The Evolution From Smart Buildings To Cognitive Cities highlights an article on Forbes.
- accelerated innovation and the creation of new opportunities
- the next step is the creation of cognitive cities
The digital evolution of cities
The digital evolution of cities has been underway for several years. It has created a virtuous circle that resulted in cities becoming increasingly competitive, sustainable, and prosperous through the optimization of urban activities and infrastructure and, at the same time, accelerated innovation and the creation of new opportunities.
The road ahead is still a long one, though, as can be seen from the manifest ferment in the industrial sector. In fact, according to a recent McKinsey & Company study, about $10 trillion will be spent to create smart factories, buildings, and infrastructure in the world each year. This expenditure will increase to $14 trillion by 2025 and will represent 13% of the turnover of the entire construction industry, which will make possible an enormous increase in the productivity of this sector.
Clearly, the private sector alone cannot embark on this path to innovation. Close collaboration with the public sector is needed to accelerate a comprehensive innovation process that can also include the general public.
The Evolution Of Smart Cities
The evolution of smart cities has been a gradual one. We started from an initial technology-driven perspective with small but fundamental changes — for example, the synchronization of traffic lights. We then moved on to a technology-enabled and city-led viewpoint in which technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud created cities we know today, with a range of digital services available.
A further step forward is the citizen co-creation of the cities of the future. In this paradigm, citizens have a fundamental role in guiding a radical transformation of cities according to their needs and goals, but also their desires and dreams. Technology and humanism combine to create the cities of tomorrow, with individuals who commit themselves to create, develop and test every type of innovation born to meet their needs.
The next step is the creation of cognitive cities: New entities that are different from smart cities, where there’s a continuous process of interaction and exchange between technology and residents and in which solutions such as AI are crucial in these ongoing improvements.
From Smart Buildings To Cognitive Cities
A fundamental factor in the creation of smart cities is smart buildings, the request for which continues to grow thanks to technologies such as the cloud that guarantees more effective and accessible digital twins, big data, cognitive service, and machine learning services, IoT that provides enhanced sensor connectivity and standardized, open protocols, as well as, of course, AI. These technologies are increasingly available and within the range of investment.
However, the creation of smart buildings is also guided by the demand for reduced management costs, the possibility of offering new and unusual experiences, and, above all, the need to create more productive workplaces. In fact, we imagine a future in which an office building gathers information about meetings for the following day and combines this data with the weather forecast and the preferences of workers in terms of the use of the meeting rooms while allowing for optimization of energy consumption as part of the growing awareness around sustainability.
The Emergence Of The First Cognitive Cities
Across the globe, there are numerous examples of the successful application of cognitive city technologies.
My company, Microsoft, has moved in this direction and adopted cutting-edge technologies to make its Redmond headquarters smart and connected. Its campus — comprising 125 buildings, 2,000,000 data points that register 500,000,000 transactions every 24 hours — required total digitalization to become a single asset, thus reducing waste and improving building efficiency. Thanks to the introduction of technologies equipped with AI, we generated enormous benefits, including energy savings of 6% to 10%, while improving technical assistance (over 10,000 requests /month) and correct 48% of problems in just 60 seconds. And all with an ROI achieved in just 18 months.
We also followed the Yas Island leisure parks developed by Miral, a United Arab Emirates company that creates tourist attractions throughout the world. With the goal of attracting 48 million visitors by 2022 and understanding the importance of having a complete, in-depth overview of visitor behavior, Miral decided to invest in digitalization of its spaces to guarantee personalized, immersive, and totally new experiences for 100% involvement of every visitor.
Practical Advice For Success
Our learning from building successful cognitive buildings and cities is to focus on inclusive digital infrastructures that integrate new technologies into the existing context. Successful plans rest on five key principles:
1. Connect top and bottom services. Consider the way “based services” (power, air, water, etc.) interact with middle (access, signage, security, occupancy, etc.) and top services (productivity, commerce, etc.).
2. Adapt to specific contexts. Adopt new technologies, both when returning to the office post-pandemic and when designing new spaces, leveraging at best the existing context.
3. Always be inclusive. As real people live in buildings, carefully consider the impact of technology on them, considering generational, gender, and cultural differences.
4. Take a living view. You should always consider the way that buildings and cities are “lived” in different ways during different parts of the day and night.
5. Involve society at large. Seek creative contributions from both public and private entities which may be impacted and/or benefit from the cognitive building.
A Look Into The Future
Naturally, by definition, all technologies we have spoken about are in constant evolution and, because of them, citizens can experience the city of the future on a daily basis, thanks to the use of spaces in ways that are necessarily very different than in the past. We have spoken of citizens, but digital experiences will impact all players in the urban universe, whether visitors, tourists, tenants, workers, or maintenance personnel.
They will be the ones impacted by the experiences that can be created when technology, social aspects, and the way of living these spaces are melded into one. Some of these concepts already exist, others are in the process of being developed and it’s only by continuing to invest in this sector that we will be able to amaze ourselves with future applications.
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Source: Forbes
