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

Following from the Cities in Action for Climate Change publication, Cisco and Metropolis, the global cities association, in partnership with the Connected Urban Development partnership has developed a survey that researches the role of urban innovation for sustainability in global cities.

In Autumn of 2009, the membership of Metropolis and the Connected Urban Development community contributed to the Urban Innovation for Sustainability survey. The survey seeks information about the top priorities of municipal leaders around the world and their efforts to create more sustainable cities. The survey is part of a research project that explores the challenges cities face; how city leaders introduce innovations; where cities are today in their quest to be more sustainable; and how city leaders perceive the role of information and communications technology (ICT) in fostering greater sustainability.

In summary, the study uncovered several important themes that should inform the work of the CUD community, the Metropolis Partnership for Urban Innovation Commission and Cisco’s Smart+Connected Communities programs in coming years:
1.       For cities, sustainability is first and foremost about the environment, but economic development and social inclusion also are crucial priorities of the wider urban sustainability agenda.
2.       “Livability” is the watchword in municipalities’ sustainability efforts, with a clear focus on climate change mitigation.
3.       Local governments are actively driving the push for more sustainable cities, marshalling resources to address the problem, orchestrating the input of the private sector and community groups, and leading by example in urban innovation initiatives, even in the face of obvious funding challenges.
4.       ICT is recognized as a vital contributor to urban innovation—and, therefore, to sustainability—in cities.

This builds from the publication, Cities in Action for Climate Change, which sets out the actions which cities are currently taking towards applying innovative approaches of technology to enable sustainable cities.

This survey takes a forward looking perspective on the priorities, plans and attitudes of global cities.

Both publications can be accessed on the Connected Urban Development and Metropolis websites.

In partnership with Metropolis, the global cities association, Cisco and the Connected Urban Development partnership have developed a publication, Cities in Action for Climate Change, that sets out the extent of actions which cities take towards applying innovative applications of technology to enable sustainable cities.

This publication by the Metropolis International Institute and Cisco, provides an overview of what some of the most insightful cities have been doing over the last few years to address climate change with concrete solutions. These span Metropolis member cities, those in the Connected Urban Development program, and other proactive and innovative cities across the world.

With an introduction by Metropolis and Cisco, the publication is intended as a repository of publically available information on sustainability programs by cities across the world. Cities in Action for Climate Change is intended to serve as insight and inspiration into the wide ranging and innovative approaches being taken by cities off various sizes, geographies, and cultures to respond to their local sustainability imperatives, and to highlight the global leadership being taken by cities to respond to global climate change challenges.

This publication complements the forward looking survey of global cities, Urban Innovation for Sustainability, also published at this time.

Both publications can be accessed on the Connected Urban Development and Metropolis websites.

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.

Cisco and the CUD partner cities have engaged The Climate Group to launch the CUD Alliance, which aims to create a sustainable program to deliver integrated, ICT-enabled urban climate-change solutions.The Climate Group and Cisco have established the CUD Alliance to extend the reach of the CUD community to additional public- and private-sector partners from around the world.The CUD Alliance will build on the success of CUD, The Climate Group’s city focus and the recommendations of the SMART2020 report, to create a forum for the development of globally relevant demonstration programs. The programs will focus on delivering low-carbon solutions through systems integration, policy and financing.

The CUD Alliance will concentrate on three main areas;- Developing new partnerships to implement pilot projects at the city level,

- Creating a platform to encourage common ICT standards for low-carbon urban solutions, - Scaling existing projects and resources across a growing number of world cities to reduce carbon emissions.The Climate Group and the CUD partners are engaged in a wide range of technology based urban projects. We encourage other cities and companies to the CUD Alliance, to contribute and drive the agenda, as we aim to further expand on the innovation, scaling and new connected and sustainable models of living in cities.See the news release for further details at: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_092409b.html.

Two global conferences have converged on Seoul, South Korea this week to address the challenges of climate change, and what approaches can be taken to address the sustainability objectives for governments, citizens and businesses across the world.

Starting on Monday 18th May the C40 group of global cities opened the C40 Seoul Summit, and the Climate Change Expo and conference, bringing city mayors, and policy makers together to discuss the challenges and imperatives for cities in the 21st century.

Starting on the 21st, our own Connected Urban Development global conference brings together thought leaders and practitioners from cities, urban planning, businesses, and academia, to hear from the global cities in the CUD program on their innovative proof of concept pilots. Also a distinguished list of speakers and invited delegates will discuss the role that technology can play towards connected and sustainable cities.

Speakers include executives from the city of Seoul; Duksoo Lee, Vice Mayor of Seoul; Sangbum Kim, Deputy Mayor for City Transportation; from the South Korean government, Sung-il Park, Director General of the Korean Informatization Strategy Office; David Miller, Mayor of Toronto and C40 Chairman; Christine Loh, from Hong Kong based Civic Exchange, and executives from Cisco, Arup, Gale International, and NASA.

Wim Elfrink, Cisco’s Chief Globalisation Officer will provide a live demo of technology solutions which enable the move to smart and connected cities. Jonathan Thorpe, EVP of Gale International, and Volker Buscher from ARUP will provide insights into the practitioners perpectives on the future of connected and sustainable cities.

The conference will be joined via TelePresence live from Seattle by Lord Stern, author of ‘The Economics of Climate Change’. He will participate in a Q&A session led by the impactful report’s co-author Dimitri Zenghelis, live at the conference.

Also leading academic insights will include those from Prof. Wu, Tongji University, China; Dr. Carlo Ratti from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Prof. Ludger Hovestadt from EVH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology).

Video addresses by Clinton Global Initiative founder and ex-US President Bill Clinton, and Job Cohen, Mayor of Amsterdam will provide the political and global support to the cities in the Connected Urban Development program, as the cities present their progress in their commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, and to the CUD community that are focused on proof of concept technology innovations that provide actionable, and tangible approaches to sustainability.

The conference sessions will look at; the Connected and SENSEable City, Urban and planetary sensing networks, the future for sustainable and low carbon urban planning and city services, and the mobility innovations of the city of Seoul and other cities in the CUD program.

Breakout sessions on Connected and sustainable work; living; mobility; plus, urban modelling and services will hear from the global CUD community and other leading global perspectives.

On the second day the 200 invited delegates of thought leaders from cities, urban planning, business and academia from over 25 countries will engage in a ‘Connected and Sustainable socioeconomic challenge’. Drawing from the delegates insights, the conference will address the role and imperatives for cities towards; governance in a carbon economy; green and digital economic stimulus; and 21st century cities.

The conference will conclude, after this discussion with a summary of these challenge discussions, and closing comments by Simon Willis, VP of Cisco Public Sector, and Nicola Villa the Global Director for CUD at Cisco.

Refer back here for updates from the proceedings of the two days.

Shane Mitchell

During EarthDay, the Urban EcoMap provided a number of commentaries, from Cisco, the City and County of San Francisco, citizens of the city, and other media outlets:

Quotes:

“Urban EcoMap in San Francisco provides residents, businesses and our city as a whole with much-needed tools to reduce our carbon footprint. With our city’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2012, we are pleased - and think it’s apropos - that Cisco selected San Francisco as the first city in the world to launch Urban EcoMap.” - Gavin Newsom, Mayor, City and County of San Francisco

“Because cities produce 80 percent of GHG emissions worldwide, they present the largest opportunity for innovation and social behavior changes. Citizens want to see the collective results of their individual climate-change actions.” - Simon Willis, vice president, global public sector, Cisco IBSG

Feature articles:

Zapping Greenhouse Gases, One Zip Code at a Time

The Environmentally Conscious City by the Bay

Video Blogs: by Mayor Gavin Newsom and Nicola Villa from Cisco IBSG.

Return to www.urbanecomap.org on the 21st May. In the lead in to then, join the online discussion there, on Twitter, Facebook and The Connected Republic.

In addition, the following media commented on the EcoMap during the day;

22nd April 2009,

Cisco Launches Carbon Emissions Map, First In San Francisco Earth2Tech

Web site to track SF green neighborhoods ABC News

Cisco, San Francisco launch Urban EcoMap San Jose Business Journal

Cisco’s “EcoMap” To Give San Franciscans Carbon Footprint Bragging Rights, Guilt Trips GreenTechMedia

 Net tool tracks carbon footprint by ZIP code San Francisco Chronicle

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

Overriding the global discussions of economic stimulus packages, there is an even bigger challenge facing civilisation. That of course is Climate Change.

I have just watched an excellent overview of a report ‘Investing in Climate Change 2009 - Necessity and Opportunity in Turbulent Times’ by Deutsche Bank, regarding the investment opportunity presented through the current economic recession.

The video summary is found at; http://www.dbadvisors.com/deam/dyn/globalResearch/1113_index.jsp#

PDF of the full report

The quote that stood out for me was; ‘The single biggest risk over the next two years is if people back off the story of climate change over the next 2yrs in the face of an economic recession. The silver lining is the Necessity and Opportunity that present themselves’ - Mark Fulton, Global Head of Climate Change Investment Research.

For me, the climate change Necessity delivers the market based Opportunity which can most effectively complement some of the inevitable stimuli that governments should address. The real, and sustainable opportunity for government is to set the economic environment where individuals, and businesses, can address the opportunity.

At least this analysis by Deutsche Bank strikes a more optimistic tone.

Shane Mitchell