CREATING GLOBALISED SMART CITIES REQUIRES A LOCAL APPROACH TO OVERCOME COMPLEXITY
The scale and speed of urbanisation across the world is bringing challenges to cities that have never been seen before. The United Nations forecasts that by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas. By 2030, it predicts that 41 cities will have a population of at least 10 million each. This is placing extraordinary demands on housing, infrastructure, transport, healthcare, energy and employment.
What is crucial is that these challenges must be addressed locally; there is no one-size-fits-all approach for city planners the world over. In developed countries, adapting existing — but ageing — infrastructure to the needs of tomorrow’s citizens is the top priority. Local governments are integrating advanced technology to make established cities “smarter”, improving connectivity between people and things to generate innovation, economic growth and social progress.
In other countries where rapid urban development has been more recent, entirely new smart cities are being constructed from scratch. Songdu in South Korea runs entirely on solar and wind power, along with energy generated from human waste processed in a co-generation plant. Its buildings have automatic climate control and computerised access. Its roads and water, waste and electricity systems are dense with electronic sensors to enable the city’s “brain” to track and respond to the movement of residents. China and India are also creating smart cities from the ground up to keep pace with mass urbanisation.
In Singapore, the government is turning the city-state into the world’s first truly Smart Nation, powered by big data and analytics technology, as well as next-generation connected and wireless sensor networks. As a first step, it installed 1,000 sensors in 2015 to track everything from air quality and water levels to public safety.
Across the world, major urban centres are facing a wide range of issues, but as technology progresses there is no shortage of solutions that can be adapted to fit local needs.
Local vision is vital: Communicating a clear plan and strong vision is vital to bringing together the public and private sectors, academia and communities. Infrastructure development and the incorporation of the latest technology can sometimes cause disruption or require public education; therefore, leaders must capture the imagination by setting clear goals to solve a known social issue.
The vision, policy and investment priorities for each city must reflect the specific context, culture and economics of the locality. There are many instances where adopting smart technology without proper analysis and forethought has resulted in a waste of resources and project failures. In India, for example, the local government of Lutyens’ Delhi faced heavy criticism for failing to communicate its plans effectively, leading to the belief that its smart city project was being implemented in an area that was already developed, thereby increasing inequality.
Local collaboration to overcome complexity: The challenge in any smart city project is to align all stakeholders to move towards the same goal. Smart city development is complex, and requires diverse ideas, experience and insights to be successful. This often means changing and adapting many established ways of working.
It could mean government organisations and departments working together on larger projects or more collaboration between businesses and government. It could also mean adapting key performance indicators to monitor not just a city’s economic growth, pollution levels or train delays, but also indicators of general quality of life for residents.
Harnessing the skills and insights of innovators from local universities and research centres is also a key to achieving local adaptation that improves citizens’ lives. The Renewable Energy Integration Demonstrator-Singapore (Reids) initiative, for instance, is the first microgrid in Southeast Asia and the largest hybrid microgrid in the tropics. Led by Nanyang Technological University Singapore and supported by Schneider Electric and government agencies including Economic Development Board and National Environment Agency, this project rallies industries, research institutes and the government to co-create innovative solutions.
Transforming the local energy value chain: In the future — and it has already begun in some Asian cities — we will see innovations that will transform the energy value chain, from generation and transmission to distribution, consumption and demand. Companies including Schneider Electric are working with cities and electrical utilities to make everything in a city, from the electricity and water grids, to the sewer pipes, buildings and road vehicles, connected to vast information and electrical networks.
Schneider’s Eco Struxure architecture, for instance, is an open and interoperable platform that delivers the promise of the Internet of Things. It provides each city with the opportunity to evolve its energy infrastructure in a way that suits its own sustainable development.
By enabling unification across facilities, applications and systems, predictive analysis and communication are supported, which allows rapid decisionmaking and investment optimisation for the long term. This can result in reduction in total cost of ownership, cost savings from energy efficiency, reduction in staff costs, and improvements in resilience and sustainability.
Powerful ideas from Asia for Asia: Successful smart city initiatives in Asia provide powerful and innovative ideas to address urbanisation challenges. Additionally, having a knowledgeable smart city solution partner that understands both local city dynamics, as well as domestic and international best practices, is essential. These partners have a commercial presence in the city, and offer private- and public-sector players experience in many different deployment models, which helps mitigate risks.
While challenges remain, there are vast opportunities for collaboration and integration to accelerate smart city projects that enrich people’s lives, drive economic growth and create sustainable communities.
Tommy Leong is the president for East Asia and Japan of Schneider Electric.