Paving the way towards a smart city reality

With around three-quarters of Australia’s population living and working in our regional and metropolitan cities, and this only going to rise, the idea of the ‘smart city’ and how to achieve this is gaining momentum. This is in part evidenced by the launch of the Turnbull government’s Smart Cities Plan earlier in the year. Exactly what a ‘smart city’ is appears largely up for debate, although the term has broadly been used to explain urban areas that are embedded with digital technologies that make these areas more accessible, productive and liveable. Some examples include smart parking, where networked sensors help ease congestion, or smart street lighting, where LEDs and controllers reduce energy consumption based on pedestrian movement and traffic analysis.

As stated in the plan, the government takes the following viewpoint:

By taking advantage of the unprecedented pace of technological progress, governments and the community can make cities more prosperous and sustainable. Real time data and smart technology will lead to better utilisation of infrastructure, clean energy and energy efficiency, improvements in services and better benchmarking of cities performance.^[1]

If buildings are the bedrock of our cities, and where many of us spend most of our time, it stands to reason they must play a key role in this new reality. Speaking recently at the On2016 event, Schneider Electric (Australia) Vice President, Strategy & Transformation Preeti Bajaj said that our buildings offer a huge amount of untapped potential.

“We have buildings we can expect more out of,” she said. “Technology can help us drive that. We can get up to 10 times better ROI by using analytics, the interoperability of devices and integrated platforms of the built environments to deliver value in a stretched environment.”

Bajaj spoke of the current trend to build a ‘digital building’ in parallel with the buildings we are constructing. This way a digital platform can connect to devices within these buildings to intuitively inform us about the patterns of how we use those environments to improve our use of energy and resources.

“We as consumers want more out of the data that is coming to us, and we want our environments to be connected. The smart city reality cannot be reality without smarter buildings being in those precincts,” she said.

Smart buildings of today

According to a new report released by Schneider Electric, we are on the brink of an evolution of smart buildings — and the technology that powers them is transforming our old buildings from “inert containers of siloed information and services, into hyper-connected responsive and controllable machines”. These are activated buildings with apps as the user interface between the person and the building, offering a “neural network of devices, sensors and equipment” which connect and communicate, predict and react. These buildings know what is going on inside them in real time and actively respond. Information is received from sensors and devices that are spread around the building and can then adjust settings for things such as temperature or light. The building management systems (BMS) in many structures today only regulate critical systems, but the next generation can do much more to maximise sustainability.^[2]

Leading the way are commercial buildings such as The Edge in Amsterdam — considered the most intelligent and sustainable building in the world — which can perhaps offer a glimpse into the smart office of the future. This 40,000 m², 15-storey glass building is designed to be ‘smart’ not only in its use of infrastructure but also the use of its people. To encourage creativity and collaboration, no-one has an assigned work desk — a direct challenge to traditional organisational work culture. Its architecture uses the natural path of the sun to activate its solar panels, producing about 102% of the building’s energy. 28,000 sensors monitor motion, light, temperature, humidity and infrared. Employees with a smartphone or tablet can use a mobile app to control lighting and climate in their workspaces, locate a parking spot, find a desk upon arrival or manage their gym routine. Some of the exercise stations will actually harness the energy from people’s workouts, sending watts back to the grid.

To achieve all this, The Edge features a range of integrated facility management and energy solutions from Schneider Electric, including an electrical distribution system, IT infrastructure, control devices and Power Monitoring Expert software. The single IP backbone is the SmartStruxure solution BMS, which enables data to be collected and monitored, and provides real-time analytics to facility managers about how the building is operating to optimise where it’s needed and to reduce waste.

Closer to home, another smart building example is the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), which can be found in Adelaide — fittingly, given the City’s ambitious smart city policies and projects. The institute uses an Integrated Building System (IBS) called EcoStruxure, also from Schneider Electric, which incorporates technologies in heating, cooling, hydraulics, fire and electrical monitoring, lighting, security and lab controls. An intelligent metering system provides real-time data on energy and water usage, which is already contributing to 18% savings in energy consumption.

 

Image caption: The South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute in Adelaide has achieved an 18% saving on energy by using an intelligent metering system and is futureproofed by using an integrated building system based on open communication protocols.

Driving change

Despite examples of smart buildings like the SAHMRI, Bajaj said Australia is lacking firm investment in these buildings of the future. Schneider Electric conducted a survey of around 100 industry experts from the corporate real estate sector and found that while 83% of organisations see smart buildings as important, less than half are willing to pay for them or pay to relocate to one.

“The challenge we have in Australia is that the industry is hesitant to invest in change. With the evolution of smart buildings well underway in Europe, developers, tenants and advisors here in Australia need to work together now to reap the rewards of these technological advancements and make next-generation workplaces a reality,” she said.

It’s possible, however, that we may see increased adoption under the ‘City Deals’ concept specified in the Smart Cities Plan. This model, taken from the UK, encourages all levels of government to sign contracts to deliver major infrastructure projects, while setting targets for things like jobs creation, housing construction and environmental outcomes. According to Ken Morrison, chief executive of the Property Council, the City Deals are a real innovation in policy.

“They break down the barriers between federal, state and local government — and make all of them partners in economic growth,” said Morrison, in a statement. “All too often, planning and infrastructure are not linked together and we don’t get growth — or we get the infrastructure, but it’s too late. We need an integrated approach to help our cities grow and prosper. UK City Deals are a successful model.”

A smart agenda to watch

Probably the closest illustration Australia has of peering into what life in a smart city may look like is Adelaide. The City’s council has a goal of becoming the world’s first carbon neutral city by 2025 and has been actively driving ‘smart’ initiatives, such as preparing for the trial of driverless cars by rolling out Bluetooth receivers in traffic signal boxes. Under the City’s digital strategy ‘Connect Adelaide’, the council has also partnered with the state government to offer free high-speed Wi-Fi across the public spaces of the CBD and North Adelaide, which is due to be completed this year. It’s the first capital city to commit to such an expansive wireless network to promote affordable digital connectivity for its citizens.

Another initiative has included fitting streetlights in the CBD with smart technology. A partnership with Cisco, Sensity and iiNet saw more than 60 lights modified with LEDs in a recent trial. These can be monitored on a light-by-light basis to check energy consumption and automatically adjust through sensors from a low dim to full strength depending on activity around them. They can also send alerts in real time when maintenance is required. If the trial is a success, the council will consider rolling the lights out in more areas across the City.

According to a news.com.au article, Adelaide now has its eye set on an ambitious plan by becoming the nation’s first 10 GB “smart city”, prioritising “soft infrastructure” as a means of growth. Provided that fibre to the premises is available, it is reportedly a relatively straightforward upgrade to achieve these new high speeds. While it hasn’t been achieved anywhere yet, there are cities in the US that are well on their way. Lord Mayor Martin Haese said the City must innovate in the face of the manufacturing downturn, and is quoted as saying, this “could be the most transformational piece of infrastructure that our city has ever seen”. Haese said Adelaide was currently debating what the opportunities for data and internet speeds faster than the NBN may be and what that would mean for attracting businesses, residents and knowledge economies.

While a number of initiatives can give the appearance of moving towards a smart city reality, the fact of the matter is the transformation is complex. Smart city applications tend to be expensive and can require huge upfront investments. Since the sensor networks, intelligent meters, smartphones and IoT devices residing within our cities all generate huge volumes of data, the infrastructure will need to strong and futureproofed to enable and sustain these applications. It’s not a feat governments can overcome single-handedly; therefore, there will be considerable need for robust policy environments that encourage private sector investment in infrastructure as well as innovation to bring projects from concept to fruition.

References

[1] Commonwealth of Australia, 2016, 'Smart Cities Plan', Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, p. 3.

[2] UnWork & Schneider Electric, 2016, 'Activate to Collaborate - The evolution of the smart workplace', Report, Unwired Ventures, UK, <www.schneider-electric.com.au/documents/buildings/activate-to-collaborate-full-report.pdf>, p. 9.

Top image credit: ©vege/Dollar Photo Club