECTOR OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, MICROSOFT

“We would like to congratulate the different speakers for the quality of their presentations. We look forward for the next edition.”

— MARIA MAGDALENA CORTIÑAS, CITYDATA.AI

“Amazing time in #smartcityexpomiami with our incredible global community. Thank you Bernardo Scheinkman for the incredible organization.”

— JOAQUIN RODRIGUEZ ALVAREZ, DIRECTOR, LEADING CITIES

“Listening to some world-class speakers and meeting some fascinating innovators at the Smart City Expo in Miami last week, compelled me to reflect on how our world has changed and the ever increasing need to question how we influence city decision making—how we help city leaders choose new directions and new technology. Here are my takeaways:

1. I held a mini ‘Question Storming’ session, and asked the audience a very complex question, ‘How can we create resilient cities?’ In a short span of time, only allowed to ask questions, we generated over 50 questions, quickly appreciating the difficulty of the challenge. We were not in search of a solution, per se, only insights that would help us think differently and ultimately discover solutions never thought of before! I am confident that our willingness to listen and learn from each other is at the heart of what cities need for future resilience.

2. Nature-based solutions were the star of the Expo! Almost every presentation demonstrated the need to find answers in nature—from city and seawall design, to water and heat adaptations, to social co-creation toward a green digital deal, to astonishing tech to eliminate waste, to taking a ‘nature pill’—all propositions that see our changed world in the light of ‘Mother Nature.’

3. It’s not about the money. It’s not about technology. It is about our ability to trust one another, to inspire others to have confidence in themselves and to make the best choices in a world full of choices. Just one example, I was so impressed with the thoughtfulness of the team at Coral Gables, Florida, led by CIO Raimundo Rodulfo. Check out their comprehensive plans and preparedness in creating a smart and resilient city.”

— SANDRA BAER, CEO, PERSONAL CITIES

“Wonderful two days spent in Miami, at the Smart City Expo Miami convened by Bernardo Scheinkman. Excellent having the Mayor of MiamiDade Daniella Levine Cava share the stage with us. Excellent lineup of speakers collectively addressing the analogue and digital fundamentals of getting our urban futures sorted. Grateful for the opportunity to have been able to share some of the Gemeente Rotterdam experience, the work done at Thunderbird School of Global Management as well as the #UrbanInnovatorsInc work announced, going live in 2023!”

— BAS BOORSMA, PARTNER, VENTUREROCK URBAN (GLOBAL)

“Had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Smart City Expo Miami that convened global leaders in sustainability. During the conference tech innovations such as ClimateTech, HealthTech, FinTech, Global Sponge Cities, Inclusive Community Engagement, Digital Twin Environment, Power Resilience, among others where showcased.

Thank you, Bernardo Scheinkman, CEO at Smart Cities Americas, for the invitation to our students, faculty, and researchers that allow us to learn from each other and building bridges of collaboration worldwide.”

— DR. GABRIELA GERON, DIRECTOR OF PARTNERSHIPS, INNOVATION & COMMUNICATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

“We’re here today at the Smart City Expo Miami absolutely enjoying the people that we’re meeting, learning an awful lot about how we can apply our three GPP cellular networks in the smart city design and deployment. It’s been very interesting meeting some of the other companies that will fully integrate with our capabilities and we’ll be able to demonstrate a transition from what is considered a military or other grade of class of communications into a commercial smart city. And we’ve had a great time listening to some of the TED Talks. We’ve been learning a lot into actually transitioning our company and efforts and to be able to help the cities in this area.”

— DOUGLAS SCOTT, DIRECTOR, FENIX GROUP

“Thanks for great collaboration across time and space!”

— EDNA PASHER, FOUNDER & CEO, ISRAEL SMART CITIES INSTITUTE

“Always an amazing time when great minds gather to help evolve our world for better.

I am blessed enough to have had the opportunity alongside these incredible people!”

— MADISON ROBERTS, FOUNDER & CEO, CRYPTO ESTATE

“Honored to have a fireside chat with Michael Pegues, CIO of City of Aurora, Illinois on the role of the Public Sector CIO. Pegues has always advocated on how this role is not just about enabling the technology infrastructure and collaboration platforms for internal employees; it also includes purposeful engagement with the residents of the communities they serve directly or indirectly. It takes inclusive communities to make smarter cities!

It was great to meet members of the North American FIWARE Task Force in Miami at the Smart City Expo Miami—Great conversation on advancing the #opensource data platform dialog for #smartercities Have met many of those in the picture virtually but meeting in person is a different experience altogether!”

— E.G. NADHAN, GLOBAL CHIEF ARCHITECT LEADER, RED HAT

“It was an honour to speak in person at the Smart City Expo Miami which took place at the James L. Knight Conference Center in Downtown Miami. I was glad to be in a modern city that is a gateway for the Americas and meet there distinguished attendants, speakers and thought leaders, and learn first hand from Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, what are some of the challenges and opportunities for Miami in terms of long term sustainability and resilience. But Miami was not alone in its desire to become environmentally sustainable and inclusive. As I learned from other speakers that shared brilliant case studies from the U.S. and globally. I am looking to follow up on this and help build alliances that can contribute to make cities, communities and regions, worldwide, become more attractive, inclusive, sustainable and resilient.”

— TOBIAS MENDELOVICI, DIRECTOR, OCEAN BUSINESS

“As we wrapped the year, one of my highlights was the freshly wrapped Smart City Expo Miami. True thought #leaders on this space were part of it including #Miami #dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava Bernardo Scheinkman really was able to bring global #leaders to #miami and have meaningful conversations about how are we going to #transform our cities to be able to embrace #technology in a #sustainable way. As I always say, the SMART in #smartcities, is not about the #technology, is about how we humans implement it.”

— LETICIA LATINO-VAN SPLUNTEREN, CEO, NEPTUNO USA

“Sustainability is the new #SMART! Great conversation with my friend E.G. Nadhan and new partners from FIWARE.

The age of digital cooperation is here! We believe in a future in which improved digital cooperation can drive environmental, social and governance, on best practices and frameworks to promote #sustainability and #resiliency.”

— MICHAEL PEGUES, CIO, CITY OF AURORA, ILLINOIS

“We’re excited to be at Smart City Expo Miami December 12-14!

And this is your personal invitation to join us! Whether you are a city, an end user, a system integrator, an iHub, a university, a venture capitalist looking for investment potentials, meet FIWARE Management, many FIWARE members and stakeholders from around the world to learn how open source and open standards make Smart Cities even smarter!”

— FIWARE FOUNDATION

“An exceptional panel at Smart City Expo Miami 2022 shared great insight on how technology will enable and accelerate the transformation of cities and communities into efficient and sustainable environments. Thanks to FIWARE’s ever-growing network of partners worldwide, it is fast becoming a reality.”

— SALIM BENDRIS, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT GLOBAL SALES, NIVID TECHNOLOGIES

“Did you catch CEO of Leading Cities, Michael Lake, speaking at the 2022 Smart City Expo Miami? Last week, Leading Cities’ team members

Michael Lake and Joaquin Rodriguez Alvarez had the chance to participate w-depth conversations, lectures, and masterclasses with international experts in the #urbanplanning, #infrastructure, and #climateaction sectors—and Mike was able to give an inspiring, impactful speech about the power of #smartcitysolutions

We’ve spotted at Smart City Expo Miami a beloved #AcceliCITY alum, Eyal Feder-Levy, CEO of Zencity, sharing his expertise, experience, and insights on executing major city projects utilizing community input. We absolutely love to see past #AcceliCITY members excelling! Congratulations Eyal on an interesting and engaging presentation!

#SmartCityExpoMiami #SCEM22

Did you catch Aneshai Smith of G.O. See The City speaking at the Smart City Expo Miami with Leading Cities? Aneshai Smith was given an opportunity to present her revolutionary solution that works to eliminate #foodwaste at the Smart City Expo Miami with CEO of Leading Cities

Michael Lake.”

— LEADING CITIES

“I’m attending the Smart City Expo Miami for the first time. And I have to tell you, it’s been a valuable experience in regards to networking. I have met some amazing people who are doing some amazing things in smart technologies, smart city ecosystems. The innovation that’s been presented at this conference is second to none, to see the progress that cities are making and to see the local innovation and to also have access to an international community so that our network is not just local in Miami, but we have representation from multiple countries here at the expo. That means that a small business owner like myself, gets to conduct international business through conferences that interconnect me and others together so that we can collaborate, build new partnerships, and further fortify our ability to deliver services that are smart for cities, for universities, for organizations going forward.

So the Smart City Expo Miami has been fantastic in that regards. It’s also I would say a place of education to learn what's happening in the future with AI, to understand the use cases that are being delivered around the country and around the world. Opens our eyes to new ideas, and it allows us to expose ourself to very positive thinkers, very positive messaging that gives us that ability to take that energy into our own planning and to hopefully innovate and continue to build out services that are relevant, services that are multicultural in nature, and a platform that’s ethical is what we are learning today, that multiple organizations are all moving towards the same path. How can we be ethical, open service oriented, and subordinate to our clients so that their needs and outcomes that are measurable are ones that demonstrate the value more so than a good sales pitch. And that’s what I’m finding here today. Real meat and potatoes as far as what can be done, what should be done, and how it can get done.”

— JEM PAGAN, CEO, BLU SKY CONSULTING

“It was fascinating to join a dazzling line of speakers and experts at the Smart City Expo Miami this week. I was especially inspired to hear from the Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko, a resilient #leader for an unprecedented time. Wow! His work truly personifies what we mean by #resilience at the Knowledge Exchange for Resilience at Arizona State University

Great contributions from boundary-spanning actors, including Paul Doherty, Raimundo Rodulfo, E.G. Nadhan, Michael Lake, Karen Vega, and Bas Boorsma.”

— SARBESWAR PRAHARAJ, ASSISTANT RESEARCH PROFESSOR & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

“Great event with many forward thinkers focused on helping make our cities BOTH more smart and more green!”

— SUZANNE JEWELL, CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER, PATCH OF HEAVEN SANCTUARY

Empowering Smart City stakeholders to build thriving and sustainable communities within the Age of AI.

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