Smart cities Case studies - Singapore, Netherlands and the UK

hello and everyone welcome to the second panel of our second day of uh the open business council cities abc summit in partnership with the world smart cities forum i want to thank everyone listening to us around the world and i'm quite excited about uh leading this panel that is going to be discussing uh some of the most important and powerful case studies around the concept of smart cities and in this case some very powerful case studies around projects and organizations that are working from this from singapore netherlands and the uk with global impact and the personalities that i'm welcome all coming that are some of the leading leaders on these areas but as well creating some cutting-edge solutions for the concept of smart cities and everything working around that so smart cities have a lot of different ways of looking at it there's people looking at smart cities from the perspective of more of the technology there's perspective of more of a smart empowerment of cities citizens and organizations and we have as well in the end the day is the concept right now that is becoming the fabric of the cities in general so i always like to repeat that 600 cities are responsible for around 60 of the gdp in the planet and most of these cities are at the moment using advanced infrastructure advanced technologies and advanced solutions to look how we can actually tackle this our purpose of openbusinesscouncil.org and citizabc.com is precisely to tackle these problems around digital transformation around how to look at the concepts of smart cities in a better way that can empower us and create new solutions and as well how we can actually leverage and understand and learn with the global leaders in these areas and the personalities that are helping us both pushing forward these concepts the solutions these frames and as well making us go forward i want to welcome today the three illustrious panelists there are three leading global personalities in these areas of smart cities but as well personalities that actually are doing from the theory to the practice and as well leading both organizations both influence the infrastructures and as well in some cases collaborations with governments so we have uh mr atsushi taira that is the managing director of missile 2 uh a company based in singapore that is working on the project out this city audacity that is a major project for smart cities and is going to be telling us about the case study and the work they're doing in singapore but as well with this background from japan and working with some of the biggest tech investment groups in the world but as well understanding how to take this forward then we have mr jawad sardar there is a future and cities uh and prosperity specialist that has been right now working in some projects with different smart city infrastructures around the world but as well been working with uk government is based in the uk in terms of looking at solutions and international corridors around cities around how to look at cities infrastructure future cities and smart city solutions and last but not least mr geordi vos that is leading digital construction at um with boss that is actually joining us from singapore there is a company as well looking at uh construction infrastructure for major projects around cities around the world so i thank you all for being here it's really exciting to discuss these topics and there's a very passion of mine the concept of how can we actually create better cities more sustainable cities and especially smarter cities we have a lot of technology around us we are probably on the verge of the most advanced time in ever in history of humanity and all of us around 70 of the population of the planet as are living as we speak in cities and is going to probably to include to increase in the next years even with koved people are still in cities or in the suburban areas of cities but the challenge is that we have so much amounts of technology layers legacy systems challenges on that level that we are struggling to first of all understand that we better can actually empower the citizens and sometimes just creating awareness for this i think the problem about these things is the tools are there it's how we use it how we actually can actually empower us with that so these case studies that you're going to be presenting today are critical because they can actually help us understand what is going on and in this case with three major global projects and major organizations and as well personalities that understand these concepts and they can actually help us better understand how to move forward and as well everyone listening from for us a listing here from around the world can actually take this to your cities to your organizations and how to take this forward so without without further delays i want to pass the word to our panelists and the illustrious personalities that i'm quite excited and that will explain their case studies and will present for around 15 minutes some of the work they're doing and as well helping us understand this so i'll start with mr atsushi taira uh that is joining us like i mentioned from singapore and is working in a very advanced project uh with this organization and as well one of the i would say with the most fabulous projects in terms of what represents cities uh with the with the project uh the organization of missile 2 and as well with the ldcet project that is going to present so i'll pass the word and looking forward to hear your case study great thank you for can introduction guys hear me well yes okay so i'm gonna share the screen first okay so uh my name is atsushi taira of mesut of singapore and then uh today i'm going to talk about one of our initiatives called audacity it's alternative universal design for a city and actually sounds quite ambitious right but don't worry you know still is just the beginning and then still nissan stage we are um but a concept will be very i hope very interesting for you guys um but before going into the details of first of all i'd like to talk about who we are so misuto was funded by kaiser song who is the serial entrepreneur and known for successful gaming company uh gungho made ipo modern 15 years ago and then uh known as the younger brother of masayoshi song who is the founder of softbank which is famous for uh biggest sort of band in the world 100 billion dollars and actually i also uh met with the uh taiso when i worked for softbank under masayoshi song and i was involved many projects startup investment and also operations and also studied the disorder with taizo about five years ago and the mission is actually turning entrepreneurial challenges uh into the world impact so we are quite focusing on the impact um so working together with the startup and also founders and and then make positive impact to the world by innovations that's basically our mission and then we call ourselves a kind of collective impact community which is solving issues by innovations and by communities power the community of startups and also founders to make the world better place for especially next generation so our target is quite long 10 years or something 20 years long perspectives and we also do investment in the startup but we also run the project by ourselves so not just uh investors but also we run projects and then alongside of those projects we have invested more than 200 startups and sometimes vcs in five years total roughly speaking 400 million dollars so it's not actually a fan but vc but more like a family office structure um then no investor behind so that's why we are about longer term return on investment and then short term and then geographically widespread such as silicon valley japan northern part of europe india and southeast asia and then wide range of target segments such as autonomous cars drones recycle and upcycle and farming and agriculture food health care and etc so i think all those are actually part of the uh city smart city and then uh recent uh you know project is audacity uh future of the living and city and then especially design a city from their scratch so why is there scratch um this is about 100 years ago in new york fifth avenue and obviously a lot of cars and also buildings a big road and then of course you know much better beautiful but still now the basic structure is the same big roads and cars and buildings so uh last hundred years we run up the industry revolution and then focusing on transportation logistics and the cities have been sort of a design for workers and also maybe focusing on efficiencies of course nothing wrong that was a great innovation at the time last 100 years because of that we are enjoying modern societies as we know but also there is some sort of a downside effect this is quite you know obvious but uh we know that because of centralization and urbanization caused a lot of lots of problem congestion pollution environmental issues depression this is actually quite uh you know big deal because of the corbett recently and community issues and in equality so we hope that in our living and society will be improved by cities and also urban setting and in some sense you know it was yes but we feel something wrong especially under pandemics and also climate change issues right so a basic question we need to ask ourselves and we need to think about the next generation right next hundred years for example should we continue this format or should we consider a better future for our children and grandchildren with alternative options that's kind of starting point of the audacity project and then we believe time has come so we need to make a paradigm shift fundamental change from technology-centric and optimization efficiency-centric to humanity-centric design supported by sustainable innovation and technology it looks like just a flipping the order but i think are quite important because technologies are great enablers but not the purpose the purpose should be centered around humanity design and i would say don't say human-centric or human-centered because it is very selfish right that's why i'm using humanity which will include environment conscious other people and then other species even right that's why we call it the humanity-centric design and then audacity study does a sort of a public private partnership at jid jurong innovation district about two years ago which is located at the west side of the singapore people know the east side in a fully developed but you know uh west side uh still there is a jungle and then there is a project to develop that 10 20 years from now and 600 hectares of the land would be the bureau and we partnered with the jtc jerome town corporation which is a government agency develops about 30 percent of singapore land and also niantic university and also interpret singapore and and then intention is that providing alternative design build a city from scratch concept and leverage startup and the research-based innovations and also focusing on the young generation such as 20s 30s even sometimes we involve the teenagers because you know we're talking about 20 30 years later all those young people are actually will be actually center of the population in the future um but uh you know this is their scratch idea the scope is actually huge it's kind of overwhelming as you can see uh city design theme map this is uh we developed most of the cases smart city project focusing on infrastructure such as energy housing water logistics and of course those are quite important as a basics and foundation right and however after we had the many discussions and workshop and then we realized a lot of other factors will be kicking in um and then we need to have a larger and holistic scope is required to make a better future so it will include for example individual dimension left upper corner such as okay learning and job lifestyle and wellness health care all those has been changing right especially we know under corbett you know all those kind of the things are so different from now than before any community dimension inclusiveness equality and ownership has been changing sharing economies kick in and the public service is actually overwhelmed that's why civic participation could be important and even production that was not part of the city uh you know before but now food agriculture even manufacturing because of the 3d printing or adept manufacturing those can be a part of the you know city and now of course you know sustainability environment conscious should be part of that right so i think that these are kind of the very big wide range of the things we need to handle and then uh you know it's cannot be the silo basis right because all those elements intellect each other when you consider a new sort of uh the energy and also need to consider yourself carbon farming together because uh our farming consumed a lot of energy for example right that's why it's a crucial and then you know we need to have a more bottom-up and also collaboration way to solve the issues and also we are looking for something alternative ideas that's why um technology options or idea options as you can see on these charts such as we love the off-grid or decentralization human autonomy sustainability cycler preventive health care micro scale empowerment do it to yourself democratize technology human argumentation well-being and then climate religions etc so when we think about the project to support or startup support or innovation to support we always refer these kind of keywords to do what not to do or to support or not to support because our mission is exactly uh providing the alternative option that's why we intentionally do something totally opposite than current form as a division and also concept and then to start with a long journey we actually setting up the kind of playground for innovators we call it and for startup so physically and virtually so we provide a sandbox setting and the living labs sort of freedom testing and prototyping and also uh you know cold living cold living actually not happening because of the corbett but that was a concept and core researching and then especially motivate young innovators right again we are talking about 10 20 years future that's why it's quite crucial to nurture all those young people to understand the future hypothesis and also enabling technologies right so once we nurture the talent and also uh enabling technologies right then uh you know we tested many ideas and then once it works our plan is that actually deploy that that kind of technology idea to the city development itself around so we we put in place this innovation district in the center of the developed city they broke them and then always you know the new ideas coming up and then it's sort of creating a metabolics right metabolism will be created from the center of the city and then new idea will be coming up from the center of the city and then validated the solution idea can be deployed the city itself so that you know the city itself is always vibrant and also kind of forever you know i think improvement and also advancement right so we kick-started the kind of seating project to to start and then by ourselves setting up the workshop facilities and also testing that now and then building that community with uh different type of people because as i mentioned we need a different kind of skill set and also type of people because in order to provide alternative options it is crucial to involve the wide variety of the people right and then set the kind of dynamic and the holistic discussions and then designs works are required so uh that's why we're taking community approach rather than corporate and also top-down approach because i don't think we cannot make it happen with such sort of a top-down approach so this year 2021 we are setting up actually this a piece of around about the 600 square meter and put in place a multiple startup and also research solution to show the future hypothesis tangibly and also adaptative the alternative options so it's actually creating awareness of the what would happen what should happen in the future so i believe that in order to develop a smart city and a future living it is crucial to not judge your next generation as i mentioned and then if those kind of people are more and more i think it's not that kind of change what happens smoothly rather than with the friction that's my strong brief and then i believe audacity will accelerate leaping from innovation of the future city design together with developed and also emerging markets handy hand because it's quite crucial to develop the city holistically together because uh you know sometimes radical alternative options will be deployed emerging markets first because developed markets have a lot of legacies and are no easy to change it but uh emerging market can be deployed sooner and then that's the reason why we are located in singapore where all enabling ips technologies are available and then founded by emerging market to work together nearby so uh be a part of the audacity i would say movement not just a project and then together you know let's reimagine the concept of the cities and also smart city that's my wish and hope that's it from my side thank you thank you so much is really impressive and i love the humanity-centric concept part because i think you're right is human is still very broader but humanity is much more ambitious and much more powerful and i think congratulations first of all because it's a great project and i would say that uh so i was reading and doing some research with multiple academics there's around 10 000 cities to be created in the next 50 years and most of these cities will need your background and support so so you are right now just to before you go to the other panelists are you doing this project right now focus exclusive on singapore but you are looking as well around the world to other cities yeah yeah i'm hoping that you know kind of the networking or city can be developed with this kind of a concept of course you know each city have a different setting because the city have a different background so that's our focus will be different but i think concept could be similar okay we need to tackle urbanization issues centralization issues and how to create a humanity eccentric design that could be common part but solutions can be different by cities but as can be same in that case shared idea and also technology across the cities that's my hope no it's and that's really what we need and that's partly my my goal especially the work we've been doing with peter kim with world smart cities forum and cities abc because i think the problem is that that's the data part of the cities there's the coordination there's the policies and most of these things no one is speaking with each other so you're creating like a frankenstein of of different technologies policies and right it doesn't help anyone so i think the challenge is massive thank you so much sushi we'll come back to the question i had a lot of questions well pastor word sardar so jawad you've been working with uk government as a future cities infrastructure and as well working with a lot of different countries around the world from emerging countries to more advanced countries so you have quite a lot of understanding of doing this from what atsushi is doing in the top level ambitious moonshot to the reality and as well the challenge i'm sure that it's not easy to take these and make this happen so i would pass the word to you and i'm looking forward to hear your words and now you're looking at these things thank you so much dennis uh can you guys hear me okay yes brilliant uh thank you so much uh good morning good afternoon and good evening uh depending on where you're joining us uh today and thank you for for joining this session so my name is is jawad sada um i'm just gonna quickly share my screen so uh one second can you guys see that yeah brilliant thank you um so my name is juwan sardar i am um by profession a consultant uh um i work with both national and and local governments and today i'll be speaking about um smart cities in the uk taking a holistic view at how the uk has managed to to to develop so many smart cities and um being a leading uh light in terms of the development and delivery of and design of smart cities at all levels so not just major cities your second and third cities and also your towns and so i i will talk about two or three case studies um to do that and but before i get into the thick of of smart cities in the uk just a quick introduction into um who i am so i'm a smart city strategist by profession i work with national and local governments to design develop and deliver smart city strategies and that's working on all levels so at a national level at a city level and then at a local town and and community level too um making sure that technology that is being deployed in cities is um to the best uh use of citizens and not um over overarching or over um obviously sorry into citizens uh privacy and and um their their uh personal lives and intrusion into into areas that um have been a problem in smart cities globally and so i work with uh governments helping them understand what types of technology will be best suited for their service delivery and ensuring that they are sticking to things like the the global sdgs under the u.n habitat and also other sort of um esg frameworks and tools just to make sure that everything has been delivered has been delivered to the to the benefit of the citizens as the citizen um like that's usually mentioned is is the core part of a smart city you know you can't really have a smart city without um benefiting your citizens um as dennis mentioned in his uh introduction earlier i was the future cities and prosperity specialists for the uk government's department for international trade that role um completed at the back end of of uh march um and as the future cities and prosperity specialists i helped design and deliver the secondary benefits program um that ran alongside the 18 million pound global futures program which has been which was delivering 30 smart cities projects in 19 cities across 10 countries um from brazil in south america south africa and africa turkey and central asia and then the association of southeast asian nations um in in southeast asia so the asean bloc and so my role in that was um helping the the cities understand how to scale up from um a capacity building and a knowledge sharing aids program to a full-scale smart cities project we can which leads to investment and trade opportunities for both um organizations within those countries but also those from the uk i'm now taking on a new role as a technology specialist again for the uk government uh looking specifically at the eastern europe and the central asian network and so working with governments in both the uk and turkey and central asia looking to progress just to trade relations and outside of that i'm also an angel investor and advisor to startups i work with a lot of um startups and scale-ups predominantly um those who are either based in the uk looking to expand into frontier or emerging markets or those based within emerging markets looking to to build uh product market fit um international growth and or looking for collaborations across other continents and my areas of focus are central asia africa and then southeast asia and south asia so um the uk how has the uk managed to to be a leader in smart cities globally i'm going to speak um from the government side initially before i go into more of a city case study level so um the uk government from a national level has played a a key role in in the the design and the delivery of smart cities across the uk um it's taken on the role of coordinator funder and regulator um allowing the the the private sector and academia and local governments to go away and to innovate and to deliver uh projects that can help deliver better urban services and how have they gone about doing that so as a coordinator the government has proactively introduced organizations to one another and encourage collaborations where mutual benefits of smart cities development uh can be found um and so an example of that in 2013 the government launched the future cities catapult um as a part of the catapult network looking to drive innovation and the future sees catapult now known as as the connected places catapult um with with the the mission of of solely helping cities both in the uk and then globally identify their challenges and explore how new technologies could help address those challenges and then bringing together different components of a city so your public sector your private sector your academia and then professionals who may not uh have known that they have the skill sets to to help cities deliver urban services but um have skill sets related to regulation to technology or to to governance and who could come in and to advise cities on new concepts and and design of new technologies and so since 2013 the connected faces catapult has do been doing phenomenal work um using government funding to help build smart cities both here in the uk and globally then secondly um after coordinating and bringing together these these groups and forming consortium the government then has provided funding for for these consortia to go away and to build innovative products for cities um so in 2012 the the technology strategy board was uh was formalized and now known as as innovate uk and ran the future cities demonstrator which was a 24 million pound demonstrator program being running in glasgow uh helping um the city of glasgow understand how technology can help address uh some of the most pressing urban problems and and challenges they faced and alongside that they also funded 30 other cities to conduct feasibility studies um again using cutting technology working with the private sector and academia to help build innovative solutions to the most pressing urban problems and then in 2017 um the the launch of the the 400 million pound digital infrastructure fund um which allowed um cities to to um get a huge amount of investment from government to be able to to digitize their services to be able to deliver better connectivity to be able to um digitally transfer transformation in within the government entities themselves and local authorities to to streamline their processes and to be able to share data freely um which are all a base and a foundation of a truly smart city and then thirdly as a regulator so um brought together these consortium brought together different parts of society to to design and develop really intuitive and innovative smart cities products then provided the funding for them to be able to build it but then also acting as a regulator to make sure that again um the citizen was at the the heart of any sort of smart city project that's been delivered so making sure that citizens um lives weren't being impeded upon their their um data was being shared in a uh regulated manner and how they've been doing that is is by the british standards institute which has been working with regulators and other partners to help develop flexible uh yet clear set of guidelines to look for when you're developing your own smart cities so the the bsi have worked with um a number of uk cities to deliver the smart city standards which are available for for anybody to to access online and can be used to to completely design develop and deliver a whole smart city looking at multiple areas of smart cities including your governance including your your design process including your stakeholder management and then your your end delivery and evaluation of the delivery so um the uk's smart cities ecosystem is is is proof that the fundamental strength that the uk holds um in terms of its development and delivery of smart cities so i mentioned the catapults network which is a network of uh organizations that are government-funded that help drive innovation bringing together different parts of society to to develop uh products on on multiple parts of smart cities so the catapult connect space catapult looks at urban innovation but you have the digital catapult looking at industry 4.0 you have the satellites technology catapult looking at satellite technology and how satellite technology can can help um different parts of or different sectors sorry including transportation including um agriculture and then you have um the digital health catapult two looking at digital health and so there's a network of eleven catapults that work across multiple sectors looking at innovation but alongside that the uk is also home to almost 200 incubators accelerators and demonstrator programs that are nurturing cutting-edge technology and i have a growing number of internationally renowned r d centers such as the allen turing institute which is looking at artificial intelligence and then the urban innovation lab based out the connected place of catapult which is looking at again providing a test bed for for urban innovation and then the institute for future cities which is a an 18 million 89 million pounds um institute based up in in glasgow at the university of strathclyth again providing a test bed for smart cities applications to allow universities allow private sector and public sectors come in and to build um products in a realistic testbed environment and then censor city in liverpool which is contributing to advancements in sensor and iot technology so smart cities in the uk so smart cities in the uk can be categorized into three uh core categories um leaders developers and or developing and emerging i'll just quickly go through this i know i know time is is a bit short so um leaders these are smart cities that um not just in the uk are are renounced globally for their smart cities initiatives they have differentiated themselves uh through the clarity breadth and inclusiveness of their smart cities vision and planning and these cities have established the advanced infrastructure that can offer test beds for commercializing new technologies and i'm leading the way in terms of implementing significant programs are both prior pilots and then scale up um a level and synthetic city scale level and you know some of the ones that are our leaders here are ones that many of you will know in terms of of london manchester bristol glasgow you know oxford and second category developing these are our smart cities that have laid down a vision um for their smart cities endeavours and they began to deploy projects on on both the pilot and a city skill level um but their execution still trails in terms of um outlining uh how those projects could come together to build a city-wide uh smart city's vision um and so they're slightly behind in terms of the progress of those that are the leading smart cities and then finally emerging and these are smart cities that have established initial statements of intent and have developed limited pilot projects but um still work needs to be done in terms of developing a strategic program and building a more extensive ecosystems to to to deliver more holistic smart cities um within them so um case studies uh i'll start with glasgow you know when you talk about the uk everybody tends to jump into london first i i try not to do that i try to speak more about different programs happening across across the uk and glasgow is a fantastic example of a city away from the center and that has done phenomenal work within the smart city space so glasgow was a recipient of the 24 million pound future cities demonstrator um award from the technology strategy board back in 2013 um now innovate uk and has since implemented its future cities glasgow program which has a huge number of of uh programs including the the central city management system including uh intelligent smart street lighting active travel energy efficiency and integrated social transport and i also mentioned it's it's home to the 89 million pound state of the art technology and innovation center and the institute for future cities based at the university of strathclyde uh strathcat which is an observatory facility um which provides um a visualization of cities and a test bed for for innovation uh to be trialled on the glasgow's operations center which is one of um a growing number of operation centres that we have across the uk um within cities is a facility that is um been established to provide state-of-the-art integrated traffic and public safety management system um and it provides it's a center that brings together cctv security for city councils museums and art galleries traffic management and police intelligence and the facility has the capability to provide coordinated real-time intelligence said response to incidents um both large and small across the city placing glasgow at the leading edge of smart city management and then finally on on glasgow you know my glasgow is a brilliant governance app which allows the the city to engage with um citizens through an app where they can report uh any issues with public uh infrastructure any issues um regarding urban services and are are um directly able to contact a um representative of the of the city via this app uh 24 hours a day and so it's a it's a fantastic example of of smart governance um within a city and and citizen engagement london um you know everybody knows about london you know a few of its iconic projects the oyster contactless payment system which was won the first of its kind that was launched back in 2003 um and has since been scaled up uh considerably um you know back in 2014 and was then transitioned into any contactless debit or credit card being used on the system and the london data store uh which was one of the which is one of the biggest open data stores that any city globally is using uh in 2010 um it starts to be 500 data sets now having over 6 000 data sets and 60 000 users per month uh bringing together data from 33 boroughs and and just a quick comment on return on an investment or in terms of business case which a lot of city officials tend to to want to understand before they they've entered into any smarties project um a study back in 2017 found that just by opening their travel data um the the the greater london authority was able to bring back 130 million pounds in terms of in terms of return of investment um uh and revenue on the basis of opening up their travel data via the tfl so allowing travel data to be used by the public um and businesses to be able to innovate um using and so that pulled back about 130 million pounds of revenue finally in london and digital twin infrastructure is a massively growing uh concept within london over 80 of our boroughs in london are using digital twins which help and the cities and and the boroughs understand uh built environments before they have to commit to large scale investments understanding um energy and environment and traffic impacts on the built environment and there's a whole host of other projects within london that um it as a leader globally and is all being led by the the mayor of london under the smarter london program and they have a huge level of interoperability between the programs and bringing together a coherent vision for the city and autonomous vehicles smart street lighting and energy management smart energy management those are all huge projects taking place in london including and plus um 5g testbed within london too and finally cambridge cambridge is on the on the one end of the uk innovation corridor something a lot of people don't know cambridge is actually home to more um patents per capita than silicon valley and that's the level of innovation happening within such a small city um it's home to the the cambridge smart city program which includes the intelligent city platform which collates and processes real-time data from a huge number of centers across the the city and is um available for for the the city government to use to be able to to um do more of evidence-led decision-making there's also a huge autonomous um vehicles program within the city where um autonomous shuttles are being trialled at the moment between the university and and another location um at times where public transport isn't available this this kicked off at the back end of last year and is is a massive step towards um autonomous public transport and is one of the leading examples of of a live test bed within within a city cambridge is also home to a number of smart street lighting um uh projects is actually home to talented and one of the the world's leading smart street lighting companies and they're working on a number of really innovative um projects including looking at security on sensor systems and security on smart street lighting which is something that that's not been looked at at a huge um degree in the past and so cambridge is also home to to one of the the leading uh institutes looking at satellite technology in agriculture and and urban transport so um again a a huge example massive example of a city bringing together different parts of society including the the university private sector and and local governments to deliver um really innovative and impactful uh smart cities programs i'm gonna stop there because i know i've probably gone over my time um but thank you so much and i'm very happy to take on any questions or any comments that you may have both in the chat or um once we start the panel session thank you so much dennis thank you this is really impressive and i think it shows the vitality of what the work that uk has been having living in the world but as well a lot of things that probably people don't know because of course for instance cambridge that has more patents uh than silicon valley i do know that one and i think it's an important thing as well to show that innovation is sometimes in places we don't know of course it's one of the leading universities that shows as well that capacity but as well what is interesting is the the network of cities and smart cities that you guys are building around the world congratulations for that so probably before we go to the last um panelists so what would be the biggest challenge you faced so far so far dealing with all these different cities especially one thing is uk but as well the relationships we have with other cities around the world and smart cities ecosystems i i think for myself one of the the fundamental issues with with um law school smart cities has been the scaling aspect of a smart city there's a huge number of fascinating pilot studies but there's still a lot to be done around finding funding mechanisms and then finding um the the the road maps to actually scaling pilot and demonstrator projects to city-wide projects and these are these are issues we've faced in the uk these are issues that we face when we work with with cities globally and there's a huge issue with with skills gap um with local authorities not always possessing the right sort of skills needed to deliver city-wide um smart cities projects and also uh another key issue that um atsushi mentioned actually in his his presentation around um making sure that your priorities with a smart city um are right so technology driven smart cities have probably been the the um the the leading uh sort of vision of smart cities over the last 10 or 15 years which um has has led to a a huge uh portfolio of smart cities that aren't suitable for actual citizens so um i think the the transition from technology led to citizen-led smart cities is another big um problem area that we've been facing but i think the scaling from pilot demonstrator to city-wide looking at funding mechanisms looking at uh partners looking at skill sets um looking at capacity building these sort of things are are issues we face globally i think um you know with with the rapid uh development of technology globally you know and the skills gap that is uh uh both here in the uk and internationally i think there's a huge need piece of work that needs to be done around trying to to build skills uh to make sure that our governments are are understanding technology and are able to regulate technology properly and able to deliver proper digital services very good points and i think really important for highlighting this and that's the purpose of this event as well uh thank you so much jawad so uh we passed right now to geordi voss last but not least so jordy is joining us from singapore but is part of the is the lead digital construction of uh with vin boss which is an organization that is engineers and consultants that possess intrinsic drive to drive complex issues and help society to progress so of course we cannot build cities without engineers without construction without infrastructure so let's look at another version case study from your case jordi looking forward to hear from your presentation thank you thanks a lot for the introduction dennis i will share my screen so everyone can see my presentation slides um give me one second i think you can see my screen right yes all right yeah so uh i will give a quick introduction basically about uh the digitalization and automation of the build infrastructure in smart cities uh but before we start with that uh quick introduction um so my name is as just was introduced uh jordy falls and i'm working for video walls and we are in dutch consultancy an engineering firm and we work on the field of development of infrastructure water uh of course the environment and construction and we have uh offices spread over 11 countries our headquarters is in the netherlands and i'm based temporary in singapore where i'm currently leading the digital construction team so with this team we basically focus on digitalization and automation of the construction industry and with this team we basically deliver a whole range of services to to help doing that ranging from consultancy technological development all the way up to design engineering and even implementation of those technologies so how does that relate to the smart cities therefore i'd like to see i like to make use of the this framework that has been developed by the asian smart cities network and where you basically see that you know smart cities are an umbrella of a whole lot of development topics uh and strategic desired outcomes and so on and the build infrastructure and the building and construction of that is a very important part of that and you see that it also has a lot of interfaces with for example the health and well being of those people living in those houses and infrastructure that are constructed but also a clean environment because the construction industry is responsible for a lot of the co2 emissions and also of course the industry and innovation and upscaling where a lot of people actually work in this industry of building and construction um so that is where the automation and digitalization of the construction basically comes in so we are zooming in a little bit more on digitalization automation why do we need that in a smart city uh well first of all uh as you maybe know the productivity in the construction industry is way lower compared to other manufacturing industries that means we need a lot more people to create the same value or in construction knowledge construction terms we need a lot more people to construct houses um so there's a lot of room for improvement um besides that the constriction industry is not really famous because of its safety and there are quite some fatal accidents even on a yearly base in this industry so also the safety really needs to be improved and as i just mentioned the construction industry is really responsible for a large part of the co2 emissions in the world estimated to be around 11 and if you take into account the emissions that are um um coming from for example operational phase of the buildings it goes up together up to 39 um so also there there's still a lot of room and needs for improvements and last but not least are of course the healthy cities there's an increasing need for housing and those cities needs to be of course appealing to living but also healthy and one of the key technologies that we develop and apply uh to work on those challenges in the build infrastructure is what we call 3d concrete printing and that's something where i would like to zoom into a little bit more in this presentation because 3d concrete printing is a great solution for example to increase that productivity to automate the traditionally very manual processes in the construction industry but also because there's less human involvement needed it's a great improvement in terms of safety um also on the field of sustainability it's a very promising technology because first of all we use a lot of new materials but it gives us the opportunity to start all over developing more sustainable materials but also the technology is very promising in terms of optimal material usage to only use material where you actually need it think about for example hollow structures but also there's very little material waste during production and also the design freedom of this technology is a big advantage to create those healthy and more appealing cities that can even be customized to the needs of the people who live and work and stay there so yeah let's get into practice how does it work a 3d concrete printer is robotic technology basically where a robot is moving a print ad that extrudes concrete and that printer that robot is fully controlled by a controller and the controller receives input from the digital designs that we as engineering firm create and that's also the link between us as engineering firm and this new technology we create digital designs and these digital designs we can convert to this new manufacturing technology which makes the industry a way more efficient industry and if you do that in the correct way you're able to produce building components layer by layer in this way that's what you see happening in this video for example um so yeah why why is all of that such a big improvement um let's have a look at the processes that you typically see in for example the the production of a wall component i will not get too much into detail but it's a process with a lot of individual steps in between to get to that final product for each step different skills are needed different materials are needed a lot of people are needed and because especially because there are different skills needed there are different people working on each step so that wall process is super segregated it's really increasing the cost and failure cost it's very labor intensive very human friendly and also a lot of material is wasted so it's not really sustainable so if we go to this new technology what we call 3d printing you see that the process is way more lean and ideal the processes really connect to each other and also simplify because everything is integrated in a single type of production process um so in the future that can look for example like this where you see on the left side one of the 3d cookie printers that we have installed here in singapore and on the right side you see other r d projects where they do all those steps in between that you need to create the building components think about reinforcement service finishing placing of tiles and it all fully completely driven by a digital design that delivers the input to these machinery so that is an integrated process with high productivity it's automated which is human friendly and it's sustainable because we don't produce waste we also don't need all that form work for example that you typically see in a construction site and that's where we have way more designs freedom and a possibility to create custom-made designs for the people so how does the future look like it looks very promising the technology is really taking off at the moment you see that in the past years more and more r d pilot projects and implementation takes place if you look at case studies around the world you see all kinds of application of this technology happening right now ranging from affordable housing up to more exclusive housing from low rise up to high-rise housing up to complete houses printed in massive printers on the construction site up to building components 3d printed in factories and also infrastructure such as bridges for example are being produced with 3d printing here you see for example the case studies of the netherlands and singapore where we have done the design and engineering and testing for the projects so that all sounds very promising so often i get the question is 3d printing the future of construction and will every construction site in the future have a 3d printer i think it will exist besides other construction technologies that are also digital so in this this photo you see for example a precast factory where prefabrication of building components take place in a highly automated way and i think that will happen next or besides 3d concrete printers where each technology has its pros and cons and depending on the needs and requirements of the build infrastructure project you will choose which technology is mostly needed or applicable um so yeah that that applies on the construction site as well where the construction site way more starts to look like factories covered um healthy environment for people to work with and of course create a higher quality end product and also 3d printing and the other digital construction technologies fit perfectly to that but yeah there's still a lot of development needed to standardize this technology there's a strong relationship between the materials we use the printing processes and the spirometers and the designs we manufacture and all that needs to be standardized to make it more acceptable accessible and also more affordable and also new business models will be developed to make use of the added value from 3d concrete printing in the most optimal way think about at the moment it's for example a bit more expensive than traditional construction but all those added values will be very useful in certain projects so we are looking for which projects needs this technology the most so that's always a combination of what you see on the right side the feasibility of course of the technology the desirability of the advantages of 3d computing and the viability in terms of business finance and you also see that over time this technology becomes cheaper and more affordable which you already see happening in other manufacturing technologies you see on the right side where the technology becomes more affordable and at the same time the speed of those technologies the manufacturing speed the productivity is also increasing um so the more projects we see the more demand the more competition and the lower the prices will be so that is something that we can really expect in the future as well um so yeah that's that's the end of the introduction that i wanted to give about what we are working on and of course we work on many more things than just 3d concrete printing but this is one of the yeah good case studies that we spend a lot of time in time on thanks a lot for your attention and if there are any questions feel free to drop them in the chat of course thank you jordy fantastic presentation this shows us as well another uh i think vertical of uh building cities improving cities but as well making the engineer and the digital so um i think before we go and i think we'll start start with the panel so i think we we saw three different uh parts of the puzzle of what is building cities building smart cities and creating infrastructure and as well the policies and all the different parts and the engineer in the case jordy so one of the things that i would like to kick off is um so we are in a very very critical and confusing times i think old times if you go to the bible the bible and actually all the whole old uh narratives always talk about major cities measure challenges from the even the the old japanese traditions or if you go to the israelian or even the arabic traditions so the cities most of the innovation of humanity was done on cities and i think all is the cities create the narratives great infrastructures creates the technology the engineering all the things i think the probably the biggest challenge that we're facing as we speak and i want to touch your um humanity-centric vision because it's actually something that me and all our organizations together believe completely is are we going to keep this humanity-centric uh vision as we build uh first yesterday i was moderating a panel with four robotic living personalities in the planet that created some of the most amazing android robots and all of these uh things are happening as we speak from utilitarian robotics to sensors and iot to disruptive uh internet of things and of course artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies so my first question and i'll go straight away to you at sushi is building out the city which is a very ambitious auditious platform implies a sense of capacity to go from the theory the moonshot and at the same time put it in practice but the challenge like we heard from jawad and from geordi for instance we still have a lot of challenges for instance in in security uh for instance during the crash in a lot of cities there's sometimes hundreds of people that die in accidents and there's as well all the cyber security and all the risks that we're seeing especially when it comes to surveillance and to other risks so how do you put that together especially to make a more inclusive humanity-centric but as well something that creates a better narrative because the challenge right now is about narrative is that we have definitely fantastic tools we have the best in history of humanity and we are actually disrupting even the way we are as humans but definitely we still have a lot of challenges to pass through so i would like to test that in your moonshot building how do you build this and how you build this in the dna of your strategies sure yeah so obviously innovation technology are crucial pieces right so uh even though i'm saying that the humanity center design all those enablers should be very advanced technology for sure and first of possible because i think uh we are sort of a big gap of the uh sort of a resource that we have and also the people number of people to support right it's big gap so that's why it's very important to uh create some sort of abundant situation right because uh it is a kind of manual process and then obviously it's not uh possible to support a massive number of people to make up and make them better you know lives right that's why uh innovation will be used uh for greater abundance of many things maybe abundance of the food abundance of energy around the space right and then i think uh it could be a reconciliation happen right because even though humanity centers but a technology should be used to create an abundance of the uh many things first of all and then obviously you know there is sort of a balance in between of course now more technologies kick in obviously sometimes the privacy will be gone right so that's why we need to have some sort of a balance between uh humanity and also uh technologies and then especially hundring the data privacy data that's why and then sometimes people concerning about you know okay government see everything and then every moment that's what maybe we need to have a sort of neutral body to manage such data maybe not exactly part of the government not exactly private maybe i think in between it's sort of a maybe collaboration between the citizens press government and then there's a whole creator i don't know either blockchain technology whatever it is it's quite crucial uh to support such a you know technology i think right that's yeah a little bit random answer but uh you know that's my answer no and i think it's an important uh consideration because i think it's about people but as well how you make these bridges so that that brings me to jawad so you've been in a very um i would say challenging position because you in the one end you are touching the cities the government in this case or governments because it's the uk and all the different governments and as well the organizations of the cities so how do you breach this different because in the end the day the challenge is that of course one thing is the moonshot and the other thing is all these fantastic things but is it like an orchestra if you don't work all together the music will be out of tune and you might have a bit of a cacrophony which happens most of the cities but i think it's how we get that so i would like to touch that because it's really the other day the magic is putting all the different players working for a common purpose but as well using these tools and these technologies for good and as well to empower us because even if the good is always subjective but i think at least empowering people makes a big difference and of course this tool especially kovid allows us to be talking with you guys around the world and we actually have these tools for the last decade but the digital transformation is still very early uh so i would like to touch that especially these bridges and bridges especially how the players can work together no no that's a very very very uh valid point and very uh permanent uh point to kind of consider with smart cities you know finding common goals between organizations is probably the biggest uh player in this is trying to find areas that they can all uh identify with so common challenges i think one thing that cobit has definitely helped with in terms of smart cities is allowing the big private sector organizations understand how important um the fundamentals of the city away from just the economic factors are in terms of urban transport in terms of resilience in terms of uh the environment all of these things i think a lot of major private sector and technology companies in specific have kind of become more aware of now more cognizant of as the pandemic has developed to where we are now with a lot of um their sort of infrastructures being challenged around how they do their work um you know a lot of this uh stuff around working from home and and a new new sort of normality in life you know these sort of things so i think the the the number one priority is trying to find common goals first of all and common goals are almost always underpinned by common challenges so trying to find a challenge that a a member of society so a resident can can identify with and also a a ceo of a a large um private sector organization could also identify with and trying to bring them together to to try to work towards solution-making and so these are challenges that we have not only in the uk this is globally you mentioned this you know i think these these challenges get uh more exaggerated when you go to more developing countries and lower income countries where the the difference between the the um upper middle upper income um people and the lower income people is much larger than it is in some other the more developed nations and so um i think this is a fundamental to any truly successful smart cities trying to be bring together and bridging those gaps and so um working towards common goals identifying common problems and then trying to identify how we can work best towards them and then i think a big point on that and just just kind of leading on to some of the stuff you spoke to at sushi about just now i think regulation is a major major part in this and trying to ensure that governments stay on top of regulations you know i think it's it's a pretty dangerous space to be in to allow uh the private sector or technology companies to regulate themselves particularly it comes to cities i think this is somewhere um that a lot of smart cities have kind of fallen short on you know um the big huh around um the google sidewalks labs and and and the the stuff that was happening in toronto um and how you know um it got to such a dangerous position where you know the entire project had to be pulled because of what where it was going um regarding data privacy and intrusion upon residents uh privacies and so you know regulation is a major major aspect of this and i think and that's how we can try to bridge some of these trust issues too because i think there's major trust issues between uh society and the regular citizens and technology companies when it comes to smart cities and so you know i think um this this humanity-centric approach that sushi spoke about is such an a brilliant concept i think this is absolutely fantastic in trying to bridge these these gaps and bringing people together from different parts of society and so you know i think again the common goals um understanding common challenges and then working towards uh proper solutions to those and i think this this sort of environment that we're in now because of the pandemic it's probably the best uh situation we could be in for for for innovation within this sort of smart city spain and trying to get different parts of society to to speak to each other in an easy way rather than having to get people to travel to conferences and travel to events we can get we've got people joining us today from all across the world from different parts of society so we have ceos we have um large executives and and from large uh organizations we have government officials we have people from from regular society and communities and and we're able to speak to each other on common issues i think this is a a brilliant platform now for us to kind of bring together different uh aspects of society to really build true smart cities cities that can actually deliver proper urban services using technology using cutting-edge technology and are regulated properly by governments yeah computer i think i i think you touch the paramount framework that are critical so policies regulation making the players work together humanity-centric so from your side jordy are we going to be touching so engineering building cities that are digital inclusive but as well solid and secure and you mentioned 3d printing there's so much technology going on and i think on the technology is probably where we're doing better i think the challenge is how we put this technology to serve the societies and not to create kind of a schizophrenic different velocity paradoxes which you still have if you go to most of the cities worldwide you have the the premium part of the city you have the less premium and you have normally a lot of urban areas and a lot of actually smart cities being created within the city for instance jawad imagine glasgow edinburgh london for instance with the with for instance london right now it's quite interesting it's just an example that we had for instance canary work that was probably the better one of the most advanced cockney city park building but right now with kovid is almost desert so we have a lot of challenges going forward and i know that for instance you guys both you jordy and atsushi you are in singapore which is considered by all parameters probably the most perfect smart city in the world at least for most of the rankings so how do you see this from an engineering and building this and of course as a big engineering company you have to work with governments with lawmakers with a lot of different organizations and as well putting all these things together so a bit of touch on that and as well digital strategist for them yeah so from a design and engineering perspective also a lot of digitalization takes place in those processes to to create those smarter and healthier cities and it all starts for example with data coming from the the cities so there's a lot of censoring data but also things about apps feedbacks and those kind of things that we use all the way up in the the beginning of the design processes to make better cities to make smarter cities to to find the conflict points and not only in the in the more richer parts of cities but also in the uh in outskirts for example where smart technologies think about smartphones nowadays are used to figure out what are the conflicts and and how we can improve the cities so um we have a very important role in the very starting point of creating cities and and if you don't do that right from the very beginning it will be very hard to to have in the end a a good and a healthy place to live so we actually have a very important role in that um and the digitalization like i said already starts in that process right the definition phase and it continues now all the way up to in the end construction and the manufacturing of the cities um so what we try to do is to have this full digital workflow where all this data is being used and have a kind of uh continuation all the way up to the operational phase of these smart cities um so it has a very large impact in in in everything that we do to to create smart and healthy cities yeah i think that's a very good point smart and healthy and i think that's that's the key element here so atsushi you are working in the moon shots and of course you work with softbank um that is of course one of the biggest vc firms in the planet now you are as well in singapore building um uh something even more advanced because singapore is already quite advanced compared to the rest of the world so from this part so let's look at what do you define as success and failure in building a smart city or a building at least this kind of moonshot better cities yeah um i think you know as i mentioned the humility center in that sense i think in the end if people i mean citizens feel great or happy happiness i think it's all about right even though it's a very efficient and then everything automated but if people feel like uh depressed i don't like this place then what's the point right that's quite important but however it is very hard to measure right very hard to measure because maybe we can ask the people but you know it's not clear measurement that's why data capture is important right and for example try to capture the data to measure the people's happiness for example and then that is making sense to make it uh iot basis or connected basic right because underneath otherwise we don't know how people are feeling it right that's why from now on i think a small city would have some sort of a measurement by capturing the people's either movement or with censoring technology whatever it is of course at this moment nobody is defining it that's why we are actually trying to define how to measure the people's happiness by using a big data while together so that's why in the end the citizen will define the success of failure based upon their happiness that's my my definition so happiness is a metric and the data which i think is very important so java that we are wrapping up the panel so what in terms of your um experience in actually specifically bridging like you mentioned a lot of different players you've been seeing fantastic projects fantastic case studies but a lot of flops as well i'm sure so when it comes to data and i think data is really so broader that people tend to okay it's actually too much abstract but are we actually do you think through all the projects and imagine around the a huge amount of smart cities or at least smart city initiatives within big cities um what would be the best metrics that you found besides the happiness metric but when it comes to data and when it comes to the metrics that you see that can empower us to to look at better infrastructure and better case studies for cities around the world and for projects on these levels well i think that's a very good question dennis i think it's it's a pretty easy thing to do because um you know cities collect data um on their own urban services um and they have been doing so for years now so um i think what we need to do is break down different segments of a smart city so if you're if you've got a project looking at um transportation and smart transportation and the best judge of that in terms of metrics will be looking at your your your key statistics around things like um traffic times around mobility so uh access to transportation um around bus services so if you're looking at public transportation you know how how good your your your trains bus or tram or whatever public transport systems you have in place have been working in terms of of uh services on time delays these sort of metrics you know these are readily available metrics that you know cities have been collecting for 15 20 30 years now and so once a smart cities project looking at a particular subsector of smart cities is delivered is then looking at the historic data and and the more present data to understand um if you have delivered a better service because i think you know happiness is a fantastic metric but i think one of the biggest uh contributors to happiness is um citizens needs being delivered to so if if uh city citizens have an issue with with waste management um you know a better waste management will lead to greater happiness within within the the community and within society and it's pretty easy for a um a city to to measure success on on waste management you know so um in terms of the the level of waste you're collecting your number of services and you know in terms of a very easy anecdotal visual sort of uh um assessment of it is looking at how for instance in in the uk we have for a long time had an issue with overflowing bins but ever since we've had these smart bins um introduced to a number of cities you know it's it's made a very visual uh improvement to streets and to cities where you know you no longer have industrial bins overflowing or public bins overflowing and so these sort of assessments are also pretty good too and then you know speaking to communities speaking to your citizens asking them whether you know after maybe three or five years of delivering a certain project have their life been improved because again you know the fundamental to any successful smart city is actually improving the lives of your citizens and if that's if you've delivered a 100 million pound project but citizens lives are still as difficult as they were before the project started and that's a thing you know regardless of how much revenue you might generate or how much money might come into your city but if you've not improved the lives of your citizens and it's a it's a failure and so and just quickly on your comment about flops um i think the number of smart cities projects that have failed probably outnumber the ones that have actually been truly successful you know i i recall a comment when i first started working with authorities in malaysia where um one of the leads from from kuala lumpur actually said to me that you know our city is a a graveyard of technology the number of demonstrators we've had in kuala lumpur and never been able to scale up he goes you forget silicon valley you come to kuala lumpur you have everything here but without any sort of use case we don't have the the skills to be able to scale these things up you know we have maybe five or six at best sort of officials within the city who actually understand things like iot and standard artificial intelligence the rest of our our city uh government don't have any understanding of this and so again going back to the skills gap it's a major issue we need to work on the skills we need to get these sort of projects and um programs into our schools into our into our universities to help build the skills to be able to truly scale up these these smart cities and to be able to have sustainable smart cities that have a long-term legacy um i know we're running out of time so i'm gonna stop there thank you so much i i have a lot of more questions and i probably will push a another panel or at least some some video interviews with each of you so i want to thank you so much uh we have another panel precisely about smart cities coming right now um this will be in youtube for the people listening to us so they can actually come back and repeat and listen because these presentations are fantastic congratulations to all of you atsushi is really impressive what you guys are doing um jawad congratulations as well because you're doing actually probably the most difficult work and having continued with the faith and energy that is important for that and jordi congratulations i know that is as well not easy to build and of course this uh stays here to the power of the organization what you're doing thank you so much i wish you a good afternoon good morning wherever you are in the world and thank you everyone that was listening to us around as well the different places in the planet have a good day good afternoon good evening thanks so much thank you so much thank you thanks for the interesting discussion and

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Length: 78min 30sec (4710 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021