Connected Urban Development

Latest developments from MIT’s ‘Solar Revolution Project‘ represent a significant technology leap, which will enable the Connected Home of the future.

As part of Connected Urban Development’s vision for Connected and Sustainable Buildings, the intelligent use of energy, micro generation and the integrated application of utilities and communications, is central to delivering this aim. This solar power storage, and generation advancement as a sustainable energy solution, represents a tangible example of how citizens can make positive contributions in their own lives to the challenges of climate change.

Our work with MIT as part of the CUD program is setting the vision across the most impacting ways that citizens, companies and city authorities can enable a connected and sustainable urban infrastructure. The forthcoming conference, co-hosted with the City of Amsterdam in September will showcase the latest progress that the CUD partner cities, Cisco and MIT are providing to bring leading research led technology solutions towards an achievable target of Connected and Sustainable Cities on a global basis.

Shane Mitchell

As we move from a phase of educating people about climate change to the phase of taking actions to mitigate climate impacts, cities - and government in general - are more than ever tasked to act. Cities are facing challenges not only on the development of effective policy actions, but also on the development of eco- efficient operations within their organizations.

We see in our CUD engagements that the areas where we have faster progress are those where business organizations are driving the program. The Connected Bus in San Francisco, the Smart Work Center in Amsterdam, and the Smart Pricing program in Seoul are examples.

Sir David King, formerly chief scientific adviser to the UK government, and director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University and senior science adviser to UBS, comes to a similar conclusion. In his recent article for the Observer in London “Big business shows politicians how the planet can be saved”, he sees private enterprises forging ahead. In his view, governments are lagging behind both public and business opinion. Coming examples of good corporate behavior are everywhere. Once derided as ’socially responsible’, measures to run cleaner businesses are leading to improved profit margins. Sir David King shared dinner with some of the most powerful chairmen and CEOs of major European and global companies, all there to discuss the greatest challenge facing civilisation - climate change. Almost as one, they spoke of the need for governments to take action to reverse global warming and for the carbon to be taken out of the world economy.

Wolfgang Wagener

The Smart2020 report published in June by The Climate Group and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI) provides a compelling vision of how ICT can be the positive driver for sustainable business practice;

‘…annual man-made global emissions can be cut by 15 per cent by 2020 by transforming the way people and businesses use technology. This could deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of over EUR 500 billion’.

As is pointed out in the blog for The Climate Group, The report – SMART 2020: enabling the low carbon economy in the information age – shows that while ICT’s own sector footprint - currently two per cent of global emissions - will almost double by 2020, ICT’s unique ability to monitor and maximise energy efficiency both within and outside of its own sector could cut CO2 emissions by up to five times this amount. This represents a saving of 7.8 Giga-tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) by 2020 – greater than the current annual emissions of either the US or China. 

The holistic scope and impact of Smart ICT to address the triple bottom line of economic, environmental and social imperatives complements the vision of the Connected Urban Development initiative. The engagement of the global business, political and citizen communities is an imperative to delivering the potential set out so clearly in the Smart2020 report.

The Connected Urban Development initiative aims to be a catalyst for innovative and scalable approaches to Connected and Sustainable Mobility, Work, Buildings, Energy, Green ICT and Sustainable Urban Planning. Moreover to deliver tangible examples in all of these areas, to visualise, enthuse and evangelise the very real scope of ICT to deliver on the climate change challenges of the 21st century.

Shane Mitchell

Barely half a year after the successful CUD Global Conference in San Francisco, preparations for the next edition of the world summit are in full swing. Set to take place in Amsterdam on September 23 & 24, 2008, the main theme of this edition of the CUD Conference will be ‘Connectivity for Sustainability’. The theme is an important one for the host city: Amsterdam is proud to be on the forefront of high-end broadband deployment for all, households, schools, businesses and public sector included.

Among others, the conference serves to examine whether and how such a pervasive broadband environment will prove a fundamental ingredient to intelligent approaches in redirecting our urban society towards a more sustainable way of living, working, learning and transporting.

During the conference, the first CUD Smart Work Center will be launched – Amsterdam’s first and highly tangible contribution under the Connected Urban Development program. Powered by high-end broadband and child-day care, equipped with Telepresence and slow food facilities, the Smart Work Center serves to illustrate what connected and sustainable working tomorrow looks like today.

Lessons to be shared at the conference: what does the business model look like, how can the smart work center be replicated, how does affordable next generation connectivity facilitate and what are the early success factors found? The conference will focus in-depth on all CUD program areas, including Green IT, Connected and Sustainable Work, Connected & Sustainable Mobility as well as Smart Energy Solutions. For a full overview of the keynote speakers confirmed and the sessions that are being organized, please visit the event website.

Bas Boorsma

The rapidly rising price of oil and the prospect of a ‘peak oil’ supply scenario, urges public authorities to invest more in environmental friendly public transport as citizens use of private cars becomes less attractive. However, this simple approach doesn’t seem to be enough.

As Washington Post says on 26^th of May 2008, transit systems that ferry commuters into Washington are experiencing significant ridership increases as some gas prices pass $4 a gallon, and transit officials caution that trains could be overwhelmed. The below figure illustrates the challenge of rising public transit ridership and gas prices. 

SOURCES: Loudoun County Transit, MTA, WMATA, APTA, DOE | GRAPHIC: The Washington Post - May 27, 2008 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/05/27/GR2008052700029.html

The world’s major cities are faced with the urban mobility crisis threat by the negative impacts of motor vehicle travel, including traffic congestion, saturated public transit, road and parking facility costs, energy consumption, and pollution emissions. Solving these problems requires alternative transportation solutions from the demand management side.

Meanwhile, the enormous innovation capabilities offered by advanced ICT are under-utilized at large in urban mobility. There have been good examples of partial solutions that solve specific local or modal issues. But an integrated approach is required to support the strategic combination of transport demand management solutions and to make use of the dramatic changes that have occurred in proliferation of pervasive technological connectedness.

With the imperative to respond to the urban mobility crisis, while making the best use of the pervasive connectivity delivered by ICT, urban environments have the opportunity to develop connected mobility solutions for provisioning services to its citizens, transport agencies, and private sector stakeholders. Connected mobility solutions will lead urban transport planning and management to be the balanced supply and demand focused model.

Furthermore, connected mobility solutions should help deal with the challenges of urban mobility by providing a strategic portfolio to increase public acceptability - generally regarded as a key factor of new policy implementation. It will eventually revolutionize the way we plan and conduct movements, and access people and things.

Tony Kim

The Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment is one of the best Industry sustainability programmes in the world. 4 days of sessions and discussions with a global group of innovators from business, government and NGOs are added to an initial visit to the British Antarctic Survey. After holding in my hands a 140,000 years old piece of ice extracted from the antarctic,  discussing with top BAS scientists how this ice is becoming the proof of climate change scientific evidence beyond any reasonable doubt, I started to realize that the work related to the scientific case for global warming is now coming to a (successful) final stage.

The discussions held throughout the rest of the programme - and the relative lack of substance related to the development of global solutions -  convinced me that the driving role on climate change needs now to be handed over to a global community of Economists, Government and businesses. The development of effective government policy, linked to innovative economic strategies while leveraging on our capital market models, is becoming the single most important element of success for addressing this issue. 

The visionary work of Sir Nicholas Stern as well as Tony Blair’s recent ‘Breaking the Climate Deadlock‘ announcement are for example significative steps in this direction. Information Technology can be both an enabler of innovative energy efficiency practices in the areas of transportation, buildings and urban planning, but can also become a supporting element of the complex work and interactions the global community of Economists, Scientists and Government leaders will need to undertake.

Connectivity and Web 2.0 services will need to address information asymmetries which will prevent effective policy and operational programs to provide a positive impact to the fight of climate change.

Nicola Villa

The idea of Connected Urban Development (CUD) was first discussed at a dinner in Washington, DC, in June 2006, when representatives from Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group met with an advisor to President Bill Clinton. At that time, several cities in Europe were launching broadband programs aimed at providing citizens and businesses access to a next generation digital infrastructure which would give rise to dramatic improvements in their quality of life and economic development. A similar trend was unfolding in North America, where an impressive number of local governments were about to launch wireless city initiatives. Most of the focus at the time, however, was on providing connectivity to city constituencies (citizens, business, and the government) and ideas on what services would be enabled by the availability of those infrastructures were still in their infancy.

But 2006 was also the year when, according to author Thomas Friedman, global warming and sustainable development assumed a prominent position on the public stage, and when corporations began to conceive of sustainable development as a significant business opportunity. The convergence between corporate social responsibility and business opportunity quickly made “green” a key issue at the board level for many companies. Convergence between technology infrastructure and global warming policy and operations was beginning to take root.

At the dinner table in Washington we began discussions on how pervasive connectivity could enable a concept by which information could be brought to people, rather than requiring people to travel to reach sources of information. The parties decided to continue those discussions and this eventually led to a four-way commitment from Cisco CEO John Chambers, Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, Mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam, and Mayor Oh-se Hoon of Seoul, in September 2006 at the Clinton Global Initiative global forum in New York. In partnership with the three mayors, John Chambers committed Cisco to invest $15 million over a five-year period to develop innovative ICT and broadband-based solutions to reduce CO2 emissions in large metropolitan areas. The Connected Urban Development (CUD) program was born.

Eighteen months on, we are celebrating the success of our first CUD Global Conference, held in San Francisco on February 20th and 21st. At our event, we witnessed the development of the first CUD proofs of concepts – the Connected Bus, the Personal Travel Assistant, and the Smart Work Center – which will soon transition into operational programs, providing a measurable impact on carbon reduction, citizen inclusion, and economic development for the three founding CUD cities. Moreover, we were thrilled to welcome Birmingham, Hamburg, Lisbon, and Madrid as four new partner cities and we look forward to exploring jointly how technology can foster a more sustainable urban environment for all.

The story of the program since the initial announcement in New York is one of personal commitment, innovative thinking, and passion to create lasting change on the part of all those – in both the public and private sectors – who have been involved in the program so far, across the globe.

During the course of the last twelve months, four basic principles have emerged from our work to date:

These programs are becoming foundational to the work brought forward within the program. At the first Connected Urban Development Global Conference, a community of more than 200 thought leaders from all over the world carefully examined those principles and their impacts. As noted by Senior Vice President Gary Bridge of Cisco in his final closing remarks, CUD embodies the essential kind of partnership needed to conceive and implement the required solutions to global warming and sustainable development. CUD explicitly acknowledges there can be no solutions without a meaningful partnership between public, private, academic, and NGO leaders. ICT is a common denominator in solutions, and holds enormous potential to reduce global warming by providing information when and where it is needed in order to make informed consumption and resource decisions, but it is also part of the problem. Industry must respond by making energy efficiency a key goal.

In this context, we are introducing the first incarnation of the Connected Urban Development portal. We sincerely hope that collaboration between a growing number of thought leaders and cities will be supported by this technology platform and that the discussions initiated at the San Francisco conference will continue online, until the community meets again in Amsterdam on September 23rd and 24th for the second edition of the Connected Urban Development Global Conference. Cisco is here to act as a broker of new relationships and as an enabler of those interactions that will spur more innovative thinking on sustainable cities.

Nicola Villa
Global Director, Connected Urban Development
Cisco - Internet Business Solutions Group