Connected Urban Development

The Smart Cities supplement in The Times in the UK includes contributions from Connected Urban Development projects. The examples of how a connected world can be enhancing to citizens and as part of resource planning is one area that the cities and Cisco are pursuing.

In the ‘digital revolution will create joined-up cities’ article Nicola Villa - global director, Connected Urban Development, at Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group refers to the HealthPresence technology as an example of how the connected world can provide benefits for consumers.  Patients will be able to consult their doctor using ‘telepresence’ technology and remote sensors to receive a more accurate diagnosis and treatment without leaving their home, furthermore we can access local government services online, on demand.

The Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) in Seoul and Amsterdam is another example where travel information from those cities is accessible from any device to enable smart decision making, and highlighting green choice and route information.

The Data Avalanche

In 2010 we see a groundswell of open data initiatives across the world, and in our experience a disparate, un-coordinated and un-standardised approach in various jurisdictions. As we see our physical infrastructure, buildings, devices, spatial sensors and even all objects become connected through RFID and QR code tagging, this presents further challenges as data flows exponentially grow in our connected lives. Furthermore as we become more connected, the expectations of the benefits of this become more pressing. As Nicola highlights “One of the big issues will be how to collect data from a wide range of sources, such as smart grids, buildings and electric vehicles as they become more and more live. How to aggregate those data and overlay them on top of each other, how to develop some predictive capability, how to help consumers make better decisions and bring data into government policymaking - these are the big challenges.”

A further consideration is the cultural shift in public services administrations. Data can be triangulated for specific territories from crowdsourced opt-in data, and proxy sources, such as mobile phone signals, whereas the willingness to share data from public adminstrations and infrastructure providers is asymmetric across different cities and countries. As Nicola refers to from the experiences in Rome, such proxy data sourcing to cross reference to municipal provided transportation data has encountered “real resistance to sharing information.” Of course this takes us into a much wider, and separate discussion for another posting, on trust, privacy and data protection.

 Smart+Connected Communities 

All of these exciting developments towards smart+connected communities have an ambition to be enhancing to our daily lives but also to contribute to the ’smart’ panacea that is being sought by cities, governments, companies and other interested agencies, in the groundswell of activity towards ’smart cities’. This is of course the imperative to deliver sustainability objectives as well as economic growth whilst facing an unprecedented period of urbanisation. Furthermore, a demographic crisis, natural resource demands, and a globalised economy are all making smart+connected communities vital to our local and sustained prosperity. In the ‘Smart thinking needed to keep cities on the road to prosperity’ article in this Smart Cities supplement in The Times Dimitri Zenghelis from Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group and associate fellow at Chatham House states that sustainability “…does not just reduce emissions, but produces growth benefits as well. In the short run, it allows businesses to make efficiency gains. There is a lot of waste at an urban level, as a result of market failures, missing markets or perverse incentives, so this is a quick win.” Zenghelis points out that cities are laboratories for innovation, observing that ‘“the bulk of patents in cleantech originate in urban areas.”

Policy Frameworks

The crucial aspect to the layering of the city and the “smart” justifications for this is the appropriate policy and governance frameworks to enable this. Zenghelis points out that “If we don’t have the right right policy framework to set the right standards and incentives, and provide the security that investors need, then cities will tend to underprovide the sustainable goods and services we need.” Zenghelis believes cities will have little choice but to forge cross sector and organisational partnerships, “Ultimately, cities will have no choice but to move in that direction. We are going to be living in a carbon and resource-constrained world and policy responses and incentives will push cities into dealing with these realities. Those that do this earliest will be in a better position to develop new markets and take advantage of growth opportunities.”

The Partnership Network 

These topics will all be debated at the forthcoming Partnership for Urban Innovation: Global Conference in Shanghai on the 17-18 June 2010. The perspectives from China will be most illuminating in this regard. We’ll continue the debate on this topic here throughout the lead-in and after the conference…..

Shane Mitchell

We had the exciting opportunity to present the perspectives from Connected Urban Development, Cisco and partner cities at the recent Comparative Genetics of Cities conference hosted at University College London’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis.

 Arizona State, UCL and Newcastle University hosted the conference to explore key problems of energy, climate, land use and transportation in large cities, using London and Phoenix as exemplars.

The presentations from the conference, comparative datasets from London and Phoenix, and many academic, business, city planning and NGO led initiatives were presented and can be accessed on the website: http://cssa.asu.edu/ucl_may2010

The Connected Urban Development presentation ‘a new approach to urban innovation’, sets out the networked and web based tools for urban citizen engagement and sustainable outcomes which we are advancing across multiple projects in cities across the world.

The lead project we are advancing towards this aim is the Urban EcoMap project. The aim is to develop the platform to compare cities through a wide range of data sources, to enable citizens, business’ and city managers amongst others to understand their community and to enable decisions to be made on an informed basis. Related projects from the Cisco team, in common with the Urban EcoMap include the Planetary Skin Institute, as described in the presentation. Extending the Urban EcoMap proof of concept application, with the cities of Amsterdam and San Francisco, to many different directions, from sustainability, economic, social and livability objectives is an exciting path which we are advancing towards.

The next step in this path will be a showcase session for delegates joining us in Shanghai at the Partnership for Urban Innovation Global Conference. As part of one of the groups visits to the Cisco pavilion at the World Expo on the 18th June, we will present the latest progress towards revealing the layers of the city, enabling decision spaces and assimilating the wide range of data that is emerging through the open data movement, and moves towards sensing the city from municipal, crowdsourced and trusted proxy sources.

Today Connected Urban Development (CUD) lived to see another fine day: the launch of the ‘Double U’ network in the Netherlands. Double U is a platform for smart work centers and other high end open public work environments. Double U is a network, an organization, an ‘organizer’ in a fragile and fragmented market, and a portfolio of smart work solutions & tools, among them, the Double U reservation tool which has gone life & public today: www.w-smartwork.nl.

Some facts:

• Double U has been initiated by the City of Amsterdam and Cisco under CUD, founded by Cisco, ABN AMRO, Rabobank and several SWC providers. Double U is a foundation under Dutch law.
• Public Launch of Double U tool on March 23, 2010: www.w-smartwork.nl. The tool itself is easily replicable for other communities around the world at low costs; Double U got launched today, March 23, at a large Dutch event bringing together 300 employers convening on new urban mobility solutions;
• Double U commences with 21 SWCs, with 30 more ready to become part of the Double U network throughout spring 2010, totaling over 50 SWCs throughout the Netherlands;
• Double U is to facilitate and embed a public Telepresence network. The first SWC to feature Telepresence is Amsterdam Bright City in Amsterdam’s prestigious ‘Zuid-As’ financial district. More locations are planned. The local public TP network will be hooked up to the global TATA TP network. The Double U reservation tool, www.w-smartwork.nl, offers a choice of three ‘work resources’: work place, conference / function rooms, and Telepresence;
• The City of Amsterdam is a launching customer to Double U: it is allowing its employees to book work space through Double U and it will be a launching customer to the public TP network once it goes live;
• Double U features ‘Worksnug’ as part of its portfolio. Worksnug is an augmented reality smart phone application mapping public work locations. Worksnug will go live as a Double U application soon, with reviews of public and co-working locations across the Netherlands. See http://www.worksnug.com/. The Double U reservation tool will be enhanced through this innovative Augmented Reality application, and user participation through user reviews – a nice example of ‘mobile’ collective IQ.

Double U is the next phase in the materialization of an urban connected and sustainable work environment envisioned and forged by the City of Amsterdam and Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group under the Connected Urban Development program. Starting out with a vision and a proof of concept in 2008, the ‘smart work initiative’ proceeded to result in a pilot, a program, business model, Value Case, White Papers, user survey and, finally, a scaled network of SWCs, helping forge a distributed work environment, nicely designed, low threshold, well facilitated, embedding Telepresence and other collaboration technologies.

On a personal note: to have commenced with an idea on the future of work, starting out with our famous diagram on distributed networks from Paul Baran, and to help this develop all the way into a national, distributed grid of public work places has been simply fantastic. CUD: Great program, great team, and some real results.

Bas Boorsma

Cisco and the city of Amsterdam today announced the rollout of Urban EcoMap, an Internet-based tool that enables cities around the world to provide smarter climate change information for their citizens. A city can use Urban EcoMap to create awareness among its residents of the impact of carbon emissions on their urban environment. It provides information on carbon emissions from transportation, energy and waste among neighborhoods, organized by district, and delivers tips on ways to reduce a resident’s carbon footprint.

• The application is an extension of the Urban EcoMap launched in May 2009 in the city of San Francisco. The Amsterdam version of the Urban EcoMap will be progressively expanded over the next six months with real-time information that is linked to data from other agencies.

• Urban EcoMap provides information on carbon emissions from transportation, energy and waste among neighborhoods, organized by district. As part of the Cisco® Connected Urban Development (CUD) program, the Urban EcoMap pilot is a cooperative initiative between the city of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Innovation Motor (AIM) and Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), the company’s strategic global consulting arm.
• The application now enables comparisons between the two cities of Amsterdam and San Francisco, on an aggregated residential per capita CO2 basis, and proportionally by the categories of Transportation, Energy and Waste.

Join us in the drive towards reducing our individual CO2 emissions to 2 tonnes by 2050, across the world.

This is the next step in the development of the application. Let us know your thoughts and ideas on how the application can develop and continue to innovate and scale globally.

A number of the technology pilots, which the seven Connected Urban Development cities have been developing, will be presented at the third Connected Urban Development global conference on May 21-22, 2009.

The conference, in Seoul, South Korea will see the launch to the citizens of the city, of the Personal Travel Assistant (PTA) application. ‘Seoul PTA’ is a web-based service providing the following facilities; Personal Travel Planner, Carbon Calculator, Real-Time Router, Transportation Information Service.

Initially, Seoul PTA will serve the Jung-gu and Jongno-gu districts of Seoul; citywide coverage will roll out later in the year.

In addition, the Urban EcoMap application, previewed on EarthDay will be launched to the citizens of San Francisco. During the two days of the conference, further connected and sustainable mobility and smart work solutions will be discussed with delegates, such as the Smart Transportation Pricing pilot in the city of Seoul, the development of Amsterdam PTA, and the scaling of the Smart Work Center concept globally.

Great progress has been made in these programs and in the areas of Energy and Buildings. Providing informed, and control enabled applications to the home, buildings, and integrated into the energy grid provides great opportunities for connect and sustainable living for citizens and businesses in cities.

The city of Madrid will present the latest progress in the implementation of the ‘Urban Energy Management’ pilot for homes, and residential communities.

In the city of Lisbon, the ‘Smart UrbanEnergy for Schools’ pilot provides an innovative perspective on Energy management in municipally owned buildings, with two way integration with the energy grid. This pilot also has an educational aspect for students to learn about sustainable living, enabled by technology.

With the PTA application, the Urban EcoMap, and the energy applications, the CUD community is progressing towards an integrated urban services platform for connected and sustainable cities. These pilots, and many other projects and perspectives from other leading global cities, expert urban planners, business, and academic thought leaders will be presented and debated at the conference.

A commentary of the proceedings and highlights will follow during and after the event here on this blog.

Shane Mitchell

Cities create 80% of global carbon emissions. As we move from educating people about climate change to taking action to mitigate climate impacts, we need innovation to help spur a shift to climate-friendly social behavior in cities. Urban EcoMap helps address this objective. Begun in fall 2008, this pilot project is a collaborative effort involving Cisco and the City and County of San Francisco.

San Francisco is the first city worldwide to introduce the Urban EcoMap. On Earth Day 2009 (22 April), Mayor Gavin Newsom launched the Urban EcoMap pilot in San Francisco. The web-based tool will will be made available to the general public at the Connected Urban Development conference in Seoul, 21st May 2009.

Please view the demonstration of the Urban EcoMap San Francisco at www.urbanecomap.org. The conversation will continue on the website blog, twitter, and facebook. Return there for the latest information as the public go-live day for the web-based Urban EcoMap approaches.

The visual preview is also included here in the program page of the Connected Urban Development community website. Go to: http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/connected_and_sustainable_ict_infrastructure/eco_map

Shane Mitchell

At the last Connected Urban Development conference in Amsterdam, the city of San Francisco and Cisco presented the concept and prototype for the EcoMap, a geo-mapping based, collaboration, visualization and measurement tool for citizens, businesses and the city authorities to measure their carbon emissions and to see the collective results of their individual climate change behaviors.

As the next phase development progresses towards a working proof of concept, a video demo has been developed to set out the scope, features and functionality of the EcoMap in San Francsico.

Underlying the imperative to deliver this innovative visualization tool is to inform citizens and enable positive, community driven decision making to address cities carbon reduction targets, the global climate change challenge, and even more importantly, citizens informed and sustainable lives in urban environments.

The latest content on the EcoMap, and the video demo are on this website at; http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/connected_and_sustainable_ict_infrastructure/eco_map

Please refer to this website for the latest developments as the prototype of the EcoMap moves to an operational launch later in 2009.

Shane Mitchell