A review of our talkie on 10
September
by co-organiser Matt
Dolan
Your Hot Source team hosted our third
talkie on 10 September at Norwich
University of the Arts. This time we looked at the idea of Smart
Cities and were delighted to welcome three leading thinkers and
practitioners on the subject as our guest speakers. The subtext for many of
us was ‘how should Norwich prepare for the future?’
A key issue when discussing Smart Cities is to have a sensible, meaningful
definition of the term. However, the jury is still out on precisely what it
means to be a smart city and this became clear in the presentations.
What makes a city Smart?
Our first presenter was James
Cornford, Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
For many people, the term smart city conjures up images of large
corporations filling buildings and streets with monitors and sensors. This
might be good for efficiency but, as James asked, how do we as individuals
benefit?
James examined the different types of intelligence we should look for when
assessing a city’s smartness or intelligence. Cities have always been about
information sharing and, like the human brain, are massively interconnected.
However, the human brain serves as more than a repository for on-demand fact
generation. The brain also guides our emotions, producing chemicals to
induce pleasure, remorse, ambition, and generally stimulating the senses.
In the same way, a smart city should not over-focus on efficiency or
calculation. Instead, (or rather in parallel) its designers should be
mindful of the human condition. That means recognising and encouraging the
emotional intelligence of a city: the verbal-linguistic intelligence and the
moral intelligence. This will help guide cities towards a balance of
efficient technical infrastructure and emotional well-being for its
citizens.
“There should be a dialogical debate – how can we make Norwich smart
and fine?” said James. The answer is that we need to bring together
local authorities, local groups, local residents and local business, to
discuss how the city should develop and progress.
Technology is the main driver
Out next speaker was Mikele
Brack. With a long career in sustainability, the built environment
and in nurturing innovation, Mikele has been involved in smart cities since
before the term was coined. Currently the founder and CEO of the City Impact
Challenge, which devised Cognicity, Mikele was
unequivocal in informing us that, for her, smart cities means technology:
“Specifically the informed and intuitive use of digital data for the
efficient and sustainable delivery of services and amenities.” Its ultimate
objective however was to “make people happy.”
Mikele started by asking us to look at the unfamiliar. It is important that
we address those things that are not immediately obvious in order to drive
momentum towards the future. How we use the enormous amounts of data that
are being collected already and what decisions we take now will affect the
kinds of cities we continue to build.
It is crucial that we have input from a variety of angles into this scenario.
Mikele explained how the City Impact Challenge has unearthed many small
businesses with big ideas. Like James, she emphasised the need for
authorities, business and communities to unite to shape our future.
Standards accelerate knowledge sharing and development
Michael
Mulquin, our final speaker for the evening, is the co-chair of the
British Standards
Institute’s smart cities advisory group. His opened by saying he
wanted us to “get excited about standards” because they are the building
blocks of the smart city. I was not expecting to meet Michael’s objective -
and yet…
We’ve already discussed in this review how nebulous the idea of smart cities
can seem. Michael started by showing us a picture of the common British plug
and pointing out how important it was to have an agreed standard for such a
ubiquitous item. With this standard in place, we can buy any electrical
appliance with such a plug confident in the knowledge we can use it in any
British home.
In the same way, we need to set standards for smart cities so we can more
easily agree on how to set goals and objectives, measure progress and share
results. Cities are unique but face common challenges such as waste
collection, health provision, food shortages and so on. How can Rio de
Janeiro’s progress in monitoring traffic be judged against Mexico City’s
pollution agenda?
Only by developing and adopting standards can we be judicious and realistic
in our goals, and accurate when measuring them. Michael described how ISO 37120 has 17 themes
including water, sanitation, fire and emergency response and transportation.
When a city faces difficult challenges, it can contact other cities that
appear to be making progress and learn from their experiences. In this, we
can all face the future with confidence.
Learn from each other and learn from the best
In summary: our speakers considered the different intelligences a city can
develop and should measure. Together, they explored how technology is
shaping the modern world and what Norwich might learn from the best global
examples. We learned how large organisations are nurturing small businesses
to support the building of our smart cities. We also looked at sensible
monitoring processes that can benefit all cities regardless of their
individuality.
As ever, we had great support from the Hot Source community – thank you to
all who joined us. Thank you also to our sponsors: Foolproof for insurance, Norwich
City Council Economic
Development team for wine and Virgin
Media Business for delicious canapés, supplied by The
Feed. Finally, thank you to our excellent speakers: Mikele, James
and Michael.
In our
next event on December 10th, we’ll explore this
theme further by investigating real world examples of the internet
of things (IoT). Please let us know who you’d like to hear
speak.
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