G+ Hangout for New City Design

The Watchful Eye

Cities as platforms for living - the ubiquitous streams of real-time data, overwhelming our analytic capabilities, has the information we need to sustainably manage our living environments. Innovation and granular deployments may be the key to the future.

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  Surveillance Video Becomes a Tool for Studying Customer Behavior
MIT Technology Review

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Software mines security footage to help business owners see what people do once they're inside the store.
The huge success of online shopping and advertising—led by giants like Amazon and Google—is in no small part thanks to software that logs when you visit Web pages and what you click on. Startup Prism Skylabs offers brick-and-mortar businesses the equivalent—counting, logging, and tracking people in a store, coffee shop, or gym with software that works with video from security cameras.
"There's a lot of wonderful information locked up in video, and 40 million security cameras in the U.S. collecting it, but it's data that's not been available," says Steve Russell, cofounder and CEO of Prism, based in San Francisco. "We want to free up that information."
More ...

Helsinki Urban Flows

Urbanflow, a joint effort of Nordkapp and Urbanscale, envisions an operating system for cities. The scenario explored in the video revolves around situated urban screens and their potential uses.

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Urbanflow Helsinki from Nordkapp on Vimeo.

The general challenge is that while cities are fast, municipal decision making is slow by nature. The heavy and invisible decision-making process within cities causes disconnect with citizens, and despite an abundance of commercial messaging platforms, there is yet to be a dedicated platform where the city and its citizens can meet.

ARUP: Cities Missing Smart Opportunity - Information

Ref: An ARUP vision of the future?

07 Dec 2011

Cities are wasting the potential of smart technologies by failing to realize the value of their hidden infrastructure and digital assets, according to a report published today by The Climate Group, Accenture (NYSE: ACN), Arup and Horizon Digital Economy Research at The University of Nottingham.

The report, Information Marketplaces: The new economics of cities, states that while cities are using information and communications technology (ICT) to improve their sustainability and efficiency, they are not recognizing or measuring the full value of smart initiatives and are missing the opportunity to turn unused data and infrastructure into new low carbon solutions and services.
The report argues that the application of smart technology is being hindered because:

• Technology-led experiments often fail to achieve useful outcomes for consumers and residents
• cities currently develop information and communications technology in fragmented projects without a coherent framework
• cities are unsure of the social and financial payback from the investments they are being asked to make.

“Our cities sit on vast untapped resources of data and infrastructure that could be integrated to accelerate the clean revolution while improving the convenience and quality of urban life. To unlock that potential, cities need the right leadership to create a vision of social, environmental and economic goals that can be achieved by a more integrated application of smart technology.”

-Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group.
The report highlights two key steps to maximize the smart technologies in cities:

Articulate the benefits

Cities must capture the potential benefits of smart technology initiatives with a common set of metrics that can be translated into financial and non-financial values of relevance to different stakeholders. These will enable cities to:

• compare the relative benefits of projects and prioritize between them; a smart grid and a road pricing initiative for example;
• achieve economies of scale by identifying how a communications backbone, in this instance, could be used for both applications.

“We need to reframe the intelligent city value proposition by measuring and articulating the full social, environmental and economic rate of return generated by city-wide initiatives. Only then can the private sector make the business case for participating. Only then can cities make the capital decisions that bring greatest value to citizens.”

- Simon Giles, global senior principal, Intelligent Cities, Accenture.

Freely available data

Research carried out by Horizon suggests that cities must provide open and free access to their data and digital assets in the form of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Making bus passenger data available, for example, could result in a range of real time commuter information services. Opening APIs will reduce the cost to third-party developers of creating new information-based services and applications. It also will maximize competitive innovation by creating a level playing field for innovators.

“An intelligent city not only reduces carbon emissions, but attracts talent and investment through quality services and infrastructure and through convenience that delights residents. Cities must open up their digital assets and create a thriving information marketplace for innovations that achieve these aims. It will take courage for city leaders to challenge the cultural norms of their administrations and expose themselves to this form of dynamic collaboration.”

- Volker Buscher, Director, Arup

“By using the data from their digital infrastructure as a market creation asset, cities will be able to capture significantly more value from smart city ICT investments. In addition, developing new information marketplaces will help cities create new industries and achieve sustainable economic growth.”

- Catherine Mulligan, Transitional Fellow, Horizon Digital Economy Research.
The report makes several recommendations to policy makers and companies

Local and national governments

• Encourage the use of common, international metrics to assess performance and to facilitate investment decisions;
• Establish a capability within the city administration to align political objectives and civil administration with public and private sector project execution;
• Start a debate on open data and on the role cities should play in creating growth opportunities.

Companies

• Understand the investment decision making process of cities to ensure private sector technology development aligns with public sector legal and procurement processes and timescales;
• Encourage pre-procurement task forces, whereby companies can offer their technical expertise to help cities streamline procurement processes;
• Use multi-partner trials to develop capabilities for longer term scaling of technology solutions.

Turn off the Lights!

Don't Forget to Turn Off the Lights!

Light from Sunday Paper on Vimeo.

How cities (and their utilities) are blowing it: New research reveals three failures

By Jesse Berst

New research from an international consortium says the world's cities are failing their citizens by failing to capture the full value of infrastructure and data. Although the report's lessons apply to any kind of smart technology, they are directly relevant to the challenges and consumer pushback faced by many of today's smart grid efforts.

 

“Our cities sit on vast untapped resources of data and infrastructure that could be integrated to accelerate the clean revolution while improving the convenience and quality of urban life,” said Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group, one of the report's co-authors. The value of smart grid and other smart technologies are not being realized because of:

·         Too much "technology push" that does not create useful outcomes for residents

·         A lack of a framework for integrated technology, which results in fragmented and siloed projects

·         A lack of understanding of the social and financial paybacks

 

The report argues that cities (and, by extension, the utilities that serve them) must get better at two things. First, they must learn to fully understand the benefits of smart technology. And fully articulate those benefits to all stakeholders. “We need to reframe the... value proposition by measuring and articulating the full social, environmental and economic... return generated by city-wide initiatives,” said Simon Giles, global senior principal, Intelligent Cities, Accenture. “Only then can the private sector make the business case for participating. Only then can cities make the capital decisions that bring greatest value to citizens.”

Open data a necessity

Second, cities (and, by extension, their utilities) must make their data available to the market so developers can build applications on top. “By using the data from their

digital infrastructure as a market creation asset, cities will be able to capture significantly more value from smart city ICT investments," said Catherine Mulligan, Transitional Fellow, Horizon Digital Economy Research. “In addition, developing new information marketplaces will help cities create new industries and achieve sustainable economic growth.”

 

As global competition intensifies, more and more cities will look to smart technology to pull ahead. This report will make valuable reading for utilities that want an advance look at the new demands and new pressures that will face them in the decades ahead.

 

The report, "Information Marketplaces: The New Economics of Cities" was published in partnership by Accenture, Arup, The Climate Group and Horizon Digital Economy Research.

 

$4B Better Building Initiative - Underway

GreenTech Enterprise

The White House’s $4B Better Buildings Challenge

The White House hopes to drive $4 billion in building retrofits and create tens of thousands of new jobs—if private partners can deliver on their promises.

Can the Obama administration spur $4 billion in building energy efficiency retrofits without being able to get the money out of a deadlocked Congress? Looks like we’ll have the next two years or so to find out.

That’s the gist of a big 'Better Buildings Initiative' set to be announced by the White House late Thursday evening. 

After months of working with former president Bill Clinton and a lot of private-sector and government partners, the White House says that more than 60 organization have pledged to spend $2 billion to retrofit about 1.6 billion square feet of commercial and industrial property in the next 24 months.

The announcement also comes with a commitment to move forward with $2 billion in federal building “performance-based contracting” projects over the next 24 months. Because private investors and companies will pay for efficiency upgrades at government buildings, then pay themselves out of the energy savings, those projects can go forward without new federal spending, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling said in a Thursday press pre-briefing call.

Together, that $4 billion in projected commitments could add up to “tens of thousands of jobs,” Sperling said. Consider it a major new market opportunity for the building energy efficiency sector -- and a major new challenge in making private-sector economics work in the absence of direct taxpayer support.

That’s because the Obama administration has been unable to get Congress to act on many of the proposals in its Better Buildings Initiative launched in February. The Department of Energy initiative laid out a laundry list of building energy efficiency initiatives, all aimed at making the nation’s commercial buildings 20 percent more energy efficient by 2020.

Part of that plan was the 'Better Buildings Challenge,' launched in late June at the Clinton Global Initiative. On June 30, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that 14 initial private sector and local government partners had pledged to spend $500 million to retrofit buildings totaling about 300 million square feet.

That included big public-private partnerships in Seattle, Los Angeles and Atlanta, as well as buy-in by USAA Real Estate Company, Best Buy and other corporate partners. As for financing the projects, partners including Citi, Hudson Clean Energy Partners, Metrus Energy, Transcend Equity and Renewable Funding agreed to provide at least $525 million in project funding in the next 18 months.

Presumably that figure is part of the $2 billion in new public-private sector financing announced this week, but there were some new funding promises as well. San Francisco-based startup Serious Energy, for example, on Thursday promised to execute $100 million in energy efficiency upgrades for customers as part of the initiative.

Indeed, the list of Better Buildings Challenge participants includes a who’s-who of startups seeking to revolutionize the way energy retrofits are financed, including Metrus Energy, Transcend Equity and Serious Energy (via its new Serious Capital model).

At the same time, energy services giants such as Siemens, Schneider Electric, Honeywell, Johnson Controls and the like are doubtless participating as well in serving the federal building upgrade portion of the work announced this week. Schneider, for its part, announced it would also join the "Challenge" portion of the project with a pledge to cut energy use at 40 U.S. manufacturing facilities by 25 percent.

The $4 billion challenge is the latest move the Obama administration has made as part of its “We Can't Wait” campaign to bypass a deadlocked Congress and spur job creation, even as the President pushes lawmakers to pass a $447 billion jobs bill.

Sperling wouldn’t put an exact figure on the number of jobs the White House hopes will come from the $4 billion initiative, though he noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- not known as a great friend of green initiatives -- has estimated the $2 billion in federal building retrofits alone could create about 35,000 jobs.

The Political Economy Research Institute projected in June that the entire Better Buildings Initiative could create up to 114,000 jobs if implemented in full. Of course, much of that would have to come via legislation, which seems increasingly unlikely, at least this year.

Sperling did make clear that one proposal contained in the Better Buildings Initiative -- legislation to authorize up to $2 billion in federal loan guarantees for retrofit projects -- was not part of the new $4 billion announcement. Given the heat the White House is taking over Solyndra and Beacon Power, two companies that won separate DOE loan guarantees only to later declare bankruptcy, it’s not surprising that more loan guarantees aren’t on the table.

The big question, of course, is whether the economics of building energy retrofits are developed to the point where they can support a $4 billion boost in business without loan guarantees or other federal supports. Kudos to the Obama administration for bootstrapping these projects via any means necessary -- but we’ll have to wait for a few years to see how many billions of dollars in projects actually get done.