Smart Cities: Reimagining the Urban Experience 1636941109, 9781636941103

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Smart Cities Reimagining the Urban Experience

Paul Doherty

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Smart Cities: Reimagining the Urban Experience Paul Doherty American Society for Quality, Quality Press, Milwaukee 53203 All rights reserved. Published 2023 © 2023 by Quality Press No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Doherty, Paul, author. Title: Smart cities : reimagining the urban experience / Paul Doherty. Description: Includes bibliographical references. | Milwaukee, WI: Quality Press, 2023. Identifiers: LCCN: 2023934950 | ISBN: 9781636941103 (paperback) | 9781636941110 (pdf) | 9781636941127 (epub) Subjects: LCSH Smart cities. | City planning. | Sustainable urban development. | Cities and towns—Technological innovations. | Technology—Social aspects. | BISAC TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Civil / General | TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Mobile & Wireless Communications | TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects | TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Systems Engineering | ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning Classification: LCC HT153 .D64 2023 | DDC 307.76—dc23 ASQ advances individual, organizational, and community excellence worldwide through learning, quality improvement, and knowledge exchange. Bookstores, wholesalers, schools, libraries, businesses, and organizations: Quality Press books are available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases for business, trade, or educational uses. For more information, please contact Quality Press at 800-248-1946 or [email protected]. To place orders or browse the selection of all Quality Press titles, visit our website at: http://www.asq.org/quality-press. 28 27 26 25 24 23 LS 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Acronym List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii Chapter 1  Smart Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Chapter 2  The Secret is in the Sauce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Chapter 3  Master Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Chapter 4  Financing and Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 Chapter 5  Operational Governance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Chapter 6  The Road Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

iii

Acknowledgments

I

would like to acknowledge the following people, as this book would never have been able to be delivered without their love and support: my wife, Jessie; my son, Daniel; my mother, Andrea; and my sister Erin and her family. I also want to acknowledge my partners, colleagues, and friends: Robert Swope, Arol Wolford, David Uslan, Michael Uslan, Nancy Uslan, Marbue Dennis, Tarek Abbas, Amr Attar, Rabelin Tchoumi, Gordon Cheng, Andrew Lawson, Margie Petherick, Thomas Doherty, Pierre Lo, Bill Wang, Turki Shoaib, Dr. Karen Stephenson, Wyly Wade, Dimitri Vegas and Like Mike, A.J. Colletti, Jason Reece, Hidetoshi Dote, Patrick Sharpe, Normandy Madden, Dave Gilmore, James Cramer, Silvia Davidia, Ransel Potter, Gary Lawlor, Remi Arnaud, Matthew Tribe, Ala Hassan, Joe Montgomery, Dr. Timm Finfrock, Amit Chopra, Hugh Seaton, Vaughn Harris, David Pay, Joshua Gumbiner, Myke Darrough, Dr. Caroline Chung, Dr. Richard McElligott, Dr. Ilan Stern, Bas Boorsma, Ralph Montague, Bernardo Scheinkman, Raimundo Rodulfo, and Matt Abeles, all of whom deserve so much thanks and love. I would also like to thank Narahari Rao, who served as a Quality Press volunteer peer reviewer for my book. The invaluable feedback and suggestions helped to make the book’s content much richer. Thank you.

v

Acronym List

AEC AI API APTV AR AV BAS BIM BPR BRIC CAD CAFM CLARA CMM CNC CRE CSO CT CTO DLT ePMO ERR ESG ETF EV FM FT

Architecture, engineering, construction Artificial intelligence Application programming interface Autonomous personal transit vehicles Augmented reality Autonomous vehicles Building automation system Building information modeling Business process re-engineering Brazil, Russia, India, China Computer aided design Computer aided facility management Consolidated Land and Rail Australia Capability maturity model Computer numerical control Commercial real estate Combined sewer and overflow Chemical treatment Central technology office Distributed ledger technology Executive program management office Economic rates of return Environmental, social, and governance Exchange traded funds Electric vehicles Facility management Fungible token

vii

viii  Acronym List

GDP GIS GPT GSA GTRI IBM HSR ICT IOC IoT IP IRR IT ITIL JV KPI LCEGS LED LIMS M2M MEP ML MSW MTA NDA NGO OEM PBS PEC PII PxP RAD RO ROI RTAV SCADA SCAS SDG SIP SME

Gross domestic product Geographic information systems Generative pre-trained transformer General services administration Georgia Tech Research Institute International Business Machines High-speed rail Information communications technology Intelligent operations center Internet of things Internet protocol Internal rate of return Information technology Information technology infrastructure library Joint venture Key performance indicator Low-carbon and environmental goods and services Light emitting-diode Laboratory information management systems Machine to machine Mechanical electrical plumbing Machine learning Municipal solid waste Metropolitan Transit Authority Nondisclosure agreement Nongovernmental organization Other equipment manufacturers Public buildings service Program executive committee Personal identifiable information Project execution plan Rapid application development Reverse osmosis Return on investment Rapid transit autonomous vehicles Supervisory control and data acquisition Smart cities acquisition services Sustainable development goals (United Nations) Structured insulated panels Subject matter expert

Acronym List   ix



SPV SQ1 TDG TA TLS USD VPN VR VRIP WFTW XR

Special purpose vehicles Square 1 technologies The Digit Group, Inc. Transform Africa Transport layer security U.S. dollars Virtual private network Virtual reality Virtual reality industrial park Water for the world eXtended reality and/or mixed reality

“Progress is the realization of utopia.” —Oscar Wilde

Introduction

W

hen originally asked to write a book about smart cities more than a decade ago, I was hesitant to take on the task. I felt the smart cities market was maturing, as was my understanding of what this movement was and, more importantly, what it was not. Since that time, there have been many different books, articles, descriptions, smart cities “experts,” and self-appointed celebrities that have not stood the test of time. But as time has passed and the market has become more comfortable with the term smart cities—and the COVID-19 pandemic brought an increased awareness to the general public of their urban environments and their roles in them—I was approached again to write a book about smart cities. Feeling more comfortable and confident that I could at least describe and communicate smart cities from my own viewpoint since I have the experi­ ence of actually doing the work, I agreed to do the best I can with this book. I have been inspired, motivated, disillusioned, and confused, yet always curious regarding cities since I was a child born and growing up in New York City—Hollis and Queens, to be exact. My family moved out to Long Island where I grew up in the shadows of “the city.” I have always enjoyed the never-ending energy of New York along with its cuisine, art, fashion, tough business ethic, and beloved sports teams. To be clear, I am a die-hard New York Yankees, Giants, Knicks, and Islanders fan. I know this will result in a good portion of the New York readers closing this book immediately and rolling their eyes. Not to worry, I mention this as an example of the many woven elements that make up an urban fabric, and in this case, create an identity as a New Yorker. Our love of our New York sports teams begins to identify a fan, a neighborhood, a society, and a culture. Our love of cuisine brings many disparate people together into different neighborhoods to carry on traditions or try something new.

xiii

xiv  Introduction

WHEN ART MEETS SCIENCE Many New Yorkers also have a passion for the arts. The wonderful thing about growing up in New York is that you are absorbed into the arts whether you like it or not. All art is democratized from day one. From the never-ending exposure to all forms of great music, to easy access to the greatest museums in the world, to being able to experience the performing arts at an early age through school field trips, to the beauty of Broadway. Growing up in New York, art shaped me. Looking back at my youth, the mix of races, religions, cultures, viewpoints, and cultures was a blessing, as it exposed me to celebrating the differences between people and making friends with people based on who they are, not what they are. Growing up in East Meadow, New York (on Long Island), my neighborhood was a mix of Jewish, Italian, German, and Irish, like myself, and most of my friends were transplants from New York City, like myself. We brought the traditions, celebrations, and games from the city out to Long Island, and that provided a common experience among us kids. These common experiences came from the many neighborhoods that make New York City real. New York City is not some monolithic place that calls its inhabitants New Yorkers. Rather, you can identify people from The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and especially Manhattan, fairly quickly if you are from New York. To me, New York is a collection of neighborhoods with strong unique identities that over time create a woven urban fabric that is our common identity of being a New Yorker. With this background, I began my journey of curiosity studying architecture and became a New York licensed architect in 1994. What I learned from doing my undergraduate architecture studies in New York City was how many of us focus on one building as a project when that project has ramifications for its neighboring buildings, the traffic, the people of the neighborhood, and the city as a whole. I never went through a formal urban planning education, but my urban education was learned by doing and being immersed in urban projects my entire career. Street smarts with enough formal training in architecture provided me with the tools to continue my journey. While I was practicing architecture, working on projects that affected real people in real neighborhoods, I had the unique timing, luck, and experi­ence of being good at information technology in the 1980s. While in architecture school in New York in the late 1980s, I was given the oppor­ tunity to enter a work/study program where I would work in the private sector one semester and then attend academic studies the next semester. This extended my undergraduate education by a few years but also cut



Introduction  xv

down my internship requirements to becoming a licensed architect. I chose to participate in a work/study program with IBM in New York, which at the time was the largest information technology company in the world. I designed and fabricated trade show booths for IBM for trade shows like Comdex, PC Expo, and many others. To properly design and showcase IBM technologies, I was partnered with the world’s best system engineers and computer engineers. I needed to learn everything about hardware and software in order to design the best trade show booths in the world. I became an expert in AS/400, RS/6000, PS/2 desktop computers, token ring networks, and OS/2 operating systems, all IBM products. I also had to learn the hardware and software of IBM partner companies in order to show how they were used in a showroom/show­case environment. These software partners included startup companies called Microsoft, Adobe, Lotus, Citrix, Norton, Intuit, and McAfee, among others. With this experience and great success with IBM, I was always intrigued as to why buildings could not be like computers. IBM was a leader in that industry because it knew how to fit together other equipment manufacturer (OEM) products into a singular unit called a computer on which IBM put its logo, and that was the business. It’s more complicated than that, but in essence, IBM to me was a company that put together other people’s work and productized it—not too far from an analogy of a building. An architect designs “the product,” and the general contractor delivers the product, in this case, a building. So, I have asked myself for decades, why can’t a building be a computer?

THE WORLD OF SMART CITIES Embedding the OEM components and properly placing them into a build­ ing provides the foundation of a fourth utility of a building. Electrical, plumbing, and mechanical are the current three primary utilities of today’s buildings. Can information communication technology (ICT) be the fourth utility where every building becomes a new form of computer? I am very lucky to be alive to see this vision become a reality with the work my company is performing today. You will read in this book about our current work in designing and delivering manufactured buildings that bring the reality of “building as computer” to life. Moving from just one building to a cluster of buildings as computers, we are at the threshold of connecting these “smart buildings” to each other as a community that works as an internet of buildings. Efficiencies with safety, security, water, and entertainment are just being discovered in real-world metrics, making

xvi  Introduction

my old curiosity of a building as computer into an idea that has evolved into linking these buildings together as an example of the internet of buildings. Fascinating. This book will examine our process and implementations as examples of people in the real world trying to move an industry forward through actions—not the only way, but an approach of the art of the possible. I wake up every morning bouncing out of bed with new ideas, new discoveries, and new opportunities knowing that the business of smart cities is just beginning with a long lifeline of work. Some of it is already available, while other work is yet to be discovered. You will read some chapters and areas within chapters of this book that are more personal in tone, like this introduction, while other areas are more serious, even academic in tone and presentation. The reason for this is that smart cities is a very broad area of interest, study, and action. There are different people with different perspectives and needs for this book, so they can take portions of this book and make it of value to them and others around them. So do not be disarmed when portions of this book seem like a lecture rather than a conversation. They are meant for different audiences, but I hope you find value in the dual-voice approach. You will find that some ideas are positioned to frame your understanding and experiences to journey into my interpretation of smart cities. This is the reason for this introduction. This book is very different from earlier attempts at defining smart cities, as this book will draw from realworld experiences and projects rather than just conjecture and “visioning.” One of the goals of this book is to provide you with honest, real-world solutions, strategies, and planning. It is my hope that by publishing our company’s ingredients and recipes of how smart cities are planned, implemented, and operated that others can take these ideas, improve on them, and blaze their own paths forward. The world does not need a singular voice to improve the human condition; it needs a community and movement to accomplish the enormous goals that smart cities provide. My motivation for sharing freely our “secret sauce” for smart cities is to leave behind some breadcrumbs, a path of success that we have enjoyed, so the younger generation can be inspired to create their own future smart cities for decades to come. There should be no ownership of smart cities. This is and always will be a collective effort. Many smart cities “experts” and consultants/advisors will call this sacrilege, but the benefits to the world of successful smart cities projects should never be about you—it is about us. The rest of this introduction sets the table for a description of smart cities, while Chapter 1 provides an attempt at describing the matchstick that is smart cities. Chapter 2 provides details of how to identify, review, plan, and implement innovations in the context of smart cities solutions, using



Introduction  xvii

available products, services, and implementation in existing and future projects. Chapter 3 focuses on the master planning and human-centric but data-driven projects we are witnessing being designed and implemented today. Chapter 4 has some interesting collisions between the financial and real estate industries that affect municipalities and smart cities projects, and also bring in key performance indicators (KPI) as one measure of success. In my company, The Digit Group, Inc. (TDG), this area of finance and critical success factor measures was our largest growth area of learning and understanding and is a key success factor in all of our worldwide projects. Chapter 5 really opens the “kimono” to show how we operate as a smart cities designer and developer as we provide what, when, where, when, and how concerning smart cities operations and overall governance. Executive program management office (ePMO) frameworks and implementations are shared, including what worked and what did not. Chapter 6 is our attempt at providing a crystal ball view of the near and far collective futures we all share. This chapter is one of my favorites, as it explores current examples of how the physical world of smart cities is colliding with the digital world of the metaverse in meaningful and impactful ways. This last chapter is also meant to generate ongoing dialog with you, my readers. Traditional book authors have written their books from a pillar of knowledge, pontificating as if from Mt. Olympus as an all-knowing people who talk at you rather than with you. I am far from a traditional knowledgemaster and much more of an adventurer who is willing to journey with teammates and learn through each experience to get to the next level of accomplishment and learning. With this in mind, allow me to invite you to continue the conversations that begin with this book on social media and other media of choice. No one knows the entire story of smart cities; it is a communal learning experience that I wish to continue with all of you. I have mentioned my company, TDG. TDG will be referenced in this book in examples of real-world implementations of our innovation ideas. TDG is a boutique company with a subject matter expertise (SME) on sustainable real estate development and smart cities. It has been and is a SME for a variety of smart-city-style projects around the world for the well-known and leading management consulting firms and on behalf of governments and kingdoms. Some of the projects we have worked on under non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) have lapsed and are now allowed to be mentioned in this book. In addition, the mention of our projects or my company is not meant to make this book as an overt promotional vehicle but instead to showcase examples of how smart cities work. An early introduction to how we work at TDG is our engagement and relationship with one of the world’s most respected cultural anthropologists, Dr. Karen Stephenson. Karen has provided amazing guidance to our smart

xviii  Introduction

cities projects by sharing keen analysis of a people-centric/human-centric approach in all aspects of our designs and solutions. Keep this in mind when you read through this book—no matter how innovative the design concepts may seem and no matter how cool things may sound, if smart cities and their solutions are not designed and implemented with a humancentric approach at their core, they will fail. To provide a preview, allow me to describe a project example to whet your appetite for the journey you are about to embark on by reading the rest of this book. Our existence as the human species on our spaceship Earth depends on four fundamentals: clean air, clean water, safe food, and shelter. The nobility of providing shelter for the human race drives the passion behind smart cities and in turn healthy urban environments for humanity to survive and thrive. With this foundation, the Qingdao International Virtual Reality Industrial Park (VRIP) in Qingdao, China, is an amazing example of challenging the definitions of time and space while inspiring our existence through the use of a metaverse, sometimes described as a digital twin. A metaverse is a collective of digital shared 3-D spaces, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual space. This can include the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the internet. Using my 1996 book Cyberplaces: An Internet Guide for Architects, Engineers and Contractors as a foundation, the VRIP metaverse is being created to assist in the following: 1) increase accuracy and confidence in design and construction documentation; 2) increase trust and authenticity in the digital data meant for facility management and operations of buildings and infrastructure; 3) provide a construct of a bidirectional communication and relationship between the physical world and its digital equivalent; and 4) deliver new and ever-evolving environments for experiences for people who live, work, play, and learn in the VRIP. The VRIP uses a heterarchy as its basis of design. A heterarchy is a system of systems that identifies each system as a horizontal layer that is connected by a vertical ontology. This ontology for the VRIP is our metaverse, our digital twin. All VRIP capital assets have information technology as the fourth utility, joining electrical, mechanical, and plumbing. All buildings and infrastructure have archived and live data running through structures. When linked together, these assets create the internet of buildings that operates in a mixed reality environment. This blurs the lines between the physical and digital worlds. This inspired collision creates the opportunity for a safer, more secure, and healthier urban environment within the VRIP. To provide a higher value for both VRIP’s physical and digital assets, all digital assets will be on the blockchain. Most of these digital assets will be secured through a fungible token (FT) that will tie intrinsically to the physical asset’s value, providing a shareholder-style relationship between



Introduction  xix

the physical asset, the digital asset, and the shareholder. Securitizing digital real estate through the connection to physical real estate provides a whole new era of time, space, and existence never available before now. Upon delivery, the Qingdao VRIP will have three main roles: 1) virtual, augmented, and extended reality (VR/AR/XR) research and development (including an incubator for startup companies); 2) VR/AR/XR theme park (education through entertainment); and 3) act as a gateway to the Chinese market for foreign VR/AR/XR hardware, software, and content companies to locate their regional headquarters to Qingdao, creating a strong global community of inno­vation and an example to inspire the human condition. This style of futuristic vision meeting current-state implementations will be the tone throughout this book. As you read through this book, I encourage you to interact with me to challenge our concepts and solutions as the world changes and moves forward. I look forward to your communication and constructive criticism on social media. In the meantime, please enjoy my book as a milestone moment in time, not an absolute. Welcome to the world of smart cities. —Paul Doherty Memphis, Tennessee

“The city is a state of mind, a body of customs and traditions, and of the organized attitudes and sentiments that inhere in these customs and are transmitted with this tradition. The city is not, in other words, merely a physical mechanism and an artificial construction. It is involved in the vital processes of the people who compose it; it is a product of nature, and particularly of human nature.” —Robert E. Park, The City (1925)

1 Smart Cities

T

he migration of the human race to urban environments is occurring at an unprecedented rate around the world, and this has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.1 New and existing cities are urgently devel­oping smart city plans and implementing projects and programs to accom­modate their citizens with a safe, healthy, and sustainable environ­ment to live, work, play, and learn. With a heightened awareness of sustainable economic, environmental, and healthy lifestyles, smart cities are emerging as woven ecosystems providing next-generation experiences and services for their inhabitants. The main source of economic growth and productivity in our world, cities also account for an enormous amount of resource consumption and carbon emissions. Smart cities strive to use their ecosystems as an integrated approach to limit the use of traditional resources and lower their carbon footprint, providing a path forward to an overall well-being experience for the human race.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES TO CREATE A SMART CITY The concept of smart cities is not a marketing campaign, a slick sales technique, or an amusing political catchphrase. It represents a series of solutions to a serious and urgent situation the world faces today. Smart cities are emerg­ing as a civic action due to a “perfect storm” convergence of market conditions, technology innovation, social wants, and government needs, and the migration to urban environments that has accelerated on a global scale, dwarfing any previous mass movement of people in history. My company adapted to this situation by creating a smart cities framework that consists of 10 guiding principles that provide us with a taxonomy. Within

3

4  Chapter 1

each guiding principle are solutions, and in certain cases, products. Our smart cities 10 guiding principles in alphabetical order are the following:

1. Citizen services



2. Education



3. Energy



4. Green/Sustainable buildings and environment



5. Healthcare



6. Information communications technology (ICT)



7. Safety and security



8. Transportation



9. Waste

10. Water This list is meant to be a “stack” that will assist in identifying the priorities for each urban project. My company has found that this stack shifts and shuffles even within a single urban environment due to competing priorities. What works as a stack on the north side of a city does not necessarily work on the south side. In order for a city to provide access to its intelligence behind the knowl­ edge and become a smart city, it must develop an intelligence system that connects the city’s central nervous system to a brain. By interconnecting all the guiding principles and implementing them as ecosystems, the urban organism for each urban development will take on its own shape, culture, and operational processes. In other words, there are no cookie-cutter solu­ tions; in the world of smart cities, the solutions create a domino effect, so when designing and implementing smart cities solutions you must always keep an ecosystem cause and effect in mind. Each guiding principle has numerous solutions and products to choose from, acting as ingredients to each urban development’s smart cities recipe of wants, needs, and desires.

THE CATALYSTS FOR THE SMART CITY MOVEMENT It may not be obvious, but the cities of Earth today owe a large thank you to the NASA Apollo space program (Project Apollo). We listened as one people to the firsthand accounts of the astronauts who saw the Earth from



Smart Cities   5

the surface of the moon. We were filled with wonder by their description of seeing our Earth as an oasis in the vast void of space, like a space vehicle traveling through nothingness. We were filled with pride as they described how beautiful, shiny, and fragile we are as a planet. And we were filled with awe when we saw the famous pictures of our planet Earth from the surface of the moon. Among all the wonderment, these same astronauts warned us that we must start taking better care of our space vehicle, as there is nothing else out there close by that we can inhabit if Earth were to become uninhabitable. These astronauts also said that one of their surprises was how the urban areas of Earth had their own atmospheres—and that each one of them looked dirty. There are many legacies of the Project Apollo program but none more important than how we need to think smarter about our cities and their effect on our planet. The smart city movement, which began with a view from the moon in 1969, has finally reached the tipping point of momentum to become an action­able topic for government officials, politicians, service providers, and urban dwellers. A critical next step in the maturity of smart cities will be in its identification, definition, and value to all stakeholders in each unique city. One striking example can be found in a report by McKinsey & Co. from 20092 that still holds valuable information. It stated that 350 million people in China would move to cities throughout China by 2028. In the years since that report was published, the number of migrating Chinese to cities within China is proving this prediction correct. Existing Chinese cities, already overpopulated and struggling to maintain public services, are bracing for this onslaught of humanity by preparing, planning, and implementing large-scale urban projects designed to transform from industrial urban environments to smart cities. This is not because they want to, but because they must. Some staggering statistics regarding China’s urban challenges: • By 2028, there will be 40 billion square feet of new building space constructed in 5 million new buildings, of which 50,000 of these new buildings will be skyscrapers, the equivalent of 10 Manhattans. • One billion Chinese residents will call a city home by 2030. • China will have 221 cities by 2028 with populations greater than 1 million people; Europe today has 35. • One hundred seventy new mass transit systems will be built in Chinese cities by 2028; there are 160 mass transit systems in use today in the world.

6  Chapter 1

India is another striking example of explosive urban growth with a population that must change their consumption and development patterns in favor of smarter and more sustainable habits. A 2010 McKinsey Global Institute report3 predicts India’s urban population will balloon to 590 million by 2030, which is almost twice the size of the entire U.S. population. By 2030, India will have 68 cities with populations of more than 1 million people, 13 cities with more than 4 million people, and six megacities with populations of 10 million or more. The report also says that the Indian economy is expected to be five times greater by 2030, with urban centers being the key driver of this growth. This means India’s labor force will increase by 270 million from today, with 70 percent of that needed for urban jobs. This new Indian urban labor force will also be relatively young compared to other BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries. The median age for the Indian population is 25.3 years, which is lower than Brazil (28.6 years) and well below China (34.1 years) and Russia (38.4). India, like China, must move to a smart city strategy, not because they want to, but because they must. In order to meet the needs of this urban class, the report estimates India will need: • $1.2 trillion USD in capital investment • 2.5 billion square meters of roads to be paved • 700-900 million square meters of commercial and residential space • 7,400 kilometers of subways and transportation to be constructed To put India’s figures into perspective, the investment of $1.2 trillion USD was about one-third of India’s total gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019. The 700-900 million square meters of needed commercial and residential real estate development means that India must build a new city the size of Chicago each year for the next 20 years just to meet the demand. From a global perspective, cities account for 75 percent of greenhouse emissions, while only occupying 2 percent of the world’s surface. It is expected that the number of people living in urban areas will double by 2050. And of immediate concern, by 2025, 1.2 billion cars will be on the road, making one car for every six people on Earth. These trends are mentioned not to initiate discussions about how we can stop them, but how we can change and manage them. There are emerging suggestions on how to change and manage the many issues facing the world’s cities today. Collectively, cities need more space in order to accommodate the influx of people. The new and emerging



Smart Cities   7

cities are planning for this with urban planning strategies such as highdensity solutions, while existing cities are exploring dense microgrids that reposition existing buildings, transportation systems, and neighborhoods to accommodate more people, create a self-sustaining economic center, and provide sustainable energy. Cities are also addressing climate change, which is forcing the issue of sustainable development into the spotlight while enabling thoughtful foresight of the future needs of a city. When a city makes the commitment to follow the path of becoming a smart city, it is positioning itself at a competitive advantage. The true measure of what will attract and retain people and businesses to a smart city will be in a city’s response to the increasing demands of its inhabitants, making a smart city one that listens, communicates, and attends to its citizen’s needs. The interesting thing about smart city initiatives is the closely integrated way seemingly disparate elements work together. As cities begin their transformative process into smart cities, it helps to consider the manner in which cities will need to address the social, economic, engineering, and environmental challenges. And this will center on knowledge. Cities were originally developed in an agrarian society that had their collective knowledge reside in either royal or religious centers. Through the development of the printing press, this knowledge was dispersed to the masses. With printed matter expanding knowledge, cities evolved as centers of commerce during the Industrial Revolution. In today’s Internet Age, knowledge is networked, providing access to the intelligence behind the knowledge, leading to the threshold of smart cities. As we identify the challenges of living in a highly connected, Internet Age world, it is comforting to relate to our cities as organisms. If the city is a body, then we have seen its evolution from the agrarian society to the Internet Age through the development of systems. Each city has its own cardiovascular system (traffic, mass transit), skeletal system (infrastructure), respiratory and digestive systems (energy, waste), and even a primitive nervous system (telecommunications). In order for a city to provide access to its intelligence behind the knowledge and become a smart city, the development of the intelligence system that connects the central nervous system to a brain is required. Smart city initiatives such as 5G network programs and citywide, free wireless broadband are the beginning salvos in meeting these challenges and moving cities forward as healthy organisms. If evolving into a smart city means connecting seemingly disparate elements into working as a healthy organism, then we should be focusing our collective efforts, our path forward, on two areas of immediate action: data and digital DNA.

8  Chapter 1

DATA Due to the implementation of vast information technology (IT) solutions over the past few decades by cities, the world has created a cornucopia of data. These data come in all shapes and sizes and enable an enormous number of tasks to be conducted more effectively and efficiently. The issue is not if the city has the proper data to become a smart city; the issue is how. Traditional IT solutions treat data as captive elements inside their own software, creating silos of data within every city. Attempts to extract these data and share them with other systems, connecting the city’s nervous system to a brain, have been complex and expensive to accomplish. With the emergence of cloud technology, meaning internet-based software and services, ­cities today have a highly potent solution that mixes performance and technology. Add in the recent innovation of distributed ledger tech­ nology (DLT), which is a database of information that’s shared and duplicated across a network of computers in different locations, cities have tools to decentralize their data to work in many layers of solutions. To put DLT into another vernacular, DLT is the basis of blockchain technology and its solutions. No longer is a city held hostage to unaffordable IT integration issues; with the emergence of the cloud and democratized products and technologies like blockchain and apps, the integration of your city’s department of sanitation data can communicate with the transportation department, the police, or city hall in an inexpensive and powerful way. The media are calling this emancipation of data being freed from their silos “big data.” This means that an enormous body of data has the ability to enter your city’s body and freely circulate. The job of today’s cities’ IT departments is not just to secure people from getting into a city’s system but also to control and manage the glut of data that will be trying to get out. Think how WikiLeaks changed our idea of cybersecurity. A major issue for a city’s IT department is how to manage big data now that it can be set free so easily. The cities that solve this issue will be on the correct path to being smart cities. Those that don’t may experience what other organisms experience when there is too much blockage in the nervous system—a breakdown. These breakdowns can be seen today with ransomware attacks and leaks due to holes in cybersecurity plans. No matter which of the 10 smart city elements your city decides to focus on, the data will be the key driver to all policies, programs, projects, and measures. The focus on big data and your city’s behavior toward its data management is a critical element toward being a truly smart city. A smarter, efficient city that would encompass aspects of intelligent



Smart Cities   9

transportation, security, energy management, CO2 emissions, and sustain­ ability is contingent upon the implementation of a big data strategic plan to enable decision-makers and authorities to perform their jobs. In response, some cities have taken an open data approach to assist in making their data available to the general public, which has spawned an emerging market for the development and sale of “apps” to enable these open data to come alive and provide value to a user. We are truly living in a digital transfor­ ma­tional time.

DIGITAL DNA If big data is a key for cities evolving into smart cities, then a question arises as to the hierarchy of data prioritization. In other words, where does a city start? Two points of entry can assist a city in answering this question. One is how some cities see the market driving the need for access to certain types of data. Incident reporting, energy usage and analysis, and transportation information are all areas in which citizens see immediate value. Other cities position the new data-centric tools like social media to assist with better communicating with their citizens. This reactive approach is highly effective when implemented correctly, with many examples from all over the world as best practices and, in certain cases, lessons learned. The second point of entry is in the proactive approach of identifying and managing your city’s digital DNA. The building blocks to the effective and efficient use of city data will ultimately reside in a city’s ability to repurpose its existing data and documents associated with the built environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities. Built environment data are already captured by cities in various formats and processes. Building departments, engineering departments, land departments, planning departments, tax departments, postal services— they all collect and manage vast amounts of data that when viewed as a whole, create the virtual and, in some cases, the digital representation of your physical city. The accuracy, authentication, and integration of these city data are the keys to a proactive approach to entering a path to becoming a smart city. The uniqueness defined by your city’s digital DNA can be used for competitive advantage, change management, and controlled, healthy growth. Without proper and authenticated digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from your city’s nervous system to the brain will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of your city to a smart city.

10  Chapter 1

Enabling your digital DNA to become active is being seen in cloud tech­ nology advancements and solutions such as sensors. Sensors are a simple technology that when connected to roads, water, and power networks can provide powerful streaming of real-time information, evaluating real-time conditions and optimizing the network’s performance. This machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is poised to grow from 15 billion “intelligent devices,” such as sensors, to more than 50 billion by 2025. Managing traditional digital DNA of city data such as blueprints, speci­fications, and geographic information systems (GIS) will be even more challenging and potentially valuable with this emergence and overlay of M2M real-time data. Your city’s ability to manage this complex stream of data in an intuitive and simple manner is another key driver in the overall evolution to becoming a successful smart city. A path to enabling your city’s digital DNA comes from the use of building information modeling (BIM) and the data captured by smart buildings. BIM and smart buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a neighborhood, district, or city provides a city with relevant, authenticated data. Wrap these project data into smart contracts and DLT/blockchain solutions and you have a new conversation that will provide value one can only dream of today. Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms that look beyond the individual building project and begin to position for capturing value (and alternative revenues) at the data transaction level in a smart city environment will capture greater market share and open new opportunities for growth than their competition. This revaluation of digital DNA dwarfs any previous notion of the value given to built environment data. Think of your city as a network, with each building acting as a server. Each building has data, such as BIM for design and construction and smart building data in the form of facility management and building automation. When these individual building data are connected to the city network, potentially through an open data policy, interesting things begin to happen. The captured AEC data that a city already possesses become the digital DNA of smart cities. Built environment professionals, specifically in the AEC market, are the authors of this digital DNA and should consider their data creation work not just for the project at hand but also in the context of an operating city and the life cycle of products, materials, and equipment that they have specified. New business models are emerging for insightful AEC firms that are emulating other business and revenue models from other industries. Many in the media are calling these digital assets “digital twins.” A business model that is gaining traction in the AEC market comes from the



Smart Cities   11

music industry. In the music industry, a recording artist writes a song and may retain the publishing rights. This means that every time that song is played, either by the original artist or by others, that song writer receives payment. A few pioneering AEC firms are emulating this business model by retaining their “publishing rights” to a building information model. Each time access is granted to the information model of that asset (building, infrastructure, etc.), a payment is made to the firm that owns the publishing rights. In most cases, this would be an architectural or engineering firm. By extending the value of the building information model past the traditional design and construction phase of the asset’s life cycle, AEC firms can now continue to receive continuous revenues into facility management and oper­ ations by granting access to accurate, authenticated data, potentially hosted in the cloud. With the emergence of AI tools like generative pre-trained trans­former (GPT) that shorten the time that many design tasks take to be completed, the traditional business model of architects and engineers being compensated by billable hourly rates will have to change. With the emergence of new business models like publishing rights, it will be fascinating to witness who survives to emerge as a next generation AEC firm in the age of smart cities. Savvy AEC professionals are strategically positioning themselves to not only contribute to smart city programs through the creation of digital DNA but also benefit from this DNA. These AEC professionals view data creation tools and processes such as BIM as a service they (and your city) should consider when developing a digital DNA plan that can include: • Legal and insurance, including intellectual property rights and who owns the data and the digital model • Planning and design • Construction, commissioning, and handover • Facility operations in the form of space planning, asset management, maintenance, document management, environment health and safety, and security

SMART CITY SOLUTIONS With a city’s data and digital DNA identified, the actionable solutions of evolving into a smart city emerge. Using the same plan, processes, and policies as in the IT industry, a city can implement smart city pilot programs and projects, adopting techniques like rapid application development

12  Chapter 1

(RAD), creating and implementing policies that use internet protocol (IP), and developing trusting relationships between people to get things accomplished, like in social media solutions. The creation of interdependence, of having your interests shared by others in the community, is a powerful force that drives ideas into action and provides a mechanism for collective intelligence for your smart city. The best smart city solutions enable this type of environment and position your smart city to share this knowledge to raise the consciousness of a topic on a global scale. In other words, being a truly smart city is achieved through a sharing of knowledge that can benefit not only your own citizens but also all citizens of the world. Cities that adopt this as part of their smart city plan will need to select smart city solutions that feed into a knowledge and data sharing platform. One of the leading public accessible platforms is the World Bank’s urbanization knowledge platform, which is empowering cities and citizens alike to plan their smart cities as modern central nervous systems that connects people, places, and things. Some of the better smart city solutions are acting as “front ends” to leverage internal data, such as digital DNA, and external data, such as the urbanization knowledge platform, while viewing these data in 3-D for an easy, intuitive view of complex information. Using a 3-D immersive interface that blurs the lines between virtual and reality, complex, expert systems like energy management systems and bureaucratic processes are simplified for the average citizen to make intelligent decisions on sustainability (for example, do I take mass transit or my car to work?), cost, and quality of life. This digital twin approach is gaining traction on a daily basis as some savvy cities are taking their digital twin models of their cities and putting the models into a gaming engine. This makes using the model very easy and provides a development environment for developers to add functions and features to the model, enabling the average citizen to easily use this 3-D model. Creating these 3-D virtual worlds are the baby steps in the creation of their own virtual worlds in the metaverse for each city. Cities are a mirror to the values of our civilization. At the core, smart city solutions, both large and small, have an opportunity to help create an environment for people to prosper in a welcoming, inclusive, and open manner. Basic service improvements, reliability, and trust building are the cornerstones to a successful smart city strategy. Many smart city solutions are technology based, so a focus on processes and workflows is critical to the success of these initiatives. A selection should not be based on technology for technology’s sake. Choosing the proper smart city solution that solves a specific task in an overall workflow can be as beneficial as a more comprehensive implementation. Your smart city solutions should also leverage the power of open data and strive to benefit as many stakeholders as possible.



Smart Cities   13

Smart cities’ results must contribute to the economy and the environment of every city, leading to smarter infrastructure, smarter buildings, and shared public services. An interesting and helpful list of results of smart city initiatives was published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sensable City Labs:4 • Sometimes the best solutions are not the biggest or most expensive: Cities routinely overinvest or underinvest in infrastructure (usually the latter) because it is difficult to calculate the extent of its future use or to project the negative impacts on services and real estate from insufficient long-term investment. The hidden dangers of overinvesting are evident in those cities that stress investment in a single infrastructure approach. For example, cities will often stress passenger vehicle-based transport systems— highways and roads for cars. Many of those cities are suffering under clouds of pollution, congestion problems, and the attendant problems with urban sprawl. Solutions built around minimal infrastructure can avoid the danger of overinvesting. • Soft infrastructure, such as information technology and the active participation of stakeholder groups, can better connect people to services: Creating smarter communities requires using collective intelligence. This doesn’t just mean accounting for the “wisdom of the crowd”; it also means taking maximum advantage of the infrastructure already in place, including wireless networks and their capabilities to weave together people, services, community assets, and information into strong, pervasive solutions reaching up and down the economic strata that make up diverse cities. Consequently, the modern “e-city” includes new forms of digital governance but also new ways of delivering education, healthcare, commercial, security, and entertainment services to urban residents. There is also no substitute for well-organized stakeholder groups to influence infrastructure project outcomes and ensure citizen support afterward. • Think creatively about how to use existing infrastructure assets for multiple purposes: The feasibility, sustainability, and utility of infrastructure projects are enhanced when they meet multiple objectives. Transportation corridors

14  Chapter 1

that are also recreation, storm drainage and utility corridors; storm water retention basins doubling as recreational facilities; open spaces and nature preserves that are also used to treat water and air pollution are all examples of multiple-use projects. • Underutilized infrastructure can be adaptively repurposed to inspire modern uses: Developed countries across the world have underutilized public buildings, rail lines, bridges, and abandoned utilities. When these assets can be adaptively reused, the result is sometimes a creative outcome. • Understanding where coercion, official incentives, and special enabling legislation by the government are required to meet infrastructure objectives is also important: Some infrastructure projects and innovations require govern­ ment support, even coercion, to be successful. Lavasa, in India, could not have been launched without state-enabled legislation crafted and customized to the project. • Innovation in the planning and development process: Cities are complex organisms. City leaders who set out to retrofit or remake infrastructure without thinking through its impact on critical systems and potential unintended consequences do so at their own peril. Deliberative planning can lead to innovations incorporated in the final development. Meticulous and extensive advance planning is the key for development success. • Innovative finance: Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, the U.S. budget deficit, the skyrocketing social costs of aging popu­lations, and relatively immature local governmental funding mechanisms in much of Asia and Africa all mean that raising the necessary capital for much needed urban infrastructure will be a problem for many years to come. Innovative financing will be imperative if many urban infrastructure projects are to be realized. Whether local governments are empowered to issue their own bonds and create different types of development corporations that own the infrastructure, or public-private partnerships are taken to a different level, the control exercised by central governments will likely have to decrease to allow innovative financing to flourish.



Smart Cities   15

HETERARCHY In order to properly stack wants, needs, and desires, we needed to reimagine how we stack and prioritize; we have traditionally used categories as our taxonomy. Our reimagining began by moving from a two-dimensional taxonomy to creating a heterarchy as our 3-D smart cities basis of design. As mentioned in this book’s introduction, a heterarchy is a system of systems that identifies each system as a horizontal layer (taxonomy) that is connected by a vertical ontology. Ontologies connect all smart cities systems (layers of the heterarchy like healthcare, education, technology, transportation, governance, infrastructure, financial, and so on) in a coordi­ nated methodology to meet the current and ongoing demands that smart cities will need to identify, as shown in Figure 1.1. Mechanical Electrical Plumbing Technology Safety/security Ontology connecting layers

Figure 1.1   Smart cities heterarchy.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

An example is our master planning for the Consolidated Land and Rail Australia (CLARA) project in Australia. CLARA is meant to deliver a high-speed rail (HSR) between Melbourne and Sydney, which requires the then-specified Japan Central Railways Maglev train (see Figure 1.2) to stop every 100 kilometers due to the train technology’s limitations. This means the CLARA solution would require eight stops along the proposed route. Each stop provides the opportunity to develop a compact urban environment built around the train station. This design has also been called transit synergized development. Each city is meant to be a stand-alone environment, each with its own identity, economy, sustainable infrastructure, and industry. CLARA smart cities are not meant to be “suburban bedroom communities” to Melbourne or Sydney; rather, they are cities that are designed to be self-contained, urban environments that accommodate a maximum of 360,000 inhabitants each, creating secondtier Australian cities that will control their urban sprawl. Each CLARA smart city has a green boundary in order to control its inhabitant capacity

16  Chapter 1

through design. Although each city is its own ecosystem, all CLARA cities act as regional organisms, using the HSR corridor as the spine for the eight cities to share communications, technology, healthcare, education, safety, and security, creating an interconnective, inland region for Australia. Since CLARA is designed to run through the interior of Australia that is mostly farmland and open space, where there are no resources or towns to draw workers to build the rail system or the compact smart cities, CLARA’s master plan uses sustainable worker towns to be the pioneering model to homestead. This provides the beginning of an economy, a sense of place, and the first inhabitants for the rail line and each of the eight cities. This natural method of introducing wants, needs, water, energy, food, healthcare, education, and shelter, and weaving these elements into the urban fabric of smart cities, led us to the discovery that a heterarchy provides a framework to deliver an urban environment that is not only human-centric and datadriven but also provides a proper hierarchy to our guiding principles stack for each of the eight CLARA smart cities.

Figure 1.2   Maglev trains in Japan.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

To introduce how an ontology would work to connect each smart city’s system, consider the example of a digital twin as part of the metaverse. Since smart cities desire to introduce cities of the future, inhabitants and guests will engage with technologies in a variety of ways to enable an environment where every footprint has a cloudprint. In order to accomplish this, all smart cities’ capital assets should have IT as a fourth utility, joining electrical, mechanical, and plumbing as primary utilities. This allows all buildings



Smart Cities   17

and infrastructure to have archived and live data run through its structures. Every building becomes a server that is linked like magic to humans’ wants and needs. When linked together, these assets create the internet of buildings that operates in a mixed reality environment. This blurs the lines between the physical and digital worlds. This inspired collision creates the opportunity for a safer, more secure, and healthier urban environment within smart cities. To provide a higher value for both smart cities’ physical and digital assets, all digital assets will be on the blockchain, by first using smart contracts. Most of these digital assets will be secured through a securitized fungible token (FT) that will tie intrinsically to the physical asset’s value, providing a shareholder-style relationship between the physical asset, the digital asset, and the shareholder. Securitizing digital real estate through the connection to physical real estate provides a whole new era of time, space, and existence never available before now. In the last chapter of this book, we will explore details of this approach and how our heterarchy framework has provided clarity around multiple stacks of innovation and technology mixed into our physical and digital assets.

MEASURES In order for our smart cities stack to work and continuously function prop­ erly, we put two high-level measurement systems into place. The United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG) and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) measures. Although these measures are com­ pre­hensive and umbrella-like in their nature, we find them useful when having conversations with a broad range of people when we explain our projects. In the case of the SDG, explaining how innovations with water filtration can positively affect a city’s citizens while also affecting its energy use as an ecosystem can be difficult to explain. By using the SDG charts, outcomes are shared, making the explanation of high technology easier to understand. ESG measures are also used in our conversations to explain outcomes. We will explore these specific measures and how to implement them later in this book. Another important measure we use is human capital and the smart cities effect on the human experience. The rapid urbanization of our world and the weaving of existing and new buildings into the urban fabric of smart city initiatives are some of the great challenges facing the world today. Let’s explore a framework for understanding the definitions, market indicators, key metrics, and value propositions smart cities hold. The emergence of smart cities as the container for ideas, thoughts, policies, and strategies for the world’s cities is an important milestone because it comes amid rapid

18  Chapter 1

innovation, convergence, and redefinitions. The basic goal (basis of design) of smart city is to improve the quality of life and the well-being of its citizens. Human capital far outweighs any other measure of a successful urban environment. As smart cities emerge as a primary objective for urban environments across the globe, it is vital that smart cities and their processes be understood by other stakeholders. Smart city initiatives run the real possibility of not achieving optimal results. There are three keys for a smart city strategy to succeed:

1. Holistic view



2. Citizen engagement



3. Collaboration

Holistic View Smart city strategies and solutions must be considered within the context of a city’s entire operations infrastructure processes and workflows. This ecosystem view will assist in identifying isolated projects and will have limited impact. Cloud-based solutions are proving to be successful in telling this vital story.

Citizen Engagement Gaining public support and trust in new processes and tools such as crowdsourcing, mobile apps, and report tracking is a primary objective of many cities on the path to becoming a smart city.

Collaboration ICT technology breakthroughs, insightful policies, and urban designs that delight are intersecting in a manner that calls for collaboration at a rate we have not been accustomed to before. These points of intersection are fertile ground for innovation within and between organizations. Both large and small smart city solutions have the opportunity to assist in creating an urban environment for people to prosper in a welcoming, inclusive, and open manner. Living a connected life is transforming into living an interconnected life for people living in today’s urban places. When people and places begin to communicate seamlessly and transparently, interesting experiences begin to happen. This is the promise of smart cities. Another measure we use post capital asset build out is to measure inhabitants’ happiness as the ultimate outcome.



Smart Cities   19

HAPPINESS AND WELL-BEING Strong evidence reveals how the places and systems we build affect the way people move, live, and feel—and, by extension, the way they treat each other. Smart cities design principles can reinforce happiness and promote a healthy lifestyle if implemented correctly. Research shows that happiness matters and that there are objective ways to measure how people feel. The question being explored is how to incorporate happiness into policies and designs and how to measure outcomes. In our smart cities projects, we considered the following for urban design criteria. It is important to: • Feel more joy than pain • Feel secure • Feel healthy and in control of your well-being • Thrive with abundance; wealth matters, but it does not suffice • Feel as though you belong to a community • Have a sense of meaning in life • Experience social connections Implementing these principles in our urban designs means finding ways for our urban environment to evoke happiness. Some design best practices we have learned over time include the following: • Neighborhoods are dense and connected. • Mixed-use environments create diversity. • Short blocks and mobility options foster walking. • Streets allow for interaction and face-to-face contact. • Streets have activities taking place. These high-level design solutions are not meant to imply that if you design neighborhoods that are dense and connected that the outcomes are automatically happy people. The buildings and their layouts can only provide the spaces where humans will choose how to live their lives. Smart cites can only enhance the environment and create the opportunity for people to discover their own happiness. There are examples of how smart cities urban planning can affect a person’s well-being, providing the opportunity for healthy people to be happy people. A simple example would be to assist how people can walk

20  Chapter 1

the recom­mended 10,000 steps each day by the layout of their urban daily journey. Starting at a person’s dwelling, getting to and from work by encouraging walking through design provides a good opportunity to get in daily steps. Referencing our best practice learnings, short blocks and mobility options foster walking, which becomes an important design element for providing a step increase strategy, leading to a healthier lifestyle, measured by good health, leading to happiness. In 2016, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government developed a national program for happiness and well-being that covers three areas:

1. Inclusion of happiness in the policies, programs, and services of all government bodies and at work



2. Promotion of well-being and happiness as a lifestyle in the community



3. Development of benchmarks and tools to measure happiness

This charter has been implemented with the following initiatives: • Appointing CEOs for happiness and well-being at all government bodies • Establishing councils for happiness and well-being at federal entities • Allocating time for happiness-related programs and activities at the federal government • Establishing offices for happiness and well-being • Transforming customer service centers into customer happiness centers • Including annual indexes, surveys, and reports to measure happiness in all community segments • Adopting a standard form for corporate happiness and well-being at all government bodies What I find remarkable about this national program is the way both the government and the public embraced the initiatives as a measure of national pride. What has emerged are simple and random acts of kindness, a natural smile, a warm greeting. The UAE did not decree happiness or else there is punishment. Rather, it embraced the idea that a friendly country will attract more visitors than it already enjoys as being a thriving tourist center. Since its two main cities, Abu Dhabi and Dubai, are homes to mostly



Smart Cities   21

expatriates who have to learn how to live together as a community of diverse customs, methods, and cultures, a focus on happiness is an attempt to celebrate differences and encourage people to reach out to each other in order to learn, live, and love in a harmonious environment. The smart cities approach of real estate development is building on these emerging foundations of happiness by designing dense and connected neighborhoods, creating walkable communities, and encouraging activities at the street level, which are some of the best practices we are discovering on how to design a successful smart city. What we are continuing to learn and what the UAE is showing the world is that healthy and happy cities are characterized by citizens who trust each other. The level of trust directly impacts people’s productivity and an economy’s overall dynamism. This is at the heart of smart cities. The age of smart cities is before us all. We did not ask for it, but it is here, nonetheless. Smart cities and the proper implementation for each village, town, and city is not a fashionable flavor-of-the-day topic but rather an imperative series of tasks in a framework to be initiated in a relatively short timeframe. A smart city’s success will only be measured by how well its inhabitants’ quality of life improves. It is our generation’s greatest challenge and the best legacy we can leave to our children. When I started my journey in discovering, learning about, and eventually implementing smart cities, I was intrigued by the idea that differ­ ent innovations could be implemented not as a single innovative project but as a symphony of innovations, each working together to create amazing urban environments that inspire and delight people. My idealism was soon shaken by the harsh realities that the world does not work this way. The current state of the world focuses on individual contracts for services and products, each with its own success factors. I quickly learned that to make an impact and have this vision of many innovations working as an ecosystem to deliver high-quality urban environments, I would have to develop a different approach.

“These are the principles for the development of a complete mind: Study the science of art. Study the art of science… . Realize that everything connects to everything else.” —Leonardo Da Vinci

2 The Secret is in the Sauce

L

iving in New York, I get to experience some of the finest culinary dishes in the world—all different types of ethnic foods, ingredients, and recipes. What makes a culinary dish so palatable is in the ingredi­ents as much as the recipe, as well as the professional chef creating a delectable dish. As the saying goes, “the secret is in the sauce.” Personally, I enjoy cooking and find that referring to innovations as “ingredients” and to solutions as “recipes” provides an easier understanding of what smart cities are—and most importantly, what they are not. I’ll share information about our secret sauce—how our company has been successful in planning, designing, constructing, and operating smart cities.

THE RECIPE FOR SMART CITIES To be clear, we have many examples of successfully delivered projects. Some examples are massive and are good benchmarks for mega-projects, while other examples are smaller in scale, but are also good benchmarks for many smart city programs and projects around the world that focus on select expertise and delivery. A smart city is not a single, vertical solution. Rather, it is a combination of single solutions that when woven together as an ecosystem provide delight and inspiration for its inhabitants. When I read in the media of a smart city success story and realized that the story was about a city’s decision to implement a curbside parking app that leverages sensors to help people find empty parking spots quicker, I thought, well, that’s clever. It saves time, it’s useful, it lowers carbon emissions, and it’s a free service. I like to think of a solution like this as a gemstone. Knowing how hard it is to get any type of innovation implemented in cities, I applaud success like this. I was expecting a story like this to be the start of a larger story, that this gemstone 25

26  Chapter 2

could be the first of many gemstones that when linked together would make a beautiful necklace. Build on success. But too often, cities point to a success like this and stay put, not building on success. They go to smart cities conferences to receive their awards, where they can come home to show their constituents that they are leading the city toward a bright future. In the analogy of a kitchen, the appetizer was successful, but they forgot the dinner. There are various reasons why so many cities move forward a little at a time, seeming to make no progress of any real significance. Politics, budget constraints, lack of skills, lack of labor, poor communication, and pandemics like COVID-19 all play a role in a city’s implementation of a smart city master plan. Our approach is to look at success factors based on our smart cities guiding principles stack while prioritizing and balancing the city’s wants and needs. By preparing the story of high-level results, our master plans then look into our cupboard to find the proper ingredients (innovations) to create the recipes (solutions) that are unique to that city and/or areas of a city. What we have discovered over time is that the storytelling of individual projects leads to a much larger story, satisfying the need that a city is on the proper path. Each smaller project feeds into the urban ecosystem, just like an ingredient in a recipe. Through experience, we are also learning that certain ingredients work better together than others. These learned lessons and best practices have emerged into smart city cookbooks that provide a history of what works well and what does not, giving city leadership and administrators comfort in their decision-making. In our company, the innovations are the lifeblood of how we separate ourselves from others. The more ingredients I have access to, the more creative my recipes become. This means we need to set up a system and process of constantly and consistently discovering, identifying, analyzing, planning, and implementing urban innovations. It is a massive task to filter out the hype from the reality to create our cupboard of trusted ingredients. A smart city is designed as a series of ecosystems that work together like an organism, with the ability to scale based on the needs of its inhabitants. Each ecosystem is a recipe that is developed from a series of innovations that act like ingredients. As examples, we will showcase urban ecosystems that are being developed for smart city projects, with minor variances for each solution on the original recipe to account for differences in culture, climate, and geography within the region. Using the food analogy, this chapter will provide some examples of innovations (ingredients) that we have used, although it is not an exhaustive list of our ingredients. And, we will provide examples (recipes) that we have created.



The Secret is in the Sauce   27

SMART CITY ECOSYSTEMS A lesson learned with our innovation process is that to create successful smart cities solutions, transportation decisions are so closely coupled with housing decisions that it is equivalent to using salt and pepper in Western recipes. As an example, whenever our master plans call for housing, we immediately bring in transportation innovations and solutions as an ecosystem. One cannot stand without the other. We challenge the conventional process of urban planning with street grids in our smart cities. Take an ingredient like autonomous transportation that does not require a street grid to guide the vehicle. The implantation of another ingredient, such as edge computing, creates a wireless guidance system for autonomous vehicles. Working as an ecosystem, the vehicle and the edge computing environment provide a safe and efficient public transportation system that is independent of a structured street grid. Solutions like this enable city planners to master plan a city that uses its unique topography, climate, and geography to place buildings rather than a man-made grid system of squares and rectangles. Passive design can then be used to position buildings to gain the optimal effect of leveraging sun, wind, and other natural elements for heating, cooling, and efficiently operating a building. The space between buildings becomes more important and valuable than the buildings themselves. This style of design also means that getting around a city using autonomous public transportation becomes the preferred mode of transportation and provides the framework for housing and other building types. Transportation ecosystems drive the master planning of urban design and its buildings. Let’s explore a number of innovations (ingredients) that have become ecosystem-style, smart city solutions (recipes) over time in our projects around the world.

INGREDIENT EXAMPLES In this chapter, we share a list of impactful ingredients that have emerged as primary solutions that we have master planned with enormous value in our smart cities solutions.

Energy Kinetic energy is the energy of motion, observable as the movement of an object, particle, or set of particles. Any object in motion uses kinetic energy: a person walking, a car moving, vibration, music, ocean waves, and

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a charged particle in an electric field are all examples of kinetic energy at work. One of our smart cities projects, CLARA in Australia, followed the research and development to propose the commercialization of the research and intellectual property (IP) from Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Materials Science and Engineering regarding kinetic energy as real-world solutions as Cleantech 2.0. Led by Professor Dr. Zhong Lin Wang (the 2015 runner-up for the Nobel Prize in Physics), the use of zinc oxide (ZnO) nano piezotronics led to the implementation of piezoelectric solutions on both interior and exterior horizontal surfaces in the United States. Piezoelectric is the use of compression to excite molecules to produce power. Interior installations at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport by Georgia Tech’s Research Institute (GTRI) have yielded 14 watts per square foot of power under commercial carpet with people moving over the floor surface, while proposed exterior installations in downtown Atlanta on Interstate Highway 75/85 will yield 8.4 kilowatts per hour with an average of 600 cars rolling on top of it an hour in simulation. Dr. Ilan Stern has been a champion for the research and implementation of piezoelectric solutions at GTRI, and I cannot thank him enough for his continuous innovation that has allowed ideas to become reality. Some of our projects followed the research, development, and imple­ mentation of Qualcomm’s Halo (now known as WiTricity) solution that can safely transmit piezo-generated power wirelessly to devices, appliances, electric vehicles (EV), and LED streetlights. Since our smart cities are designed for public transportation, autonomous EVs will not need as many charging stations, as the piezo/halo ecosystem provides enough power to continuously charge every EV in each of our smart city projects. In addition, the piezo/halo solution is planned to generate enough energy to power every LED streetlight in our numerous projects. Our specified smart cities LED streetlights also will have a Li-Fi solution installed that will produce a 10 gigabit ubiquitous Wi-Fi network for an entire city, which will be free to use. Another innovation that is part of the kinetic energy ecosystem is Wattway, a photovoltaic (solar-powered) paving system that is embedded as a smart city roadway. Physically sitting on top of the piezoelectric system, Wattway solar slabs generate enough power per kilometer to light 5,000 homes per day. The kinetic energy ecosystem can also be expanded to wearable devices, which will allow charging on a person based on the person’s movement, such as walking, running, and exercising. This power generation redundancy provides smart cities with a feasible Cleantech 2.0 energy ecosystem solution that promises to capture market share around the world.



The Secret is in the Sauce   29

Water An innovation that has emerged as an exciting recipe is the filtration of polluted water into potable water. Square1 Technologies (SQ1) is the developer and manufacturer of an advanced water treatment and purification system that is the culmination of more than five years of research and development. The SQ1 treatment process quickly, efficiently, and costeffectively produces safe, clean drinking from almost any water source. Additionally, the systems are very easy to maintain and operate, which proves to be a particularly significant advantage in developing countries. The lack of access to safe, clean drinking water is a dire humanitarian crisis. Recent research shows that a child dies at the horrific rate of one every 14.5 seconds from drinking contaminated/polluted water. What differentiates the SQ1 system from other water treatment solutions stems from its patented, nuclear science-based technology (US Patent 9,043,167 B2).1 This patent is a game-changer in the field of electrolysis management and deployment. Utilizing this technology, SQ1 systems create powerful chemical and atomic reactions where almost any type of contaminated water can be quickly and inexpensively disinfected and sanitized in large volumes. By simulating the conditions of nature in the environmental chamber, the SQ1 technology solution rapidly (by order of magnitude) accelerates the processes of decomposition, oxidation, and reduction from decades, centuries, and even millennia to seconds or minutes. This is accomplished by pumping water (H2O) under low to moderate pressure into the “reactor” chamber. While in the reactor, the water is subjected to mega-high energy, extreme heat, and pressure sources at the molecular level. These conditions cause the H2O to literally be torn apart. The resulting implosion creates plasma as well as massive amounts of hydrogen (a reducer) and oxygen (an oxidizer). These are released as “free radical” ions into the remaining water. These ions, coming in contact with biologicals, chemicals, and solids in the water, react violently with the diluted organisms, compounds, and metals as they precipitate out of the deconstructed H2O. In this condition of extreme high mass and energy transfer, the cellular membranes are torn apart, exposing the organisms to temperatures equaling the surface of the sun and pressures many times greater than the bottom of the deepest oceans. The constituents of the wastewater under this treatment simply cannot survive. They are killed or reduced to their base origins as harmless organic or inorganic elements, rendering most or all of them inactive. The solids, once dissolved in the water, now come out of the solution. After exiting the chamber, they are easily separated out and removed through a series of filters.

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Currently, there are two primary methods of treating and producing large volumes of drinking water: chemical treatment (CT) and reverse osmosis (RO). While both methods can produce safe drinking water, they both have severe limitations when compared to the SQ1 solution, which include the following: • There are high cap costs to deploy CT and RO systems, which can be 50-60 percent higher than SQ1. • There are high maintenance/operation costs for CT and RO, which can be 70-75 percent higher than SQ1. • CT and RO systems require high levels of technical competency to maintain and operate. The SQ1 system requires no technical competency to maintain and operate. • Long-term consumption of chemicals in water can lead to human health issues. SQ1 uses no chemicals. • RO can produce dangerous pathogens. SQ1 eliminates pathogens to untraceable levels. The fact that CT and RO are so expensive to deploy, maintain, and operate is a huge factor in why developing countries have critical drinking water issues. They simply do not have the capital necessary to proliferate CT and RO systems on any large-scale, sustainable basis. And even more of a contributing factor to the developing drinking water problem is the lack of technical competency in these areas to maintain and operate CT and RO systems. For now, SQ1 has two very important distribution channel partnerships in place: Water for the World (WFTW) and Transform Africa (TA). Both nongovernmental organizations (NGO) are very well-connected and estab­ lished in Africa, which provides opportunities for smart city ingredients like SQ1 to thrive in these emerging economies. The business model for both WFTW and TA is to place the SQ1 systems in urban areas of Africa and sell drinking water for prices considerably less than current prices of other drinking water products. The biggest market segment that will be targeted includes people who purchase bottled water for their drinking water needs. According to Market Data Research, the market for bottled water in Africa was $8 billion in 2021 and is rapidly growing. The big players in the African bottled water market are Nestle, Hangzhou Wahaha Group, Coca-Cola, Danone, Pepsi, Mountain Valley Spring, and Icelandic Glacial.



The Secret is in the Sauce   31

WFTW is a humanitarian organization that has been a leader in delivering drinking water solutions to people in need for more than 18 years. Through their efforts, 1.3 million people per day have access to safe, clean drinking water who otherwise would not. To dramatically increase their ability to provide clean water, WFTW contracted SQ1 to design and build the WB5000—the cornerstone equipment for WFTW’s purchase placement program. This is a global initiative to provide inexpensive, sustainable, locally produced, clean drinking water in areas of the world where access to safe water is scarce. Utilizing the WB5000 as a water vending machine, a unique and innovative business model has been developed that will propel and sustain the WFTW initiative. The WFTW contract provides for additional systems being purchased and placed from revenues generated by water sales from prior placed systems. As of 2023, the first 80 systems have been sold and are in the process of being deployed in Kenya. WFTW projects these 80 systems alone will generate funds to purchase an additional 800 systems over the first three years of operation (based on selling only 50 percent of available water). TA is a humanitarian organization that works closely with numerous African governments in developing sustainable economic development projects, including safe, clean drinking water projects. TA has selected SQ1 to be its exclusive water purification supplier. It has contracted with the company for the design and manufacture of the WB10000 (10,000 liters per day solutions).

SQ1 Cloud-based Monitoring System Based on the monitoring contracts with WFTW and TA, SQ1 operates a state-of-the-art, cloud-based monitoring system. This system is embedded with artificial intelligence (AI) technology and on-board sensors that con­ tinu­­ ously send analytical data back to SQ1. The system automatically diagnoses and signals issues in real time so immediate fixes and solutions can be dispatched and managed when necessary. This feature assures the operational and maintenance performance of each system and is a critical component of securing the financial integrity and success of the WFTW and TA projects.

Distributed Municipal Water Treatment System SQ1 has designed a containerized (40-foot container) water treatment and purification system called the CS100K. This is a scaled-up version of the WB5000 and WB10000 systems. Each CS100K can be placed and operated from virtually any water source and distributed around a community for

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easier access to the community served. Each CS100K can treat and deliver 100,000 liters per day of safe, clean drinking water. Due to the SQ1 software controller, multiple CS100Ks can be daisy-chained and operated and managed as one integrated business system focused on serving a specific community or area. The CS100K systems can be set up and operated at a much lower cost and require much less technical competency to operate and maintain than CT or RO systems. Consequently, it is much more feasible to deploy and operate SQ1’s systems in developing countries. This provides a more economical and sustainable solution for areas that struggle to support CT or RO systems.

Humanitarian Impact The SQ1 technology has the potential to make a very positive and meaningful impact on the plight of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world who lack access to safe, clean drinking water. Despite the good intentions and efforts of many governments and organizations that are focused on this issue, the drinking water problem in these countries continues to get worse instead of better. This is in large part due to the previously mentioned issues of high capital cost and high maintenance and operation costs of traditional CT and RO solutions. In developing counties, the issue is compounded by the high technical competency levels required to maintain and operate CT and RO plants.

Air Quality An outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is a hyper attention to indoor air quality. With the movement of an airborne virus that shut down most of the planet for a long period of time, the need for scientific control of air quality has risen in value over the past few years. As a company, we have been in pursuit of a unique air quality control system that integrates existing sensors and equipment with a new analytic engine to assist a building’s management system in better efficiency and effectiveness. Installed in buildings owned/ leased by leading financial institutions and news broadcasters, we have sourced a solution that saves money and energy, and improves indoor air quality for better health by leveraging BIM data into a unique air quality algorithm. Using the concept of blockchain for buildings, our smart cities’ BIM data structure makes it possible to create a digital ledger of transactions and share it among a distributed network of computers. It uses cryptography to allow each participant on the network to manipulate the ledger in a secure



The Secret is in the Sauce   33

way without the need for a central authority. Using machine learning that leverages blockchained BIM data, our company has developed an AI tool to maximize office air quality based on GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3), and we have started to experiment with the results. Future Decisions Ltd. in London provides a great solution by using a trusted estimation algorithm combined with machine learning, so that we can begin to predict building behavior. This allows the building to prepare for and take advantage of events that will occur or, in the case of negative events such as pollution, to minimize or negate their effects. With the advent of big data sources from the ubiquitous connectivity of modem devices comes the ability to apply a myriad of mathematical techniques. Investigating within the built environment, energy grids, and smart cities, a multitude of patterns appear, enabling forward-looking predictive assumptions. It is these types of algorithms that we love to exploit, as they enable preemptive action to events rather than simply knowing about it after the fact. Rapid urbanization, traffic conditions, and modern materials all contri­bute to poor air quality. Our smart cities projects provide analysis for VOC, NO, NO2, CO, CO2, O3, NOx, SO2, PM10, PM2.5, PM1, and other pollutants. Our smart cities projects also provide pollution mitigation control algorithms and chemical filtering to ensure clean air and healthy, happy building occupants (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1   Air quality.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

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Our air quality ingredient operation involves a three-step process that requires one month of pollution monitoring for which a detailed report is generated. This report determines the correct course of action for steps two and three. Using our predictive algorithms, we can reduce indoor air pollution by 30 percent or more. If more stringent air quality is required, we can implement chemical abatement. Our solutions generally result in significant energy reduction and increased comfort improvement, resulting in a return on investment within a year. Here is a testament from a user: “The technology implemented which manages our air quality has additional capabilities which has reduced our CO2 footprint by 2000 tonnes per annum. In addition, the power-saving plugin has saved us over £500,000 in energy costs (per year ) while also enabling us to optimize our building controls.”

Technology Technology, in its current form of hardware and software, will continue to be an environment for continuous innovation and growth. The impact on smart cities development will be based on three emerging major technology ingredients: the cloud, gamification, and platforms/apps. This does not limit the impact of blockchain, smart contracts, cryptocurrency, AI, GPT, and other emerging technologies on the built environment and smart cities; it is just too soon to measure the impact of these emerging tools. Please embrace the following technologies as our best attempt to document the best smart city practice in context at the time of publication.

The Cloud The cloud refers to the internet and cloud products’ use of the internet to remotely access and leverage software functionality and store data. Smart city cloud products enable the security, migration, integration, and interoperability of complex city data. This combination is of high value to cities, as their organizational structure was never designed to share, and each department is expert-system focused and operates in a “silo.” This situation led to an accumulation of existing city information in various formats and states of quality across a city government. Smart city solutions promise to dive into these silos, identify and acquire sought-after data, and share them with data in other silos to provide solutions that used to be too resource-intensive to implement. Cloud-based products for smart cities are catching the wave faster than incumbent technology products due to low cost, easy scalability, and the big data functions of these products. Cloud solutions lower the barriers to entry by being inexpensive compared to traditional software offerings, have little



The Secret is in the Sauce   35

to no additional technology infrastructure that is required, and are very secure. Planning for the cloud for a smart city involves a higher resource allocation to connectivity than in the past. Having higher bandwidth provides a better experience for cloud-based solutions. XML and other protocols also assist in tagging and managing city data by making it easier to find, manage, and distribute city information from silos to platforms. As the cloud’s many attributes become more mainstream to city government operations, expect a plethora of cloud solutions to become ubiquitous in how citizens have a relationship with their city.

Gamification Although the cloud is the environment and the driver behind many smart city initiatives, the use of gaming technologies is providing internal and external value in the art of storytelling. Gaming is a broad term that describes the technologies, processes, and strategies that are used by video/computer games. In the context of business, and in particular the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC)/facility management (FM) industry, gaming is also described as the use of game design techniques, game thinking, and game mechanics to enhance non-game use in the context of software applications and processes. This “gamification” encourages people to adopt them or to influence how they are used. Gamification works by making technology more engaging, encour­ aging users to engage in desired behaviors, showing a path to mastery and autonomy, helping to solve problems, and taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they would ordinarily consider boring, distant, or unchallenging by playing diverse roles in competition and collaboration with others in search of a reward. A more pragmatic use of gamification in the AEC/FM industry is when 3-D solutions like BIM, 3-D graphics, and objects can be imported into an online gaming environment to provide a user with an accurate 3-D geospatial world that can be used to navigate, analyze, and manage vast amounts of AEC and FM data in an easy-to-use environment. By providing a design in a gaming tool, an architect can quickly get feedback from an owner or engineering consultant earlier in the process, leading to a better solution. By addressing a field condition in the context of a detail in a gaming tool, a contractor can quickly and accurately resolve the issue without losing time or having to learn new software. By viewing their city’s operations in the form of a 3-D gaming “dashboard,” city managers can be more effective and efficient in their decision-making.

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The gamification of the AEC/FM industry is in its infancy, but it is being nurtured into a fast maturity by implementations across a broad spectrum of solutions. From building product manufacturers that want their products to be the basis of a design by making their objects easy to drop into a gaming design tool, to facility managers who wish to geospatially identify and manage equipment in enclosed spaces like plenums and walls, gaming is a positive, disruptive technology that enables people involved in the AEC/ FM industry to understand each other a little better.

Platforms and Apps Some initial smart city efforts focused on the city-as-a-platform approach, which was copied and modified from large-scale IT programs and thinking. Platforms are software systems, usually proprietary, that force users to use their methods of software management, development, and distribution based on strict software licenses. Platforms can be cloud-based or located within a secure, on-premises network. Traditional software platforms usually require proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) to create unique views of data or functions to manipulate these data. Although at first very intriguing, most smart cities are shying away from these centrally controlled uber system designs and embracing an open, online platform approach, leveraging the concept perfected by Apple with its iPhone and iPad products of developing apps and downloading those apps from iTunes or Apple’s App Store. The difference between the municipality platform of Apple products and the municipality/smart cities solutions is the requirement that they be open sourced. There is an emerging best practice that the smart city “professional” apps are learning from the mass market approach of apps like those Apple promotes. Smart city professional apps need to be developed fast and inexpensively and should focus on simple tasks, giving end users the flexibility to interact with their urban environment in their own unique way, instead of learning a more formal, strict system that may or may not be easy to use, free, or accessible. Just as the market is making the shift from proprietary software applications with thousands of features and functions to lighter apps that may perform only a few functions, the AEC/FM and smart city software market is also following this trend. Recent surveys report that with the ease of developing professional apps, AEC firms are taking a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach and developing their own apps at a staggering pace. In the context of smart cities, the emergence of apps to assist citizens to have two-way communications with their government is proving to be an important first step for many mayors who wish to transform their cities into



The Secret is in the Sauce   37

smart cities. Apps that allow a citizen to take a photo of a pothole, report it to the city, and then track the process until the pothole is fixed is a simple example of how smart city apps are breaking down the communication walls between city stakeholders. Citizen engagement is an important smart city function that cities are implementing to lay the groundwork for a better trust relationship between elected officials and city workers and also between the city government and its urban inhabitants. A breakthrough in citizen engagement has come in the form of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is obtaining needed services, ideas, and/or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of online and connected people, usually developed and managed by apps and blogs. By inexpensively and quickly being able to start a movement, activists and traditionally inactive citizens can participate in discussion and discourse with a city and suggest solutions that can streamline decisions and lead to actions that used to be too long and too expensive with limited input from citizens. Proper crowdsourcing in a smart city enables bottom-up community building with top-down empowerment from city government. The value of crowdsourcing is not just in using smart city and internet of things (IoT) technologies and solutions as the data points to make informed decisions but also to introduce the wisdom of many human users. The proper balance of technology and human interaction provides a strong foundation for smart cities.

RECIPE EXAMPLES To showcase how we use our ingredients to create recipes, I’ll highlight two projects in Hong Kong that were successful and provided a maturation pathway for each innovation we have used on other smart cities projects around the world. The first example is a smart district solution involving water and data management that resolved issues for multiple buildings. The second example is of a building restoration that positioned the new facility as a smart building. TDG Hong Kong’s OrbiWater™ gives on-demand access to critical data and documents to one of Hong Kong’s most prestigious developers, Hongkong Land. TDG Hong Kong (operating as Screampoint at the time) provided a process and software solution to solve a massive document and building information management (BIM) data management issue by providing an easy-to-use, 3-D visual data solution that allows users to find, manage, and distribute digital information quickly and effectively. Hongkong Land owns and operates some of the most prestigious buildings and properties in the world. Its flagship properties are in a condensed area of Hong Kong Island called Central. Central is the home to

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the Hang Seng Stock Exchange, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, two major luxury shopping plazas, and hundreds of multinational corporate offices. To cool the massive properties of Central, a complex seawater system pulls water out of close-by Victoria Harbour and pumps the water into the facility’s heating ventilation air conditioning (HVAC) cooling systems. Cooling this system is mission critical to keeping the properties operating and open. In order to operate and maintain this system efficiently and effectively, Hongkong Land must have access to the documents and data that are associated with the seawater system. The problem in the past was finding and using system documents and data in a time-efficient manner. For instance, if there were an issue with a portion of piping or a pump station, the search for finding the proper drawings, specifications, and up-to-date maintenance information would take up to 35 percent of the time for resolving the issue. In addition, once the documents and data were found, ensuring the proper revisions of this information were being used was always a risk. TDG Hong Kong was given two months to work with an internal Hongkong Land team to define, develop, and deploy a BIM solution that would give Hongkong Land easy-to-use access to the proper information in real time. The first challenge was locating the necessary internal Hongkong Land data and providing this to the TDG Hong Kong technology team in a timely manner. It was discovered that many of the document and data management elements were in place, but they were not “talking” with each other. It was also discovered that there were many formats of documents and data that were used to manage and maintain the seawater system, so a multimedia solution was going to be required. Leveraging the OrbiWater solution gives Hongkong Land an easy-touse, intuitive user interface with powerful apps for process improvement, documents search, data management, information publishing, and broadcast communication. OrbiWater is an environment that leverages BIM data and provides the opportunity apps to be created and deployed rapidly through APIs. Some of the built-in OrbiWater apps for Hongkong Land include: • Property portfolio navigation • Viewing tools—select, grab, rotate • Measurement • Snapshot navigation and capture • Video navigation and capture • Existing data import/export



The Secret is in the Sauce   39

• Multimedia library • Warranty and maintenance library Tight BIM project management protocols and processes were successfully implemented to keep the complex program on time and within budget, and sensitive corporate communications and issues of data ownership were successfully resolved due to a close working relationship between Hongkong Land and the solution teams. The OrbiWater solution was successfully deployed and measured within the two-month contract period. The solution assisted in demonstrating short-term value through immediate, tangible cost savings. Some examples of these cost savings include: • Reduced documents and data search time up to 35 percent • Facilitated and streamlined maintenance workflow processes with an estimated savings of 15 percent The delivered OrbiWater solution provides Hongkong Land with the readiness to: • Provide on-demand access to mission-critical information in an easy-to-use solution • Reduce the cost of day-to-day operations and maintenance of the seawater system • Grow the expertise and capabilities of employees by providing easy access to documents and data • Quickly integrate into Hongkong Land’s current workflow and systems and be scaled to allow for maximum cross-company use of the OrbiWater solution for maximum cross-company value Our company was asked to provide smart cities services for a historic building called Hong Kong Central Market. The abandoned property needed numerous modern-day upgrades to sustainable mechanical electrical plumbing (MEP) systems, conveyance systems, and safety and security systems, as well as the addition of Wi-Fi, tenant apps, and other amenities that a modern commercial tenant would expect to have. In short, we needed to bring a turn-of-the-last-century building into a smart building that was positioned to be connected into a smart cities network. Our first step was to establish an executive project management office (ePMO) that would have an operating BIM office as a major project control for the fit out of the building and provide the digital DNA for facility and property management. One example of the use of Central Market’s BIM data would be for preventive maintenance of items like a lift (elevator).

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Showcasing the Thyssenkrupp solution, a lift technician can pull up Central Market’s BIM by using a Microsoft HoloLens. HoloLens provides a mixed reality view of BIM data. Mixed reality is the combination of immersive (virtual reality, or VR) and nonimmersive (augmented reality, or AR) data and geometry. Technicians can use their hands while wearing a HoloLens to touch information and receive actionable responses, like running a diagnostic for the lift cab. Technicians can also communicate directly through the HoloLens with other experts to solve issues in real time in the field, in this case, using Microsoft Teams inside the HoloLens. Technicians can also use Central Market’s BIM data in full scale to map lift data in the field to the physical lift in real time, providing a digital operations and maintenance guide inside of the HoloLens.

BIM Integration with ORBI® Another example of an ingredient being used in a recipe is the integration of BIM data into facility operations. As mentioned in the Hongkong Land project, the management of data for Central Market will use the ORBI solution. By integrating BIM and geographic information system (GIS) data into a browser-based, 3-D gaming environment that enables you to commu­nicate, coordinate, and collaborate in an easy-to-use, engaging, and affordable experience, Central Market is able to trust its data and provide next-level services. ORBI is designed to be easy to use, deploy, and maintain over long periods of time, becoming the de facto standard on how to store and use your BIM data over the life cycle of your Central Market project. Using GIS-based mapping as the basis of design, ORBI integrates with BIM data and geometry to create an environment for the creation of apps that can be used in any device that can host a web browser. ORBI apps already developed that can be used on the Central Market project are ORBI Facility Management and ORBI Water. Central Market project use cases include:

ORBICenter ORBICenter is an operations center/ePMO solution. Each object (asset) in ORBICenter is live and can interact between the virtual world (ORBI) and the physical world through ORBICenter. This means you have control of your environment via your desktop, laptop, tablet, and smartphone. Customers are using ORBICenter to augment their current operations center features and functions, providing data that are visualized to make better-informed decisions.



The Secret is in the Sauce   41

ORBIMonitoring ORBIMonitoring is a powerful construction progress monitoring solution. ORBIMonitoring provides Central Market with accurate information to make smart, informed decisions during unprecedented construction and ensure stakeholder confidence by increasing transparency to real estate data through online progress monitoring. ORBIMonitoring provides Central Market with an easy-to-use, intuitive user interface with powerful features for process improvement, executive reviews, research, concept options, facility management, and asset management. ORBIMonitoring is optimized for use in the field as an augmented reality tool, providing 3-D visualization in a smartphone to match a 4-D model based on a construction schedule against what is reality and provide either a positive or negative match. Project control and transparency are at the heart of ORBIMonitoring.

BIM Quality Assurance/Quality Control (BIM QA/QC) TDG Hong Kong uses a unique tool to assure and control the quality and integrity of the data in the BIM models for which it is responsible. The primary function of this BIM QA/QC tool is to analyze and optimize BIM for environmental and life-cycle costing. Using customized, intelligent rules, BIM QA/QC will search through the Central Market BIM model and highlight data issues that are important to HK Urban Renewal Authority (URA), and then provide the ability to fix these issues, which can synchronize with the source model. BIM QA/QC provides a quick analysis of the Central Market BIM deliverables from all project consultants, which can help with identifying errors, implementing quick solutions, and providing the entire project team with real-time, accurate, and trusted BIM data. Using BIM QA/QC, the Central Market BIM office will streamline project delivery with better coordination throughout the design and construction phases; avoid costly RFIs, change orders, and rework with better quality information; and provide visibility into building data before occupancy to plan maintenance programs. Using BIM QA/QC, TDG Hong Kong turns the Central Market BIM data into a digital, real-time owner’s manual: • Assists facility managers with getting complete and accurate building information • Automates model checking and saves modeler time • Unlocks BIM data and provides access to anyone on the project team

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Results We discovered the following best practices with our Hong Kong Central Market process: • The cloud-based Urban Platform enables a multidimensional, virtual representation of a specific location on Earth, providing customers with a limitless experience of interacting with people, places, and things on a local and global scale. • Cities and citizens gain enhanced visibility of a vast array of data (for example, transportation, public safety, community services, energy performance, and sustainability measures), which is consolidated, analyzed, presented, and connected through the userfriendly, intuitive interface of a visual model. • The cloud-based Urban Platform provides a single point of view of complex, multi-agency, authenticated city data, creating efficiencies and cost savings, and generating new, nontax revenue streams for its city clients. • The cloud-based Urban Platform provides the environment for the development of apps for cities with municipal agencies and other stakeholders that, in addition to being used by the city for which they are created, can be licensed to other cities in a revenue-sharing arrangement. A cloud-based Urban Platform brings together previously disconnected operational programs and data, which allows for coordinated, efficient, and sustainable urban policies and strategies across neighborhoods, businesses, and the entire social fabric of an urban area.

THE INTERSECTION OF POLICY, ICT, AND DESIGN A good example of ingredients and recipes is when policy, information communications technology (ICT), and design collide as ideas in different urban environments. Political and smart city creativity become important ingredients when there is so much for others to learn. The really interesting things concerning both new and existing smart city projects and programs are at the intersection of policy, ICT, and design. City leaders know they must develop a strategy to become smarter on many levels and believe that proper technological solutions when backed by solid government policies



The Secret is in the Sauce   43

and implemented in well-designed places can bring enormous value to the city. But most cities do not have the resources, capabilities, or capacities to implement technical, financial, or human solutions. This means that cities are finding new models to engage internal and external resources, to find new ways of creating lasting collaborative relationships through new business models. This fundamental use of collaborative strategies as a path to finding the proper balance between public and private organizations is a key to prioritizing smart city initiatives. Each city will discover that the collaboration method of identifying the right mix of government policies, ICT solutions, and inspiring design will raise the bar for cities as competitive, innovative, and exciting places to live, work, play, and learn.

NEW CITIES AND EXISTING CITIES Although most of the early marketing and thought leadership of smart cities focused on the development of new cities in emerging markets, the maturity of the smart city concepts and implementations has shifted to include existing cities, widening an already large market. Both new and existing cities can be measured in the success of the 10 leading indicators mentioned earlier in this book, but there are different priorities and needs. Every city must see smart as an aspirational concept, like a framework, that responds to its own unique needs, wants, priorities, and environment. New cities have the luxury of not having to deal with existing conditions like aging infrastructure, processes that are habitual and resistant to change, or “sacred cows.” Cities built from scratch under the marketing umbrella of “sustainable,” “green,” and “zero carbon,” such as Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates, Lusail City in Qatar, and King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia, are all enjoying the experience of doing it as greenfield cities. The issues of slipping schedules, cost overruns, and poor quality that plague many of these smart city implementations revolve around new materials, means, methods, and building types that the local construction professionals and workers in the field have not experienced before. Combine this with a lack of data for the systems meant to manage the process, including trying to use BIM in an environment that is not fully prepared, and you can see that new cities have issues that existing cities may not have. Most existing cities are taking a pragmatic approach to being smart, sometimes due to a lack of funds and sometimes due to careful planning. Some cities, like San Francisco, are creating eco-districts as an approach to taking bite-sized implementations of innovations with measurable results. Kansas City is using its award of being Google’s first Gig fiber network to enable a host of programs and projects that are lighting up an entrepreneurial

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spirit not seen in this community before. And in Boston, the city government has created an innovation lab that assists city departments with developing and testing innovations, providing relief from budget constraints and risk for each department. This move allows Boston to innovate faster and with more impact than working and developing innovations in a silo. At the core of these existing cities moving toward becoming smart cities lies its most important asset—data. The data in most existing cities are in various forms of quality, structure, and availability. From building departments that may only have paper as their form of data to zoning boards that may have GIS maps or CAD drawings in formats that are no longer supported, the task is daunting when it comes to gathering data from existing cities. Setting lines in the sand of what data to capture, where these data reside, who will perform the task, and how long this process will take are all things to consider when undertaking a data acquisition plan. But once enabled, the existing cities can see immediate results of how their data, when brought into a smart city environment, can begin to provide better information to make better decisions. This strategy of using existing built environment data as the foundation for enabling a smart city is a best practice and should not be ignored. Pulling together the numerous innovations (ingredients) and solutions (recipes) into a coherent master plan that meets the criteria of each and every unique smart city is both an art and a science. In the next chapter, we will explore some best practices and lessons learned from our smart cities journey regarding master planning.

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” —Leonard Bernstein

3 Master Planning

M

aster planning has always made me think of an exercise where some wise guru on a mountain magically waves his hand to roll out a city in perfect harmony with nature, creating an environment where people are happy and prosperous. In reality, it is nothing like that. In my experience, master planning has been a continuous balancing exercise of analyzing past, present, and future information while managing the expectations of a broad swath of people, while always asking who is paying for it all. I have deep respect for elected officials, appointed officials, and staffers in city administrations around the world who have to manage and administer urban environments. It is at times a thankless job and other times an amazing job, and our world needs amazing people to lead by example. The master plan of any city is a moving target that is constantly being challenged by events that in some cases were unforeseen. The COVID-19 pandemic is an example. The adaptability and adoptability of a master plan is one of the great challenges to our city’s leaders. With this in mind and with the experience of working closely with government leaders and officials over the years, my company takes our master planning very seriously and builds flexibility into every solution. Our process includes taking that city’s smart city priorities (we call this a stack) and ensuring that innovation projects are slotted in a timeline that is sensitive to budget pressures and scheduling while always having consistent storytelling and communication of the bigger picture with internal administration and the general public. This approach is not perfect, but over time, the rhythm of what, why, where, and how innovative projects are implemented and measured will become trusted, providing permission for the next stack of priorities to begin their process. It works like a large organism with external elements pushing into the plan while internal elements are grabbing for attention. Someone once mentioned that our

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master planning process is like making sausages—not pretty during the process, but delicious and good-looking at the end. A best practice we have found to be useful is to celebrate success, no matter how small. As the pieces of the plan fall into place, numerous people use a lot of resources and energy to get each piece of the puzzle accomplished. Celebrate this accomplishment. Awards, a call out, or a pat on the back can go a long way to keep people’s enthusiasm and discipline going during the never-ending journey of an urban master plan. Using the main outcomes of the master plan as a touchstone for storytelling is another best practice. The reference to the United Arab Emirate’s happiness index is a good example of this. Utilizing many small projects as measures of an overall happiness index shows people that even one person can have an effect on the community. Identifying, accessing, and using authenticated urban data is a big challenge in a smart cities master planning process. Although there are usually plenty of data to use, the quality levels of these urban data can be variable at best and unusable at worst. In some cases, we have resorted to drawing a line in the sand and beginning a new data collection process with data quality standards moving forward into the future. This provides a clean slate to have our smart cities programs, systems, and solutions at efficient levels of operations. This strategy also brings the opportunity to focus on cleaning only the past data necessary to integrate into our clean data pool, not spending an inordinate amount of time and money cleaning large swaths of data without a focused need. Once there is trust in the basic urban data as our foundation, we can then begin a formal process of discovery in our master planning process.

HUMAN AND SOCIAL CAPITAL In the case of both new smart cities and existing city planning, our company begins its master planning and metrics with the discovery of the cultural anthropology of the people who either will reside or are residing in that urban environment. As mentioned earlier in this book, our work with Dr. Karen Stephenson and her ability to identify, analyze, and provide insight into how people live in a specific location has proved to be our secret sauce in designing and developing urban environments that delight. In Dr. Stephenson’s network science process, the cultural aspects of studying human behavior also take into consideration elements like climate, geography, history, cuisine, celebrations, traditions, mythologies, placemaking destinations, and values that are unique to that specific location on Earth. Mixing these elements into a matrix and heterarchy



Master Planning   49

provides us with a road map of what is important to the community in an accelerated method, providing conversations much earlier in the master planning process than traditional methods. Some background on Dr. Stephenson’s approach: Network science is an interdisciplinary field that studies complex networks in biological, physical, and social phenomena. Research in human dynamics emerged in the mid-twentieth century utilizing graph theory to mechanistically model computer networks onto more ephemeral small-group dynamics. Twentyfirst-century research witnessed a fusing of virtual and physical worlds and how data from those worlds are captured and calibrated in humanecological-financial systems. Establishing protocols for human and social capital is to recognize the relevance and importance of human digital data in this field of inquiry. Currently, institutes of higher education (IHEs) struggle to keep up, but gov­ ern­ments and private corporations have moved forward, making entrepre­ neurial inroads, only stopping short of establishing protocols and policies.

Definitions: • A network begins with two or more objects linked together. As networks add linkages and become more complex, their combinatorial properties can be mathematically described and manipulated. • The field of network science draws in part from methods derived from graph theory and quantum theory. Graphs (or vectors) are visual structures used as heuristic devices for describing networks, that is, relations between and among entities in physical, biological, and social phenomena, with an aim of developing predictive models and possibly directing future behavior. • Network analytics are methods for measuring, mapping, and understanding linkages or connections between entities and how those connections give rise to individual and aggregate behaviors.1 Having these frameworks become meaningful to an individual and being able to put solutions in place in a smart cities master plan that is valued means having permission to use people’s personal information. To be clear, our smart cities master plans have never and will never be used to capture personally identifiable information (PII) and reuse it without their knowledge. This Web 2.0 strategy that has created powerful companies like Google, Facebook, and others does not work in a smart cities environment. Rather, a Web 3.0 strategy of permissions, rewards, and transparency is a

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more natural fit to implement personal information in a high-performing, urban environment. PII is any data that could potentially identify a specific individual. Any information that can be used to distinguish one person from another and can be used for de-anonymizing anonymous data can be considered PII. PII can be sensitive or nonsensitive. Nonsensitive PII is information that can be transmitted in an unencrypted form without resulting in harm to the individual. Nonsensitive PII can be easily gathered from public records, phone books, corporate directories, and websites. Sensitive PII is information that, when disclosed, could result in harm to the individual whose privacy has been breached. Sensitive PII should therefore be encrypted in transit and when data are at rest. Such information includes biometric information, medical information, personally identifiable financial information (PIFI), and unique identifiers such as passport or Social Security numbers. This is how we respect, manage, and utilize personal information in a Web 3.0 context for our smart cities master plans. We use this human-centric approach as our constant reference as we move further into our development of a smart cities master planning process. When we are planning a greenfield urban environment, we have to consider that we are fast-tracking a traditional urban growth process at a quantum scale. Usually, cities grow over long periods of time. Most cities start out as trading posts, gathering people together who discover over time how to live, work, play, and learn. In the case of most greenfield smart cities, there are little to no local resources to draw from, and there need to be the seeds of inhabitants to begin the process. As an example I will use our CLARA smart cities project in Australia to highlight a solution to this dilemma, the provenance of greenfield smart cities, the pioneer worker town. To build a city from scratch, you need workers, equipment, and materials. To attract the best and brightest, CLARA needs to design and construct a pioneer worker town as the first development for each of the eight planned cities along a high-speed rail (HSR) line connecting Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. Each of these towns needs to initially accommodate 3,000-5,000 workers and their families. The initial cities to be constructed (Cities 2 and 7) are far enough away that worker commuting is not possible, so the building of these worker towns will be the first step in developing both the HSR and the eight smart cities. Some initial considerations for the CLARA pioneer worker towns to include: • Residential dwellings: CLARA will construct a mix of singleoccupant and family-style residential dwellings that initially will be temporary facilities with a growth migration into permanent facilities as the city is built around the worker town. These



Master Planning   51

structures will be manufactured as structural insulated panels (SIP) that when joined together in the field provide modular spaces that function as residential dwellings. As the market of each city grows, there is the option to repurpose these modules into larger and/or different facilities. • Support and services: Fire, police, first responders, healthcare, education, commerce, food and beverage, cultural facilities, movie theaters, logistical depots, department stores, specialty stores, grocery stores, and recreational facilities and programs will be established and integrated into the worker town. • Commercial: Retail, hospitality, food and beverage, and other commercial entities will be operational in each of the worker towns. • Infrastructure: Roadways, utilities, water treatment, and other basic needs will be part of the land development phase of the master planning of the worker towns with scale designed into each of these infrastructure elements. • Industrial: Light manufacturing and digital fabrication are part of the master planning specifications for each worker town, as many of the structures being designed and built in CLARA smart cities must use this procurement methodology. The idea is to utilize each fabrication plant for the build-out of each city, with the ability to transform from a real estate build-out process to a different manufacturing process, such as furniture, replacement parts, and so on. Worker towns migrating and maturing into a more sustainable business model is an exciting transition model as the CLARA project matures. In addition to these industrial innovations, there is the practical need for concrete mixing plants and other infrastructure basics that will be required and supported by the CLARA worker towns. • Supply chain: Due to the enormous volume of materials, equipment, appliances, and workers necessary to deliver the work required as part of the CLARA program, the existing supply chain in Australia needs to be rethought. National contracts with building manufacturers will be in place as part of the master planning process and deliverable. In addition, the logistics of the project will also be in place, with alignment with the CLARA sales team. The alignment of the project’s need for qualified workers and the local talent gap analysis results may need further investigation between Australia and the United States.

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• Governance/ePMO regional offices: Every worker town will have a manned and dedicated executive project management office (ePMO) that will act as the initial governance body for the worker town. This means all concerns will be directed to that office. This ePMO is also responsible for supporting all necessary means of the worker town inhabitants, such as energy, water, wastewater, stormwater, waste, education, healthcare, transportation, commerce, food and beverage, entertainment, parks and recreation, and overall quality-of-life issues. The office will also act as a temporary governance office that will train and hand off to a locally elected government body over a short period of time. • Safety and security: A prime objective of the worker town operations will be world-class safety and security protocols and programs in place before anyone inhabits a worker town. • Growth and integration: The CLARA master plan will have growth plans and eventual integration processes of the worker town into the fabric of the city those same workers built. Our high-level phasing of the transition from worker town to smart city includes: • Phase I: A temporary encampment of tents or trailers is installed for the first wave of workers and their families. All initial housing and other facilities will be designed to be off the grid and sustainable. • Phase II: More semipermanent housing and worker town facilities are built on-site using digital fabrication means and methods. With the increase of worker population and needs, permanent roadways and support service facilities like hospitals, schools, and other urban facilities will be constructed. • Phase III: Permanent housing and facilities are constructed and each CLARA city begins to take shape.

LAND ACQUISITION An important process that should be part of your smart cities master plan is the complex process of land acquisition. Land acquisition is the process of obtaining ownership or rights to a piece of land for a specific purpose, such as building a smart city. The process of land acquisition for smart cities can involve the purchase of land from private individuals or companies, as well



Master Planning   53

as the use of eminent domain, which allows the government to take private property for public use with just compensation. The process of land acquisition for smart cities may be controversial, as it can displace existing residents and disrupt communities. Additionally, land acquisition can be a lengthy and complex process, with many different stakeholders and legal considerations to consider. It’s crucial for the local government and city authorities to consider all the stakeholders and their concerns before acquiring the land and also have a fair compensation system in place. Our CLARA land acquisition process was a major element of the success of the entire project. We created three business entities that purchased, at various times, parcels of land that we knew were where the eight smart cities were to be built. Most of this land was not developed and was considered “the bush” in Australia. The purchase agreements were for our three companies to put a down payment on each parcel of land, with an option to complete the purchase within an agreed-upon timeline. The idea was that as CLARA announced to the public the CLARA plan, the value of the land would increase, but we were locked into an agreement to purchase the land at the original option agreement. The difference between the original option land price and the new land value with the development announcement is called value uplift, and our CLARA project could borrow from investors with the spread of the land value as the measure of valuation. The CLARA example is one project that has used worker towns as the stimulus for greenfield projects. A best practice that has emerged from this approach is the implementation of a manufacturing process to assist in the speed and quality of building a greenfield smart city.

THE INDUSTRIALIZED CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY Due to many factors, including the global labor shortage, supply chain inconsistencies, and a renewed interest in delivering quality projects that can be truly automated and sustainable, the emergence of manufactured components and buildings is increasing. Our company has had success in this process by delivering prefabricated, modular housing and technologies out of our factory in Shanghai, China. This was a partnership with Concept Modular that resulted in producing the components of a 250 square meter (approximately 2,500 square foot) home finished with zero defects and zero waste in less than seven minutes. Our focus on the success factor of cycle time was measured not on a project but on the products we were manufacturing, the SIPs. Our ability to ship these panels flat packed in

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a shipping container, and then systematically connect the SIP in the field through our patented joinery system, created a profitable and sustainable process of delivering three-bedroom, two-bath homes in record time (see Figures 3.1–3.4). In our controlled manufacturing environment, we were able to have a high standard of quality control for the manufactured product, which led to a smooth process in the field that ultimately delivered highquality homes for our customers. Our factory worked with computer numerical control (CNC) machine designers to create custom equipment that functioned as the backbone of the factory, running on customized software based on Dassault System’s SOLIDWORKS™ program, which provides a configurable building information model (BIM) to control the CNC machines. The machines are then able to effortlessly create the fenestration and conduits for doors, windows, electrical, plumbing, mechanical, and information technology (IT) infrastructure.2

Figure 3.1   Shanghai modular panel factory.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty



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Figure 3.2   Structural insulated panels (SIP).

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Figure 3.3   Volumetric buildings.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

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Figure 3.4   Knock down buildings ready for shipping.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

By wiring our homes with IT as a utility, we create new opportunities to provide valued services and new revenue streams in regard to safety, security, well-being, and entertainment. By connecting these homes together as a community, this internet of buildings opportunity can provide accelerated and sustained growth for the master planned worker towns to mature into smart cities. Our master plans encourage the use of a manufacturing process like this described solution, but our plans also take into consideration that many smart cities projects may not have the budgets or expertise to follow this approach. We do believe that over time, as the costs of manufacturing become lower and the expertise and market demand increase, a manufactured built environment may become the recognized standard and not the exception. The description of our manufactured homes brings forward another main component of our smart cities master planning: the smart building.

SMART BUILDINGS Over the years, many buildings have moved toward automating facility management processes to provide a quality-built environment, streamline tasks, and become more efficient with resources (see Figure 3.5). In fact, the sophistication of certain building systems like lighting, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), conveyance systems (elevators, escalators), and security has created robust solutions but has also created deep silos of



Master Planning   57

operational data and knowledge. The challenge for many building operators is to integrate these systems so their buildings become smarter by having operational data “talk” to each other to find greater gains in efficiency and effectiveness. It is a daunting task, as there is massive complexity inside the world’s buildings of both proprietary and open protocols and systems, leading to a resource-intensive process just to have disparate systems communicate with each other.

Figure 3.5   Using BIM to design, build, and maintain smart buildings. Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Integrated solutions to allow disparate building systems to commu­ nicate and work together have matured in recent years, breaking down this resource-intensive task into affordable solutions. Equipment management control solutions from companies like Siemens, Johnson Controls, and Schneider Electric have provided the market with innovative building automation systems (BAS) in many configurations that are creating the framework and environment for the emergence of truly smart buildings. What this market maturity of smart buildings brings to the smart cities market is the opportunity to look beyond the individual building project and begin to position for capturing value (and alternative revenues) at the data transaction level. If the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC)/ facility management (FM) market is creating the digital DNA of the

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building and the building is leveraging these data to perform at an optimal level as a smart building, the logical next step is to have buildings begin to communicate together as a self-healing-style network as part of a smart cities master plan. Knowing that your data are being used in a more robust ecosystem of a smart city that has potential transactional value, AEC/FM leaders will capture greater market share and open up new opportunities for growth than their competition. This revaluation of digital DNA dwarfs any previous notion of the value given to AEC/FM data.

BUILDINGS AS SERVERS, CITIES AS NETWORKS Think of your city as a network, with each building acting as a server. When these individual building data are connected to the city network, likely through an open data policy or as an ordinance, interesting things begin to happen. The AEC data that a city captures through this process or already possesses become the digital DNA of smart cities. In a similar way that there is latent valuable data in each building, cities possess an amazing amount of data in various forms, sizes, and accessibility. The magic of utilizing these valuable data to make better decisions lies in identifying, locating, and reporting these latent data into actionable data. Like oil exploration, finding the right reservoir of raw data to tap into can be an interesting journey unto itself, but with advances in informa­ tion communication technology (ICT) such as cloud-based technologies, along with blockchain and AI, there has been great improvement in a city’s ability to gather vast amounts of data regarding city infrastructure in a cost-effective manner. ICT advances becoming commonplace in cities today include: • Ubiquitous sensors enabling authenticated data collection • Low-cost communications protocols and systems to simplify and reduce costs • Pervasive video devices that assist in public safety programs • Real-time management systems for traffic, water, sanitation, and public transportation that automate control and optimize performance • 3-D visualization analytic tools that translate all of these data into actionable intelligence



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With both new and existing cities, this data intelligence process begins with a proactive approach to identifying, capturing, and managing a city’s digital DNA. Because the outcome is to enable city stakeholders with tools, analysis, and reporting to make better decisions, 3-D visualization analytic tools (sometimes called digital twins) are emerging as the preferred methods due to their ability to take highly complex amounts of data and show results in context with the digital twin of that city. In order for digital twin tools to work, they need accurate, authenticated data to “build” a 3-D view of the city. These data reside today in a city’s building department, engineering department, land department, planning department, sanitation depart­ment, tax department, postal services, or any department where they collect and manage vast amounts of data that when viewed as a whole, create the virtual representation of the physical city. The building blocks to use these city data effectively and efficiently will ultimately reside in a city’s ability to repurpose its existing data and documents associated with the built environment, which is the authenticated digital DNA of all cities. The accuracy, authentication, and integration of these city data are the keys to a proactive approach to entering a path to becoming a smart city. Without proper digital DNA structure and management, the connectivity from a city’s “nervous system” to a “brain” will be problematic, inhibiting performance and the evolution of a city to a smart city. Once this foundation of a digital visualization of a city as a digital twin is in place, cities have the ability to leverage this “front end” to begin viewing the data behind the digital, smart buildings. Today, cities acquire most of a building’s data through some basic communication of paper and digital reporting, which can be resource intensive. What is emerging in both new and existing cities is the automation of this reporting process through programs and systems like smart meters (water and power), cable/streamed digital entertainment and telecommunication boxes, and building “black boxes” that can house and report on the “health of a building” for things like structural integrity to building automation system data. This can be viewed as buildings becoming servers of data, like in a computer network. Best practices of buildings as server installations use the core of the building and mechanical room as the location where this building data can best be captured, managed, and reported. Think of a building’s core as the “spine” or backbone of that building that can be hard-wired and connected to the internet, with a redundant backup of being wirelessly connected to communicate with an intelligent operations center (IOC) and/or an ePMO. Once at the IOC, the building’s data can be analyzed using the city’s digital twin for quick, intuitive results. A simple example is the capturing of a building’s power consumption, which is reported in real time to the IOC and measured against benchmarks

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and then reported with each reporting building using green, yellow, and red indicators. If users want to view more information on the color-coded building, they can have access by clicking on the building. Lessons learned and best practices from operating and maintaining computer networks will be required reading for many city stakeholders to realize the benefits of having immediate access to authenticated building data. Easily mapped to a computer network, the city as a network concept brings many unexpected results that cities are only beginning to discover. Using buildings and infrastructure assets as a visualization and data foundation, the use of sensors, video, and mobile devices to assist with city management becomes an easier process than what traditional city management has had to work with before today. A best practice of IOCs is for cities to elevate the value of data coming from both AEC and FM. Innovative AEC and FM firms are rethinking their value propositions when they realize that their data are being used over a longer period of time when in the context of smart cities rather than just in the design and construction process or just within a single building’s use. New business models are emerging that put a portion of traditional AEC and FM fees into extended service agreements based on the amount of data used, such as the music industry publishing model. Others are becoming data escrow agencies that provide data on an as-needed basis, ensuring the quality and authentication of a building or infrastructure’s data, leveraging the use of smart contracts. Using the cloud to conduct and automate these services in a big data environment, sometimes using blockchain services, the costs and technology complexity usually associated with these solutions are negligible, making the business case easily adoptable. As these types of emerging business models mature and the market begins its pull cycle for digital DNA services, the rewards to innovative AEC and FM companies will be substantial, potentially outperforming existing fee-based contracts.

EDGE COMPUTING— DIGITAL CORRIDORS Another area of interest when master planning your smart city relates to the strides in technology innovation regarding a systems-thinking approach of decentralized computing called edge computing. The theory of edge computing in the context of smart cities is that you can design computer components into the walls, floors, and ceilings of your building and leverage the connectivity between buildings to run data transactions and hosting. Like a version of a traditional data center, the ramifications of this are staggering.



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If you take the concept of a smart building to the next level of literally putting physical computer components into a building, you have created a building as a computer, which in theory means leveraging an edge computing framework into the design of your buildings, where they can act as a true network and be the static servers that can act as the data center for the city. By creating these servers that have roads and walkways between them, digital corridors are created, providing high-level connectivity for things like guidance systems that allow autonomous public transportation vehicles to safely be navigated through dense urban environments. Another theoretical scenario is that by treating buildings like server racks in a data center, a secondary system of computing power could come from the autonomous vehicles themselves. If you are driven by your autonomous vehicle into a digital corridor, the city’s brain could ask permission to use the unused computing power of your vehicle in real time, providing a revenue stream to you while providing a dynamic series of servers and additional computing power for the city’s brain. The potential of edge computing solutions makes it a must-explore option during your smart cities master planning.

AEC/FM Data The main issue for the architecture, engineering, construction, and facility management (AEC/FM) community is not to find itself mired in the com­plexities and sheer scope of smart city initiatives such as internet of things (IoT) and big data, metaverse, and the infinite overlap of process, communication, and technology, as it is just too massive to initiate realistic action items. Rather, the focus of the AEC/FM community should be to find itself at the discussion table of smart city protocols, standards, and projects, providing its wealth of knowledge concerning the physical space and exploring the use of its data in the digital space. How this conversation between the AEC/FM industry and smart city stakeholders should begin comes from our industry’s growing use of BIM and the emergence of captured operational data from smart building initiatives. BIM and smart buildings provide the digital DNA that when put into the context of a neighborhood, district, and city provides a city with valued, relevant, authenticated data. The key to success for creating value propositions for both the AEC/FM professional who owns the rights to these building data and the smart city stakeholders will be how effective and efficient the building’s data, its digital DNA, weave themselves into practical, effective smart city initiatives. This creates opportunities for cloud-based blockchain and mobile analysis and management that can lead to better design, performance, service, and sustainability. The emergence

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of the phrase “big data” becomes a marketing and business development tool for the stakeholders in the built environment to begin to translate and interpret to the smart city stakeholders as to why their data are important to them and how the knowledge behind the urban intelligence of big data latently resides with today’s AEC/FM professional. We use this as a big part of our smart cities master planning. .

SECURITY There are many different security measures that can be implemented to protect connected smart cities. Some of the key measures that we consider during master planning include: • Network security: Implementing secure networks and communication protocols, such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and transport layer security (TLS), can help protect against cyberattacks and unauthorized access to the city’s systems. • Identity and access management: Implementing strong authentication and authorization protocols, such as multifactor authentication, can help ensure that only authorized individuals have access to sensitive systems and data. • Physical security: Ensuring that the city’s infrastructure, such as sensors and control systems, are physically secured and protected against tampering can help prevent unauthorized access and disruption. • Data security: Implementing secure storage and handling practices, such as encryption and data masking, can help protect sensitive data and prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. • Disaster recovery and business continuity: Developing and implementing plans for disaster recovery and business continuity can help ensure that the city’s systems can continue to operate in the event of a disaster or other disruption.

SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE Another major component of a smart cities master planning process is to integrate sustainability and resilience as components of this plan. Having proper data about your urban built environment, specifically your city’s



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buildings and infrastructure, are the building blocks to implementing projects and programs focused on sustainability and resiliency. The sustainability movement of the recent past was always a curious endeavor, as many customers of the built environment were confused as to the message. Aren’t we, as an industry, supposed to be designing, building, and managing in a sustainable manner as a matter of common practice? This poor messaging of sustainability as a separate process is thankfully not translating into the smart cities movement, as sustainability is an expected process, integrated and transparent to the overall process. What is resonating as a focus is the resilience of cities, rather than the sustainability, as witnessed by world events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurricane Katrina, the Sichuan earthquake in China, Super Storm Sandy, and man-made events like the Boston Marathon bombing. In each case, a community’s response provided best practices and lessons learned on how quickly and properly the community bent but did not break. The community’s resilience was tested and, in all cases, it recovered. The measure of resiliency in the framework of smart cities is going through its first generation of analysis and reporting. An overriding result of this analysis is that we can’t prevent natural or man-made disasters, but with our knowledge and access to technologies, we can better protect our infra­struc­tures, way of life, and institutions physically, organizationally, and digitally. With dense populations, cities are particularly vulnerable to natural hazards. For example, Super Storm Sandy (October 2012) alone was responsible for damages of $50 billion, mostly in the New York City metropolitan area. Co-op City in the Bronx, a residential “city within New York City” development with 14,000 apartments and an independent power grid, has a proactive resilient infrastructure that proved its worth during Super Storm Sandy. Power for Co-op City is generated by an on-site 40-megawatt combined heat and power plant. When Sandy hit, Co-op City was not affected by the power cuts experienced by the rest of New York City. The goal of sustainability is to put our world back in balance, while the goal of resiliency is to look for ways to manage in a continuously unbalanced world. A resilient city assumes it doesn’t know exactly how things will work out and that mistakes may happen. Some of the better resilient city programs focus on learning from the resilience of nature and how to best manage continuous change. Some of the urban technologies that are being implemented that follow this strategy include wireless “mesh networks” that provide connectivity for communication from device to device, creating an interwoven, self-healing network on the fly. This type of network is the ultimate backup method to communicate in a dense

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urban environment when the primary networks fail. SpaceX’s deployment of low Earth orbit mini satellites for internet connectivity, called Starlink, is proving this in its deployment of wireless connectivity to the Ukraine government and military in its fight with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As of the time of this publication, the deployment of the Starlink system is one of the main reasons the current Ukrainian resistance has had success against the Russian invasion. The recent move by cities to work with their energy departments and vendors to create self-resilient micro grids to compensate for an aging energy infrastructure is taking hold as a best practice for a smart city. Micro grids can be best described as a move from a linear ecosystem of equipment, systems, and processes to a decentralized, circular ecosystem for energy production and distribution. The current linear model means that energy flows into a city from outside power stations, while circular models have cities producing most of their energy from local, renewable sources, such as capturing energy from municipal waste and sewage, and then distributing locally. The advantages of resilient infrastructure able to withstand natural and man-made hazards and disasters are: • Resilient, smart cities are better prepared to recover quickly during and after a crisis. • Robust infrastructures are generally more resource efficient, powerful, and reliable. • Resilient technologies and data stabilize the operation of critical systems, especially during a crisis. A smart city’s ability to bounce back from natural and man-made events is a highly valued measure of resilient planning. The result is a city that is more secure, efficient, and reliable. Smart cities are designed as a series of ecosystems that work together like an organism, with the ability to scale based on the needs of their inhabitants. As mentioned in Chapter 2, each ecosystem is a recipe that is developed from a series of innovations that act like ingredients. Smart cities are not about innovation and technology; they are about raising the human spirit. Our approach for our urban master plans starts with a discovery process with cultural anthropologists to assist in gaining an understanding of the people in that region. From there, we establish the needs for that location and then build horizontal heterarchical systems (education, healthcare, transportation, and so on) that are tied together through vertical ontologies (ICT, digital twin/metaverse, blockchains) as our smart cities solutions. One of our primary smart cities ecosystems for our master planning process is transportation.



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TRANSPORTATION ECOSYSTEM A major element of a smart cities master plan is its transportation plan, which involves people, goods, and services. The planning of a smart cities transportation system, both in existing and new cities, along with today’s technological innovations, provides a fertile environment for a reimagining of a city’s transportation options. Urban planning for smart cities stresses in the master plans that the actual size of a city is not as important as the design of the neighborhoods within a city. A city’s size is a result of human needs, which traditionally had the city plan the layout of roads in a street gird. Getting rid of the “grid” is a primary element of a modern-day smart cities master plan. Autonomous vehicle wants and needs are an important driver to reimagining the physical layout and function of a road. Proper autonomous vehicle planning does not need a grid to operate efficiently. It also means that plots of land are no longer held hostage to squares and rectangles (location, location, location). So, by reimagining road layouts and building placement, we are building into the urban fabric solutions of isolation, protection, and resilience in a physical manifestation. Events like earthquakes, typhoon/hurricanes, pandemics, tornadoes, bombings, and so on can be risk mitigated by rethinking the idea of “block” and neighborhood. Throw in disease control and management, like our recent situation with COVID-19, and it is imperative that we design better. A good resource for this thinking is a recent article of how disease has shaped the physical layout of New York City over the years.3 Continuing to use CLARA as a real-world example, CLARA uses a new autonomous vehicle system called Centipede, which plans to use individual, intelligent pods to safely and securely transport people throughout each CLARA smart city as a prime method of traveling along the transit corridor. Using a sophisticated destination control operating system, Centipede is primarily a public transport system that uses a similar appointment/ scheduling system to Uber or Lyft, except the cost for your Centipede account is part of your purchase or lease of residential property in all the regional CLARA smart cities. If you are not a resident of any of the regional CLARA smart cities, a simple account sign up with the Centipede app allows inexpensive mobility and transport throughout all CLARA smart cities and within each CLARA smart city itself. An account with Centipede can be used in any CLARA smart city. In addition to transport and mobility, Centipede offers services for a fee for riders of the system. If you have time in your journey, you can summon Centipede service pods to connect with your personal pod. In the morning, you can summon the Starbucks pod to meet you within 10 minutes of your destination.

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Once connected, you can enter the Starbucks pod where your pre-order has your coffee waiting for you and is paid for through the Centipede system. You then return to your transportation pod, and the Starbucks disconnects from your pod and goes onto the next customer in the next pod. This style of service on demand can be used for lunch pods, dinner pods, happy-hour pods (party pods), personal services, and so on. In addition to the user being mobile and having Centipede services on demand, Centipede also provides services to your home, which may redefine the design of a home. Instead of getting a Centipede to go out to a restaurant for dinner, in CLARA’s smart cities, the chef and kitchen come to your home and connect into a Centipedeenabled area of your home, bringing take-away service to another level. This type of service can be used for business conference Centipede pods, doctor/medical pods, dentist pods, personal hygiene pods, and so on. The economic boom the Centipede ecosystem brings to a CLARA smart city is staggering, bringing urban dweller needs together with practical solutions, generating tens of thousands of new jobs that do not exist today.

INTELLIGENT TRANSIT While I was exploring master plan innovations regarding transportation like those described previously, I was introduced to Robert Swope, a metro councilman for the City of Nashville, Tennessee, during a smart cities conference in Yinchuan, China. Robert explained to me during this conference that he had a transit plan that provides a comprehensive solution for Nashville. The following are ideas and solutions from Robert’s Intelligent Transit Plan, and portions of this plan are part of our smart cities master planning today. Here are some of my favorite thoughts from Robert’s whitepaper:4 Over the past centuries, mankind has evolved. So have the ways in which mankind lives, loves, plays, and works. The steam engine introduced trains, which changed where cities are built. The internal combustion engine changed the manner in which people move from point A to B. The elevator completely changed the way in which cities are designed and built. It is time to move forward into the next millennium, to utilize the knowledge, AI technology, and experience gained over the past 300 years to not only assist the next coming paradigm shift in humanity, but also concurrently create a more efficient, effective, conscious manner in which humanity exists.



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To better understand the true complexities of the intelligent transit proposal, one must break down the existing beliefs we currently operate within. One needs to open the door to a new future and foster a new acceptance of the virtual world, which will change the manner in which we approach design, construction, energy, transit, housing, safety, and education. Yes, this is a very large topic of discussion, but I hope to shine a light on new solutions that, implemented together, could very well promote an environmentally cleaner, more energy efficient, and ergonomically friendlier life experience for humanity in the future. The intelligent transit plan attempts to incorporate new tech­ nologies into each of these areas to facilitate a far more effective and efficient operational model.

Energy • Microgrids—Community-based energy/transportation centers composed of small (200 tons per day) gasification plants serving 4,500-6,000 homes and businesses within a given community. • Gasification plants—The centerpiece of each microgrid will: – Convert 200 tons per day of municipal solid waste (MSW) into electrical energy – Cost $7.5 million each – Have a total footprint for such a system of less than 2 acres – Have sound levels that at peak demand will not exceed 80db without sound deadening and 40db with deadening – Be 100 percent environmentally clean – Eliminate the need for landfills – Utilize the energy generated within each microgrid; excess will go to the local power company • Any and all energy generated in excess of demand flows back into the local grid with the local power company as a backup to community based microgrid systems. • Microgrids dramatically reduce the chance of a national grid being hacked or otherwise subverted.

• Solar-powered bus stop benches and solar panels on buses augment the system.

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Transportation • Autonomous electric next-generation buses powered by the microgrid distributed energy wirelessly (see Figures 3.6–3.9). – Wireless charging at major bus stops will enable buses to remain fully charged 24/7 (WiTricity system) – Completely redesigned 2m, 12m, and 20m nextgeneration buses – Expanded 24/7 service through dedicated lanes rapid transit autonomous vehicle (RTAV) lanes and the use of WiTricity wireless charging system. – Crosstown routes will utilize smaller buses (2m and 6m). • Autonomous personal transit vehicles (APTVs) powered by the microgrid distributed energy wirelessly. – Will be charged via wireless charging at bus stops and within the transit/energy centers, which will enable 24/7 service – Will initially serve first mile – last mile from and to each bus stop – Phase II to include autonomous crosstown and two-tothree-mile radiuses – Phase III includes nine county regional transit grids – Will have a fee—possibly $0.40–$0.80 per mile traveled

Figure 3.6   Personal pod, first mile–last mile. Courtesy: Paul Doherty



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Figure 3.7   Computer drawing of the 12-meter inner city bus. Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Figure 3.8   Computer drawing of the 20-meter commuter bus. Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Control Management Systems and Infrastructure • LED lighting to replace all municipal street lighting. • Verizon/sensity Li-Fi system will be installed on each lighting element to enable a 5G up to 10G up/down wireless “municipal network” that will provide real-time control of energy microgrids, mass and personal transit, water/sewer management, and total infrastructure controls, including buildings.

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Transit proposals would need to include multiple dedicated lanes for EV/AV buses and cars but on a simpler design than the current proposed light rail solutions, only utilizing one lane on main corridors. The intelligent transit proposal was developed with three guiding principles: 1. We must start thinking of mass transit and personal transit as complementary elements, not simply two distinct forms of transportation. 2. Regardless of the options offered, a transportation plan needs to be developed from the beginning on a regional basis. 3. We must look toward the future of energy generation and distribution in a completely different spotlight. Intelligent transit is designed to offer 24-hour-a-day service, 365 days a year, with scheduled service in (up to) 15-minute intervals along heavy traffic corridors utiliz­ing dynamic inter­ val responses to changing demand through­out the day. The entire system, from your own door­step to your final destination, will be available via an expanded Metro Transit Authority (MTA) app on your phone, including payment and pickup on-demand options. ­

Figure 3.9   Grand Central Multimodal Station. Courtesy: Paul Doherty



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The intelligent transit plan encompasses the generation of energy in a 100 percent environmentally clean manner; the distribution of energy in a modern, clean, wireless manner; and the massive control systems that will be necessary to integrate not only the transportation elements discussed here but also every aspect of the urban ecosystem, therein achieving the goal of a smart city master plan. While consciousness demands the inclusion of affordable housing options, workforce education/training, building design and construction, city planning, and public safety concerns, the focus is on transportation, energy, and control management systems. In discussing various mass transit options over the past three to four years with experts around the world, we have found that most still address mass transit as an independent function with no real relationship to personal transit. If one were to consider a holistic, environmentally clean, equitable, and efficient transit environment, why would one choose to separate mass and personal transit from each other? We believe the future is the successful intertwining of these two options in one cohesive ecosystem. They must exist together, work in tandem with one another, and offer total transit independence to everyone for any proposed system to benefit all the constituents of an entire region. Intelligent transit believes that the future of transportation lies in two connected realities: 1. Electric vehicles operating within a completely autonomous transit environment 2. A complete transit ecosystem combining nextgeneration self-driving electric vehicles on the mass transit side and corporate fleet service operated personal transit vehicles as last-mile, first-mile options, all managed through an MTA model, creating door-todoor availability throughout the entire region Knowing full well that 90 percent of all accidents, roadway deaths, and traffic congestion situations are the direct cause of human error, it makes perfect sense that if we want to save 1.52 million lives a year globally, we must each reduce our own personal transportation expenses by more than 70 percent a year, create a 100 percent environmentally clean city, and reclaim

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more than 40 percent of the usable land in our urban areas with the removal of parking lots. Then we, as a community, must make the hard decision to eliminate the human driver from the transit equation. As we look at refining city planning, design, and construction tech­niques, we cannot ignore the single most important element of city infrastructure—energy. And this is not just the creation of energy, but also more importantly, the distribution of cleaner, renewable, and sustainable energy sources. It is the view of this plan that energy will be distributed in the future in a far different manner than the current high power lines strung along wooden poles beside each roadway. It will be distributed wirelessly. With the use of wireless, environmentally clean, charging stations at each energy/transit center and at major stops along all routes, WiTricity wireless technologies, (originally created by the Oak Ridge National Laboratories and developed by Qualcomm and marketed as HALO) can be installed to facili­ tate vehicles that never need to stop and recharge; in other words, they charge as they operate. Each charging station requires nothing more than access to clean energy and a “pad” imbedded into the road surface. This system is capable of rapid charging with speeds not seen before. For example, if a Tesla Model S automobile currently takes seven hours or more to charge through existing means, the WiTricity system will completely charge the same vehicle in less than six minutes. This is game-changing technology that will, in the proper implementation, create an operable system that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To transfer energy to residential and commercial customers, we suggest utilizing Nashville Electric Service’s (NES’s) existing network for the time being. In doing so, excess power can be redirected to other microgrids as necessary. However, with the same basic wireless technology that drives the charging stations for mass and personal transit options, every device within your home or office will now be charged quickly and efficiently the moment you enter the dwelling/building. The intelligent transit plan provides a path forward that within 30 years, all energy may well be transferred wirelessly,



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thereby confirming what Tesla set out to prove more than 120 years ago. As we collectively begin to define what and how technology will change our lives in the future, it is tantamount that we keep an open mind. The tenants of construction and infrastructure are slowly fading into the annals of history as more intelligent ways to achieve our goals present themselves. Environmentally cleaner, cost efficient and time effective methods of generating energy, power distribution, transportation, and control systems are being developed and implemented on a global scale at an increasing faster rate. It is up to us to decide whether we want to live in the past or embrace the future. The future is now.

WATERSHED (WATER, WASTEWATER, STORMWATER) MANAGEMENT Water, wastewater, and stormwater have traditionally been managed as separate processes in order to manage their effects in an urban environment. Smart cities will use a successful solution in enlightened cities around the world today that combines all three processes into one management entity called watershed management. Referencing the CLARA project, they used their watershed management system to provide continuous innovation implementations and consolidated management. The eight CLARA smart cities are designed to have the best fresh water in the world for their citizens at the lowest rates in the world, providing safety in regard to wastewater, providing better efficiencies regarding wastewater, and providing security and effectiveness in regard to stormwater. The CLARA smart cities master plan has positioned the watershed management to operate as a singular entity through ecosystem processes, reducing operational costs and increasing quality. One example is in the management of rainwater. Every CLARA smart city is designed from the first drop of rainwater. Where does the rain go? How does the rain get captured? Once captured, what does the city do with it? What does an individual building do with the captured rainwater? It is CLARA’s belief that when designed properly, a city can capture close to 100 percent of its rainwater and use it holistically throughout the city so all urban inhabitants benefit without the external use of energy. Another example is the use and reuse of wastewater and stormwater, where through simple changes in the capture and flow of each process, enormous benefits will occur as the solution is built into the infrastructure at the design phase, creating a simple yet powerful solution

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for each of CLARA’s smart cities. Some of the benefit solutions include the use of water tanks, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), hydroponic cultivation systems, hydroponic farming, anaerobic septic systems, aerobic reactors, and clarifiers with indoor and exterior wetland ecological fluid beds. In simple terms, CLARA has designed its smart cities to manage “grey water” through a natural process, providing useful and efficient water in various stages of purification based on wastewater and stormwater. CLARA smart cities are designed to save hundreds of millions of dollars over the life cycle of this infrastructure design of an ecosystem.

QUALITY OF LIFE Continuing with the CLARA example, careful consideration for the design, development, configuration, and features of each CLARA smart city in regard to quality-of-life measures take place during the master planning phase of the CLARA project (see Figure 3.10). During this master planning process, the number-one question being asked is, “Who are we building these cities for?” CLARA’s design starts with the people. Using surveys of the Australian people, the resources of Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), cultural anthropologists, sociologists, behavior experts, and our own in-house award-winning designers (architects, urban planners, engineers, landscape architects, interior designers, and product designers), CLARA began our design process based on the basic fundamentals that are important to the Australian community.

Figure 3.10   Smart cities layout.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty



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The basic design fundamentals that are driving CLARA’s city configu­ ra­tions and features include: • Respect for the land. Generated from the indigenous, Aboriginal people of Australia and finding its way into the core of all Australians, a deep respect for the land is a primary need that all real estate development must meet. Our master planning takes this as a driver for all design, creating a new definition of urban environments. A new definition of urban that works with nature, with a focus on the specific location and what the land is providing you, is being used as CLARA’s basis of design. Australians are custodians of the land for the period of time we are here. Our city planning will respect this responsibility. • Common ownership/sense of community. As the world enters the age of the sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb), mega trends are providing a path forward, indicating that sharing most things is becoming commonplace and the accepted norm. Common ownership of things will have its limits, but CLARA is designing its smart cities to capitalize on this trend. Autonomous vehicles as a mass transit solution, common area street furniture, and shared office space are but a few examples of this trend that are affecting the design of each city. Due to this shared experience, a keen sense of community becomes even stronger in CLARA smart cities, as pride, fun, teamwork, and freedom are expressed and celebrated through CLARA’s master planning process. • Authentic qualities. A major quest for CLARA is to not build soulless urban environments in which no one would want to build and live a quality life, let alone visit. Learning from research and firsthand experience of visiting “ghost cities” in China, CLARA has designed its smart cities to derive their physical form from function and the needs of their inhabitants that are genuine, not fabricated. Designing urban environments for Australians who understand sincerity and appreciate authentic qualities about their urban experience has been at the forefront of every design. By designing a physical environment that encourages physical movement, maintaining human scale for buildings and open space as inhabitants move through each, and creating a series of urban environments of wonderment, discovery, and pleasant surprise, CLARA is not creating a stage set of a city but rather a new urban environment that people can feel a part of and fall in love with, making CLARA smart cities for their inhabitants and visitors “My City.”

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• Social responsibility. As when purchasing a new car, the overwhelming feeling to keep it as new as possible can become obsessive at times. After all, there is an air freshener that provides a new car scent! This behavior has many root causes and when analyzed, these behavior variables can help us understand people’s wants and needs. A major driver of people’s behavior today is the social responsibility they feel toward their community and society at large. As referenced in the new car example, people who move to a CLARA smart city will have a similar “want” to keep their urban environment as new (clean, fun, inclusive, and so on) as possible. Behavior-driven responsibilities such as wanting to recycle as often as possible, wanting to use city transit system solutions like Centipede, and wanting to contribute to the city’s knowledge center to assist others will provide an overwhelming sense of civic pride. Civic pride, along with regional pride, will go a long way for the adoption of CLARA smart cities as an Australian’s home. A smart city is a place to work, raise a family, get educated, feel safe and secure, make friends, and enjoy a quality of life that would be impossible with the current economic and environmental situation in Melbourne and Sydney today. CLARA’s smart city designs are meant to create a sense of place through a series of experiences that begin even before a person enters the CLARA highspeed rail maglev train. Social media, online, and metaverse presence and positive news reporting will provide an expectation of wonder regarding the project well before people begin to visit the cities. The CLARA showrooms in Sydney and Melbourne will also provide expectations and experiences that Australians have never experienced before. Using seemingly magical processes like virtual reality to bring visitors to the showrooms of the different city sites to be immersed inside the city before its built, CLARA will create excitement leading up to the sales of property, housing, and commercial property. This momentum will be heightened with CLARA augmented reality apps that will allow people to superimpose 3-D CLARA objects on their smartphones, providing the ability to virtually furnish your CLARA home and share this with others. CLARA will also have a customized version of Microsoft’s Minecraft to share with the Australian public to play with for free and allow them to create their version of their chosen city, giving a voice to the people on what is important to them in their urban environments, while providing an expressive outlet for millions of existing Australian Minecraft users, who are usually under the age of 15. With this momentum, CLARA will be implementing the branding of each city with unique elements



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based on its geography and the cultural identity that surrounds its location. This is called geocultural branding. Once this geocultural branding is identified for each city, a measure of competi­tive­ness based on this identity will be implemented. This competitive identity index will drive each city’s positioning in the market for years to come. This process must be in a hierarchy in order to be effective and follows this order: • Pre-CLARA experience: Online, social media, metaverse, traditional media, and CLARA showrooms are the first experiences most people will have and, as such, the pre-CLARA experience is the most important experience as it begins to set expectations. • High-speed rail (HSR) stations, trains, and corridor: The HSR train and corridor are the reasons why the eight cities exist. The HSR will be celebrated for this and will become a person’s first physical experience of CLARA. Being transported into a new world, a new urban experience will be projected in the stations, on the trains, and through areas of interest along the corridor. One example will be on the speedometer of the train, as it is displayed throughout the train as a point of interest, “Look how fast we are going!” • Regional: The main focus of CLARA’s geocultural branding will be to recognize that this entire development is regional in nature. Branding the region as “special” creates the foundation for each of the eight cities to build upon. The ability to showcase the regional interconnectivity of its cities through commerce, trade, commuting, safety, security, and branded features will be an enormous strength for the branding of CLARA as a region. • City: Each city will have its own identity, based on its geographic location, climate, water locations, local cultural influences, industrial opportunities, academic needs, wellness wants, healthcare needs, and demographics of potential inhabitants. As CLARA moves through the master planning process, careful consideration with vast amounts of input will be used to identify what each city wants to become. This unique competitive identity will be used in a comprehensive manner to position each city for the maximum exposure to the market, with storytelling being the primary vehicle to communicate each city’s intention. • District: The heart and soul of each city will be determined by its districts, which will house unique neighborhoods. The celebration of each distinct neighborhood due to cultural diversity, food choices,

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art enclaves, music venues, and other unique elements of an urban lifestyle will give its inhabitants pride in each neighborhood, district, city, and the region as a whole. Over time, this identity will emerge and be celebrated as unique to that city. Within the city, the value of being a resident or visitor of one district over another will emerge, providing a friendly competitive spirit that will drive real estate pricing for years to come. • Precinct: In all central business districts, there will be the following primary precincts: gateway, education, healthcare, and sports. Within certain districts, there will be the need to condense a neighborhood to provide specific functions. Depending on each city’s wants, needs, and desires, these precincts will emerge and be identified, providing a fertile platform for branding, competition, and growth (see Figure 3.11).

Figure 3.11   Smart cities layout.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Smart cities master planning is a noble cause that is enormous in its ambitions and focused with its ability to be the constant touchstone for guiding a city’s future. By providing a real-world example with the CLARA project, I wanted to show how theory became a reality. CLARA is currently still going through its iterations and morphing into a shovel-ready project, with its master plan guiding the way. In parallel to the smart cities master planning process, the important questions of how and who is going to pay for the smart city and how is it measured for success need to be answered.

“You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” —Peter Drucker

4 Finance and Measures

E

ach smart city real-estate development and solution project has its own unique criteria and funding needs. There is no cookie-cutter method, or process, for how and who is going to pay for it. My company has had to be very creative in its approach, methods, and realization for raising the proper capital for every project. What I have learned is that there are different types of money, and the key to success is understanding these different types of money and how to position your project to make a good fit for all parties. I have also learned that relationships with money and people are at times very strong and at times very tenuous, as every project has its own rhythm and cadence. Finding a match to this rhythm and cadence is a learned skill that is only taught by doing. I was educated as an architect with only a fundamental education in finance and accounting. Over the past 30-plus years in real estate, I’ve had to learn the ebbs and flows of how money works, not just from an academic process but also from winning and losing in the marketplace. Some people call this “street smarts.” Knowing the difference between return on investment (ROI) and internal rate of return (IRR) and understanding the value in creating special purpose vehicles (SPV) as opposed to joint ventures (JV) has been an ongoing master class in finding the proper ways of not just making money but also learning to respect capital.

ECONOMIC ECOSYSTEM SURROUNDING SMART CITIES An important lesson learned during this process is that because an inno­ va­tion has importance in one of our projects, it should not be introduced

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to an ecosystem without that innovation being able to stand alone as its own business, no matter how valued that innovation is to a successful ecosystem. Innovations, especially startups, need to be profitable from the start. There is no room for albatross-style companies to siphon money from a project ecosystem. In our business, we operate a strong discipline with this on every project without exception. We perform this filtering and measuring through a series of pilot testing, stress testing, and small-scale initial implementations in order to be promoted into a sustainable, scalable ecosystem. It is analogous to a new innovation being a talent in baseball’s minor leagues and then being promoted to the Major League Baseball system. Since there is no single path for funding smart cities and their solutions, I thought it would be helpful to explain how the United Kingdom (UK) and the European Union (EU) are addressing and providing high-level frameworks in the financial industry. These descriptions and suggested processes are very good to begin your own journey of building relationships with retail money (commercial banks), investment banks, institutional money, investment capital (venture capital, private equity), family offices, and sovereign wealth funds. Let’s explore the financial challenges you will face regarding smart cities.

CHALLENGES Feedback from the investment community is that smart city projects are in many cases not sufficiently developed to be considered investable. Often projects are presented in a way that the investors don’t recognize or understand, and many of these projects are not presented or developed to the point that financiers are willing to engage in detailed discussions. It has been our experience that many smart city project risks are not explicit enough to be valued or managed. Financiers and public sector investors are experts at analyzing very specific risks. They need a familiar risk in order to rate it, and they prefer to invest in individual products and components that they understand rather than integrated, ecosystem projects like smart city projects. Financing smart city projects remains problematic due to unfamiliar investment structures and new combinations of actors with different drivers who do not have a track record of working together. Developing well-structured and investable smart infrastructure projects is challenging for many local authorities and traditional investment funds due to the combination of experience, knowledge, novelty, cost, multiple



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actors working across traditional industry and sector silos, and lack of clarity on risk, revenues, and overall business models. Compounding this are the high transaction costs for the first waves of projects, which will be higher until a market is established with off-the-shelf investment structures available for projects. All investments require a viable financial model that identifies the revenues required to repay the investor, whether equity- or debt-based. In order to secure a guaranteed source of revenue long term, there often has to be some sort of long-term contract with governments, cities, or districts. Historically, the difficulty in identifying funding sources has led to significant underinvestment in the basic initial costs of a smart city, like infrastructure. Cities are reluctant to offer long-term contracts without robust com­ mer­cial evidence and effective strategies to lower their risk. In addition, trusted data and assumption methodologies to support cash flow forecasts may be lacking or may exist in isolation and have not been adopted as standard industry practice. Smart technologies are relatively new and without an established track record. This makes securing public and private investment chal­leng­ ing, as a large, upfront, risky investment is often required in the early years of a project to develop, transact, construct, and move them into an opera­­ tional phase. There is also a big gap in the financing available for projects that require capital investment from $10 to $100 million. These sums are too big for small individual funds and too small for large financial institutions, which tend to prefer large schemes that can finance the high transaction costs of infrastructure. In addition, the banking system does not have the capacity or inclination to take on new types of risk, and there is often a mismatch between finance requirements (such as a long-term, stable return) and the project proposition (such as dependent on new revenue models). To address these issues, in June 2014, the Belfius Bank in Belgium created a €400 million loan fund (50 percent from Belfius and 50 percent from the European Investment Bank) to provide low-cost financing for smart city projects in the areas of transport and mobility, urban development, and energy efficiency. The fund provided loans at preferential rates for the implementation of Belgian city authorities’ smart city projects. Funds like this that combine public and private capital are able to take a different approach to risk than pure commercial finance.

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Infrastructure Technological development and changing business practices mean new busi­ ness models for infrastructure in cities are emerging and existing business models are being challenged. Smart city business models are playing a key role in this evolution, but a number of challenges exist to unlock their value. Every city is unique, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the development of smart city business models. There are, however, some generic characteristics that enable us to develop a robust framework for developing business models for smart cities. Road and rail transport, smartphone apps, intelli­gent transport systems, parking systems, and connected cars are all tech­nologies that demonstrate the potential for creating value. Potential business models include: • Streamlining existing city systems to manage loads more effectively, developing new in-car services, and creating new types of insurance products for vehicles • Improving the management of roads, in particular, which could reduce accidents while improving air quality and health • Identifying potential revenue sources that provide new services, such as bike rental schemes, to long-term changes in land use created by technologies such as autonomous vehicles, opening up a raft of value capture and revenue-generating possibilities for cities The adoption of these new technologies presents many challenges, including the development of new partnerships between the potential actors who would emerge from such a new value chain. For utilities, project examples include smart metering, end-user apps, and smart grids for water and energy. Efficiency models look to improve the accuracy of distribution and maintenance works. Value addition models include load shifting to encourage resource use outside peak time, thus reducing the need for expensive backup sources to come online. In-depth, detailed system integration will allow cities to understand the impacts of different utility provisions on one another. For example, one of the largest costs in water processing is energy, and one of the largest costs in energy generation is the use of water. If a municipality can implement innovative solutions to lower both energy and water costs, the positive results can be clearly seen and measured. Smart buildings are another challenge to address, especially in existing urban environments where not all buildings will have the proper internal



Finance and Measures   85

and external technologies to participate in a smart city environment. Smart buildings produce, store, and efficiently manage resource consumption. Smart buildings leverage the use of building automation systems, based on vendor neutrality and open standards, allowing building systems data to connect and providing the ability to analyze and report building performance for each system (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, tenant roles, and so on) and through benchmark aggregates. While reporting an individual building’s performance is good, comparing buildings based on location, building type, and so on is even better. This reporting allows real-time comparison between buildings and enables companies and others to dramatically reduce the costs associated with running a building. It is likely that many corporate buildings may start to produce some of their own energy through renewable sources such as solar or wind power. Through physically and digitally connecting to the smart grid of a city, they will not only be able to control how much energy they use but also be able to provide excess energy to the city to use. This abundance of excess energy will provide the opportunity for cities to find innovative ways to partner with building companies in order to promote the implementation of smart systems, new materials, and tech­nologies in buildings. Crucial to developing smart business models is identifying the social, economic, and environmental value that is generated through an intervention over time. Investments in infrastructure create benefits far beyond the financial; they create jobs and growth, providing a multiplier effect on the economy. These effects have traditionally been difficult to capture financially because they have been difficult or impossible to measure. Smart technology allows for more accurate and reliable measurement of impact, which in turn means previously unquantifiable benefits can be priced and captured contractually. The emergence of smart technology opens up a new source of revenue for projects, new business models for recovery and value capture, and new opportunities for investors. Coordination of services is often easier in a regeneration area or where there is a national project such as the Olympics or World Expo, where a dedicated delivery body is established. In an existing city landscape, it is much more difficult. It requires coordinated leadership from cities, central government, and industry, as ownership is fragmented, long-term service contracts are in place, and different organizations don’t tend to work proactively with each other. For example, a smart meter’s project requires IT companies, banks, energy companies, and government to all work together. For smart city projects, it is vital that strong and effective new partnerships are formed to enable the value to be captured.1

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SOLUTIONS Agreeing with the challenges of the UK, the EU provides its take on universal challenges, along with a path forward of solutions. Barriers to financing smart city technological solutions can be summarized as follows: • Perception of high risk when investing in innovative solutions and energy efficiency measures • Uncertain energy price policies and uncertainty about fossil fuel prices • Large volumes of investment required • Long-term delays before reaching maturity/profitability • Limited capacity for public funding: high public deficits in municipalities and incapacity to raise funding from capital markets What we have found to be successful in attracting the proper investment capital for our smart cities projects include the following: • Reduce the real and perceived risks of investment • Attract long-term finance from specialized institutions (that is, pension funds, family offices, sovereign wealth funds) • Develop project aggregation mechanisms to create bankable and sizeable investments with reduced transaction costs • Develop off balance sheet investment systems with private mechanisms (development of special purpose vehicles and private-public partnerships, or PPPs) Financing smart cities requires integrated solutions to ensure energyefficient urban development. Grids, energy-efficient buildings, energy supply systems, transport, and the behavior of citizens will need to lead to considerable energy savings and greenhouse gas reductions, which is the final aim. Strategic planning, integrated municipal departments, and procurement processes will need to be backed up by innovative financial mechanisms to leverage the necessary private funding to support the largescale and to some extent radical transformation in energy use. Over the next decade, the costs of energy will continue to fluctuate, and cities will strive to increase economic growth while achieving carbon reduction targets. In this context, there are likely to be increasing opportunities for the public sector to drive investment in smart technologies



Finance and Measures   87

in the low-carbon and environmental goods and services (LCEGS) sector through public procurement by, for example: • Retrofitting of public sector building stock • Smart energy grids and broadband access • Electric vehicle charging infrastructure • Installation of heat networks • On-site renewable energy generation • Involvement in more general adaptation/mitigation initiatives There is increasing recognition that the LCEGS sector is a growing part of the EU economy, with the associated economic and social benefits that this brings. This high-value sector has the potential for exponential growth based on increased global demand for LCEGS. The long-term socio-economic benefits of a smart city transformation linked to energy use are generally recognized in terms of economic returns, as well as standards and health benefits. Even if showing important economic rates of return (ERR), such a large-scale, costly transformation is less attractive for private financiers. The IRR of some components is uncertain and in some cases perceived as excessively risky. The more innovative the solution, the more difficult it is to raise financing. Regulatory uncertainty also plays a role. Fuel and energy prices are highly dependent on policy frameworks. The lack of full costing of fossil fuel externalities, as well as changes in policy on feed-in tariffs and other renewable subsidies, damages the risk-adjusted IRR on investment. The financial challenges are: • Perception of high risk when investing in innovative solutions and energy efficiency measures • Uncertain energy price policies and uncertainty about fossil fuel prices • Large volumes of investment required • Long-term delays before reaching maturity/profitability The EU, governments, and public financial institutions have the capacity to develop the necessary tools to promote innovation and the deployment of novel solutions. However, it is important to note that not all challenges can be solved through financial engineering. Many barriers are regulatory and region specific. EU member states should ensure that their regulatory frameworks are not creating barriers to innovation.

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Figure 4.1    Investments in smart cities are risky, including the Expo 2020 in Dubai shown here. Courtesy: Paul Doherty

FORMS OF INVESTMENT Investment in smart city projects, especially in the areas of energy, trans­ port, and information communication technology (ICT), for cities holds many similarities with other investment projects. Raising funds for their financing is based on the same generic principles and models for investment financing elsewhere in the economy. To better reach out to private sector investment sources it is necessary to understand how private sector investment and financing decisions are made. Traditionally, investments represent decisions to acquire assets, be it real assets in the form of affixed and working capital (that is, land, buildings, plants, and equipment but also patents and trademarks) or financial assets (that is, securities, deposits), taking into account the operational costs of the investment over the lifetime of the projects. The financing decision then concerns the question of how much capital the company needs to raise to fund the related operations and what the funding mix should include. Firms can generate capital internally, through their own net operating cash flows, or externally through equity capital markets, bond markets, or the banking system (particularly for short- and medium-term borrowing). The financial system acts as a conduit through which the cash surplus of “savers” is channeled to companies and government entities that need cash.



Finance and Measures   89

Direct and Indirect Financing The financial system operates through two alternative financing channels, known as direct and indirect financing. • Direct financing. One way for firms to raise money is to obtain it directly from savers by selling them securities for cash. A security is a certificate that specifies the conditions under which the firm has received the money. • Indirect or intermediate financing. Very often, firms cannot access the financial markets to sell their securities directly to investors. This is the case in many newly established firms and also firms that are too small to issue a sufficient number of securities to appeal to investors. These firms rely on indirect or intermediate financing that refers to raising capital through financial intermediaries, such as commercial banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and venture capital funds that act as agents between the ultimate recipients of capital and the provider of capital. There are several different actors involved, such as: commercial banks, leasing companies, mutual and other funds, investment banks, and venture capitalists. Commercial banks typically offer short- to medium-term loans with terms of one day to ten years. Long-term loans can be obtained from insurance companies and pension funds. Venture capital firms supply equity to newly established firms with limited track records and can either focus on short-term or longer-term gains.2

Risk Appetite and Loans Each type of investor has a different appetite for risk. (See Figure 4.1). Some focus on debt instruments and others on equity. Their requirements for guarantees or security vary, as do the rates of return they seek, their degree of involvement in the companies in which they invest, and how they realize their return on investment. Therefore, different companies and projects, which have different sizes, risk profiles, and potential to generate a return on investment, will pursue different financing. For a strategy seeking to leverage funding to succeed, it needs to be tailored to the interests of investors. Outside of this core financial system, funds can also be obtained through government budgets, investment agencies, and/or international financial institutions. Debt financing refers to the acquisition of funds by borrowing: a lender provides capital to a borrower for a defined purpose over a fixed period of time. These can be loans or bonds, structured as recourse or limited

90  Chapter 4

recourse debt with full or limited guarantees. Loans can take a number of forms, but fundamentally they are of two types:

1. Secured—The borrower pledges a specific asset as collateral, of which the lender may take possession in the event of default.



2. Unsecured—Where there is no potential asset to take possession of in the event of a default, the interest rates tend to be higher as a result.

Loans have three main elements:

1. Face (or nominal) value—the amount of money owed by the borrower



2. Interest rate—the cost of borrowing, which will be higher for riskier projects



3. Maturity (or tenor)—the term over which the loan is to be repaid

Financing with recourse means the company stands behind the project or venture and the related debt, and the financiers can have a claim on the company’s assets in the event of default. Financing with recourse is usually used by companies for core investment activities. However, they also frequently opt for so-called limited or nonrecourse financing, depending on the characteristics of the investment.

Debt Instruments Debt instruments also include bonds, which are debt securities issued by companies or governments. They entitle the lender to recover the investment over a certain period (usually long term) with interest. Bonds provide the borrower with external funds to finance long-term investment. These are similar to loans but are simpler to trade. If bonds are issued by project companies to raise funding from the markets for a specific project on a nonrecourse basis, they are often called “project bonds.” For our projects with governments, bonds are a primary finance vehicle, as the market already exists for bonds, and investors are comfortable with them. As an example, EU Project Bonds are a financial instrument that is enhanced by an EU/European Investment Bank (EIB)-funded risk-sharing mechanism, to increase their credit rating. This reduces risks and the interest rate required by the investors to buy the bonds, thus lowering the costs of capital for the promoters of the project. For investors, the strength of bonds is that these are classified as senior debt and are therefore the last financing source to cover the costs of any losses. A particularly interesting aspect of



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bonds is that they can be raised for a class of investment, a fund that is used to finance many projects, reducing the transaction costs of raising funds for single projects. Debt instruments may require some sort of guaranteed mechanism. In some cases, where risks are too high to attract private finance, guarantee programs/mechanisms (often publicly backed) can be provided for com­ panies/projects to access debt financing. Guarantees can be applied in all phases of a project’s development to improve both access and the terms of financial products that would be undersupplied if there were no guarantees. In Europe, there are some common guaranteed structures available: • Pari passu (two or more obligations that are equally managed) partial guarantees (that is, the EIB and the EU offer guarantees sharing the risks in parallel) • Portfolio first loss and second loss guarantee (that is, the EU takes the first loss up to a designated amount, followed by the EIB with a second loss if the amount is exceeded) • Subordinated recovery guarantees (providing partial coverage of risk exposure against loans) • Loss reserves act as loss guarantees and liquidity support schemes

Smart City Financing Guarantees have an important function to bridge the gap between the per­ ceived risks and the actual risks, thus assisting beneficiaries in providing them access to finance, reducing their cost of capital, and expanding loan tenor and/or grace periods to match project cash flows. In other words, they can overcome risk-related barriers in financing companies/projects involved in smart city projects. Subordinated debt finance is capital that sits midway between senior debt (that is, long-term secure bonds) and equity in the order of repayments (that is, level of seniority). Because it sits after the senior debt, it is con­ sidered riskier in terms of collateral rights and right to cash flow, as senior debt holders have preferential rights to those. There are fewer sources of subordinated debt financing, and it is usually obtained from insurance companies, subordinated debt funds, and finance companies, or it is raised with public offerings of high-yield bonds to institutional investors. Mezzanine debt financing has features of both debt and equity financ­ ing. It is considerably cheaper than equity (it does not involve forgoing control of the company) and also could help raise sufficient capital to

92  Chapter 4

meet the risk-return requirements of senior lenders. It is often considered a complementary or alternative solution to portfolio guarantees, as it can reduce or substitute the amount of senior debt, but it is less suitable for large projects with long terms to maturity.

Figure 4.2   Smart city financing.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

Equity financing refers to the acquisition of funds by issuing shares of common or preferred stock in anticipation of income from individuals and capital gains as the value of the stock rises. Equity is a residual claim or interest and the most junior class of investors in an asset, after all liabilities are paid. Equity financing can come in the form of public listing or private equity (venture capital or growth capital). There are different levels of seniority of equity and debt financing when it comes to the order of repayments. Depending on who is the lender and what the agreements are on the debt and equity, the finance for a company can be listed in the following order of repayment priority. The top form of financing needs to be reimbursed first, and at the bottom, there is equity, which can only be paid once all other loans have been covered (if anything is left): • Senior secured debt • Senior (unsecured) debt • Subordinated debt (mezzanine financing) • Equity



Finance and Measures   93

The financing architecture of smart cities projects (see Figure 4.2), such as the share of equity financing and any risk mitigating public support, needs to be measured according to the needs of potential investors. The riskreturn tradeoff has to have a proper balance for all stakeholders, which is why it is difficult to have a standard financial template for every smart city project. For each risk level, investors need a minimum return to participate, and the higher the risk, the higher the return needs to be. Either the risks are mitigated through financial instruments or the ratio of debt to equity has to be lower. Public equity with low interest can thus allow higher returns to be spread among private investors, improving their risk-return prospects. A popular finance solution for smart city projects is to leverage the government. Governments are able to design expenditure/investment programs in order to respond to investment needs and market barriers and failures. This can take the form of traditional grant support schemes, technical assistance, soft loans, and other financial instruments (including debt and equity). Grants are a traditional form of support and do not normally require repayment. They are often used to support high upfront costs for some projects or basic research. Grants can increase the financial rate of return on investment and leverage additional resources through requirements on co-financing/matching funds. Interest subsidies like soft loans are another instrument often used by governmental institutions/ agencies. Common conditions for soft loans usually contain terms such as: • Extended payback periods • Low or zero interest rates

• Short-term interest deferral periods

• Inclusion of a payback grace period Revolving funds offer loans that can be repaid with revenue earned, which can then be reinvested in new projects in the same area. Revolving funds are considered to be particularly important when liquidity is scarce. A 2013 article from the EIB offers helpful information for shaping a smart city: Financial instruments are increasingly being used by governments to attract private investors to smart cities developments. These are combinations of grants and loans aimed at changing the costs and risk return profile of projects to attract investors and expand the leverage of funding from the private sector to finance projects with public objectives.3 A good resource with finance is with the Smart SPP—innovation through sustainable procurement, which provides a number of evaluated case studies from various EU member states.4

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MARKET INDICATORS AND MEASURES Smart city market indicators and measures are maturing as more smart city projects and programs are being implemented, providing a better pool of data to analyze and report. A key market indicator of a city making the transformation into a smart city is its investment in infrastructure. A city’s physical infrastructure of roadways, walkways, bridges, tunnels, mass transit, and other public areas like parks are not just economic indicators of progress but also visual indicators. When people are visually and physically affected by a smart city, it triggers an emotional response of “liking” or “disliking” the experience, creating a decision mechanism of wanting to, or not wanting to, experience it again. Quality-of-life issues are more intense in an urban environment due to the density and number of people in a finite amount of space and the effects of not having consistent power, having dirty water or polluted air, or not having your trash picked up in a timely manner. The effects of the quality of energy, water, air, and waste disposal are key indicators for all cities today, not just green, eco-cities, mainly because the availability of these city services is a limiting factor in a city’s ability for growth. A leading infrastructure indicator is the development of smart grids for power, gas, and water. In California, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has installed 9.5 million power and gas smart meters in 6 million households, taking 90 billion meter-reading intervals per year since 2007. This enormous amount of big data is being positioned to be analyzed and acted upon to become a valuable resource. With the development of visual analytic tools that can affordably be deployed over the cloud, PG&E can use these data to make better-informed decisions and develop a framework for having its power grid become a smart grid. A smart grid for power and gas enables realtime, two-way management of electricity, gas, and information. Innovative technologies allow for better integration of renewable energies and more efficient power and gas transmission across the entire grid. Smart grids are laying the foundation in the context of how buildings can communicate with a city’s integrated operations center (IOC), which is an excellent example of a true “city as a network.” For a city to plan and manage its smart grid strategy, there are functional goals and characteristics to meet, including: • Self-healing from power disturbance events • Enabling active participation by consumers in demand response • Operating resiliently against physical attacks and cyberattacks



Finance and Measures   95

• Providing power quality for today’s needs • Accommodating all generation and storage options • Enabling new products, services, and markets • Optimizing assets and operating efficiently Power and gas smart grids rely on data from meters and sensors to meet their functional goals. These captured data are designed to assist in creating smart grid solutions for substation automation, demand response, distribution automation, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), energy management systems, wireless mesh networks, powerline carrier communications, and fiber-optics. Enabling these data to flow bidirectionally between the source and a smart grid management system allows for real-time control, information, and data exchange to optimize system reliability, asset utilization, and security. Like power and gas smart grids, smart water grids are emerging as the new quality standard for smart cities today. Leveraging the use of captured sensor and water meter data—technology that was developed for the power grid—makes the transmission and processing of water-based data possible. New solutions are being installed to retrofit older water systems and new systems alike, which will monitor things like vibrations or electrical conductivity. Thousands of sensors inform municipal water authorities about events such as leaks or transmit data about storm water overflows. They will also provide households with information about their water usage or possible health threats. The smart water grid uses two data acquisition methods, metering and sensors. Smart water metering is used for consumption reporting, leakage detection, rate charges, and load reduction, while smart water sensors are used for contamination alerts, quality assessment, flow reporting, and conservation protocols. The implementations of these smart water initiatives are usually tied into largerscale projects, like the numerous combined sewer overflow (CSO) projects being performed in U.S. cities today through EPA consent decrees.

EXAMPLE: CORAL GABLES, FLORIDA, SMART CITY HUB An excellent example of this type of smart city system is being used in Coral Gables, Florida. Raimundo Rodulfo, chief innovation officer of the City of Coral Gables, has developed a comprehensive smart city hub that interacts internally with numerous city systems and externally with the general public. The execution and level of transparency is remarkable.5

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Raimundo and his team use the Coral Gables Smart City Hub web site as their communications tool with internal and external stakeholders. The hub provides an open data platform that leverages the captured data from a multitude of sources that provide a rich environment of live and historic data. His team then creates analysis, outputs, apps, and reports that provide value, transparency, mobility, business intelligence, and tools for citizen engagement.

REALITY CHECK There is consensus from the market that there is a need to look beyond the conventional investment solutions, because government alone cannot finance investment in smart cities programs and projects. There is the need to augment nonbudgetary resources and unlock unconventional sources of capital. The proper questions that need to be asked include: How can we leverage asset-based financing? What are the policy and regulatory framework changes required for monetization of land to finance urbanization? How do we attract private capital and strengthen the role of the market in delivery of urban services? As cities compete for investors and capital to meet smart city demands, creative financial solutions will remain the norm for the foreseeable future. This chapter was meant as a reality check for the real-world imple­ mentations of smart cities and their solutions. In the following chapters, let’s explore the actual blueprint of how to properly deliver a smart city (Figure 4.3).

Figure 4.3   Jeddah Economic City, Saudi Arabia.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” —Peter Drucker

5 Operations and Governance

A

major element in designing, building, and delivering a smart city is the governance framework of how to procure capital assets and infrastructure. We have been successfully using the executive program management office (ePMO) approach shared in this chapter. While most of the chapter is technical in nature, it is meant to provide a practical guide to this part of a smart city’s implementation.

EXECUTIVE PROGRAM MANAGEMENT OFFICE (EPMO) LEADERSHIP APPROACH The following best practices for operating a smart cities project are based on past ePMO implementations that TDG used on successful smart cities projects. The basis of the design and function of our ePMO is quality man­ age­ment. There are seven principles of quality management:

1. Engagement of people



2. Customer focus



3. Leadership



4. Process approach



5. Improvement



6. Evidence-based decision-making



7. Relationship management

99

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A smart cities program is known to be a complex and highly sustainable series of projects that incorporates specialized buildings, infrastructure, solutions, and products, which possess many sources of risk for delivery and facility operations. Our ePMO provides the organization and management structure to effectively deliver and, more importantly, operate the system of systems organization (Figure 5.1). PMO Framework Activities Go fac vern ilit anc ati e on

Risk management

rds nda ce Sta heren ad

Quality management

Issue management

Program Management Office Program administration

P reprogr ort am ing

Communication management

y enc end ess Dep aren aw

Program governance & planning

Activities

Program integration

Vendor/contract management Benefit management People change management Resource management Scope management

Figure 5.1   A PMO schematic.

The ePMO is led by five functional groups:

1. Executive team



2. Administrative office



3. Project controls and central technology office



4. Health, safety, and environmental



5. Design/construction/operations delivery

Executive team. Ensures project performance, meets regularly with the project executive committee to report progress, oversees each functional group of the ePMO, and oversees that the project program is established and executed properly. Project strategy and performance are the key focus areas of this group. Administrative office. Responsible for contracts and procurement, com­ mu­ nications, public relations, stakeholder management, accounting and billing, IT support, human resources, and day-to-day administration activities. Apart from supporting the ePMO activities, this group also serves a critical role in engaging third parties outside the ePMO and ensuring



Operations and Governance   101

the project addresses the priorities of partners, project stakeholders, the surround­ing community, and local supply chain. Project controls and central technology office. Responsible for project oversight of cost/budget, schedule/production, quality control, docu­ ment control, and risk management. A critical component of the controls office is the central technology office, which oversees, implements, and sup­ ports project technology. This will ensure best-in-class delivery of build­­ing information modeling (BIM) and integrated project data, leverage the power of smart buildings/facilities, and deliver a highly valuable digital asset for project operations. Health, safety, and environmental. Develops safety plans, safety audits and reports, and safety training programs; monitors the environmental impact of the project; and ensures compliance with regulatory agencies. The health and well-being of workers, the public, and the surrounding environ­ ment is a critical focus for this project. Design/construction/operations delivery. Oversees the development of all design phases, construction and installation, and facility operations, ensur­ing alignment with project requirements and a seamless transition from one stage to the next. Each major component of the project design will have a lead manager who is a specialist in that field of design and con­ struction and be engaged through the design and construction of the project. The ePMO oversees key project phases:

1. Master planning



2. Site assessment, planning, and construction



3. Design development



4. Construction delivery



5. Tenant fit out



6. Operational planning and execution

Master planning. The detailed master plan will provide overall layouts for the project, providing sufficient information for the program management team to subdivide the overall program into specific detail design bid pack­ ages such that each package can be tendered to an independent detail design consultant. A detailed master plan shall consider the following sig­nifi­cant focus areas: land use, alignment of infrastructure and public circulation, building alignment, the project healthcare system and education system, housing types, roadways, landscape, hardscape, operational facili­ties, utili­ties infrastructure, emergency services access, public spaces, space program­ ming, architectural design aesthetics, building performance criteria and

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guidelines, sustainability requirements, and urban design align­ment with the community. Site assessment, planning, and construction. As initial site and building designs are commenced, it is anticipated that early site assessment and construction works can begin. This would include securing the site, confirming site and soil conditions, and installing site offices and temporary site infrastructure to support initial rough grading operations and progressive site development operations. Design development. When master planning is complete, the ePMO will contract with the design and engineering firms that will lead the detailed development of design. Both international and regional design consultancy firms will be considered based on competency and the ability of the design consultancy firms to provide appropriate design deliverables and their ability to assure quality design deliverables in conformance with the requirements of this project. The ePMO will also engage an array of experts in each major sector of building design and construction to ensure the highest level of quality control and construction. Key oversight roles include: architectural, mechanical electrical plumbing (MEP), structure, envelope, interiors, sustainability, energy performance, IT infrastructure, prefabrication, innovation technology integration, and facility operations. Construction delivery. As the detailed design packages are complete and trade contractors are procured, the sector experts engaged early in design will remain with the project through design completion to administer quality control and changes during construction. They will ensure that the trade contractors hired to install the work are in compliance with design intent, quality requirements, and the master schedule. Utilizing the intelligent data integration made possible through the ePMO’s central technology office, all aspects of the project design and construction delivery will be managed and monitored with the support of the most advanced BIM environment systems and BIM management tools, including gaming engine implementation, digital twin asset management, and metaverse maintenance. Tenant fit out. The ePMO will also engage with the industry vendors per building type to design the assets that encompass the key features of the project. In collaboration with these vendors, the ePMO will lead the effort to integrate its design and specification requirements for both design and construction coordination. As the core infrastructure of buildings and facilities is completed, the ePMO will oversee the installation of the assets and coordination of the vendors. Operations planning and execution. Operations of the project systems are critical to both the design and the construction efforts. Professionals who will ultimately operate the project systems will begin to engage with design and construction throughout those processes to ensure the project



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systems can be effectively and safely operated, maintained, and renovated over its operational lifespan. The following groups will each implement key processes and tasks: • Project reporting, dashboarding, and analytics: The ePMO executive team regularly reviews data about project performance through information dashboards to make timely project decisions based on procurement and delivery plans, cash flow projections, schedule progress, health and safety performance, environmental studies, quality assurance reviews, and stakeholder concerns. Dashboard reporting is a critical tool for the ePMO and the executive team to review and assess performance quickly and regularly, as well as keep the project teams informed as to current project status and critical activities regarding schedule, cost, changes, inspections, approvals, health/safety, quality, and so on. • Procurement planning and purchasing: This includes analyzing and managing the project supply chain, securing long lead time equipment and bulk materials—aiming to leverage economy of scale for the project. The ePMO will recommend appropriate strategies for procurement and contracting to ensure a fast-paced and project-appropriate quality and delivery schedule. • Financial management and reporting: This involves establishing appropriate financial objectives and controls, securing financial resources for project delivery, and establishing and monitoring annual delivery budgets, as well auditing and reports on financial performance. • Budget management and reporting: This involves refining, executing, controlling, and updating the budget as determined during the financial management process. Resource requirements, estimates, activity durations/schedules, historical data, and market conditions will all be major factors used to establish and manage the budget. • Cost management: The project manager and his/her team will control costs within budget to ensure the project scope, quality, and delivery schedule are met or exceeded. A plan will be developed defining the parties responsible for cost management, developing earned value calculations, change authority, cost performance measurement, reporting, and analytics. • Change management: Changes to design and construction plans are critical to ensure compliance with the project program. As

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variations in each project are identified, design consultants and construction contractors will prepare variation or change orders to be considered in terms of time, cost, and quality. These changes will regularly be reviewed and considered by the ePMO change management board. This board will be dedicated to reviewing and approving these variation or change order requests. • Quality control: The quality control processes and controls will be developed by a dedicated quality control manager early in the project. The ePMO sector experts will be highly engaged in the quality control processes and reporting for the project, working with the quality control manager to conduct quality inspections, generate reports, log data and findings, and communicate with the construction teams to ensure the work is installed correctly, to the project requirements. • Document control: The controls office services the project design and construction teams through highly refined and executed document control processes. This includes receiving, organizing, and publishing critical project information including plans, specifications, change directives, requests for information, and other documentation as deemed necessary by the ePMO. • Communications: The ePMO must function as fluidly as any company and will develop communications plans that ensure all team members receive the information they need to execute their roles in a timely manner. Additionally, the communications plan also needs to address how the ePMO communicates externally to project stakeholders and the public. • Sequencing, planning, scheduling, and productivity: Each sector of the project plan will be fully integrated into a master project schedule. The master schedule will include inputs from design teams, contractors, trade contractors, and material suppliers. The master schedule will be the basis for production planning and design sequencing, as well as a tool for informing informational dashboards to monitor project performance and inform decision-making. • Stakeholder management and public relations: Stakeholder management is the systematic identification, analysis, planning, and managing of the expectations of anyone who has an interest in



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a project or will be affected by its deliverables or outputs. As part of the ePMO, a stakeholder register and engagement matrix will be developed for the project, which will be used to record stakeholder concerns and interests, which inform decisions on outreach strategy and engagement by the ePMO. • Health and safety management: Ensure the highest standards of safety to protect workers and the public are thoroughly planned and implemented throughout the project life cycle of design, construction, and operations. Central to this effort will be field safety audits, a worker training program, and safety planning. • Environmental management: Conduct analysis and ongoing studies of critical impacts on the local environment and infrastructure related to traffic, water supply, energy, waste management, environmental protections/preservation, noise control, air quality, existing infrastructure, and public services. • Education/training: All TDG projects feature an education/training program office unique to each project. It will address the best methods to implement training for safety, technology, and processes critical to project success. This resource will be available and will actively engage with the ePMO, design consultants, construction partners, trade contractors, delivery suppliers, and other project entities to ensure that all have the information they need to be part of the complex system required to execute the project. Education/ training for local project team members will be a critical success factor for the project. • Process technology research, development, and support: Identifying and developing technologies to support the ePMO controls team, as well as the design, construction, and operations groups, is critical of all project phases. The ePMO will engage technology experts from throughout the industry to coordinate with its process technology leaders and internal team to not only identify technologies but also to develop the processes for how those technologies are deployed in an efficient and effective manner. High priority for the process technology team will be to leverage BIM and project data to support interoperable and integrated facilities operations for the lifespan of the project.

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Corporate

PMO

Program

Project

Schedule management

Change management

Budget and cost management

Risk management

Governance & gateways

Document management & collaboration

Reporting

Earned value management

Systems and tools

Figure 5.2   ePMO hierarchy.

Courtesy: Paul Doherty

As you can see in Figure 5.2, we run a tight ship with quality manage­ ment at the core of our successful projects. During the life cycle of the program, our ePMO regularly reports to and informs the program executive committee (PEC) of the status and delivery progress program, reporting, and advising on: • Procurement and delivery strategies • Planned and actual program delivery schedules • Planned and actual program cash flow • Health and safety, environment, and quality assurance regarding program delivery • Stakeholder issues How our ePMO ultimately is measured is through utilization of project and program data. If it runs accurately and efficiently, we will have a successful project. The key for this success is a well-designed, managed, and operated central technology office.



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CENTRAL TECHNOLOGY OFFICE The TDG central technology office (CTO) sits inside the ePMO and functions through quality process elements and procedure.

BIM Roadmap The BIM roadmap will include standards, policies, measures, contract forms, and a template for a best practice BIM project execution plan (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3   BIM execution planning. Courtesy: Jason Reece, The Pennsylvania State University

BIM Project Execution Plan (PxP) A PxP will be developed and implemented for the project and distributed through the project’s ePMO. Operating the PxP for this project will address approach, capability, capacity, and competence. Here are the areas of focus. BIM PxP overview information: Document the reason for creating the PxP. Project information: The plan will include critical project information such as project numbers, project location, project description, and critical schedule dates for future reference.

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Key project contacts: As part of the reference information, the plan will include contact information for key project personnel. Project goals/BIM objectives: This section will document the strategic value and specific uses for BIM on the project as defined by the project team in the initial step of the planning procedure. Organizational roles and staffing: One of the primary tasks is to define the coordinators of the BIM planning and execution process throughout the various stages of the project. This is particularly important when identifying the organization that will initiate the development of the BIM plan, as well as the required staff to successfully implement the plan. BIM process design: This section will clearly illustrate the execution process using process maps, which are developed in the second step of the planning procedure. BIM information exchanges: The model elements and level of detail required to implement each BIM use should be clearly defined in the information exchanges requirements. BIM and facility data requirements: The owner’s requirements for BIM will be documented and understood. Collaboration procedures: The team will develop electronic and collaboration activity procedures. This includes the definition of model management procedures (for example, file structures and file permissions) as well as typical meeting schedules and agendas. Model quality control procedures: A procedure for ensuring that the project participants meet the defined requirements should be developed and monitored throughout the project. Technology infrastructure needs: The hardware, software, and network infrastructure required to execute the plan should be defined. Model structure: The team will discuss and document items such as model structure, file naming structure, coordinate system, and modeling standards. Project deliverables: The team will document deliverables required by the owner. Delivery strategy/contracts: This section will define the delivery strategy, which will be used on the project. The delivery strategy (for example, design-build vs. design-bid-build) will impact implementation, and it will also impact the language, which should be incorporated into the contracts to ensure successful BIM implementation.



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3-D/4-D/5-D: 3-D BIM includes the following elements of a project so they can be coordinated with each other into an integrated design: • Site: the location of the project, including surrounding buildings or natural elements • Structural: the foundation of the building or infrastructure • Architectural: the actual structure and design of the building including walls, ceilings, etc. • Mechanical: the placement of pipes and ductwork for the heating and air system • Plumbing: the location of plumbing elements, including fire protection systems • Electrical: the distribution of power, lighting and telecommunications This information can be cross referenced with other members of the design team so the most accurate model can be created before construction. It also helps when stakeholders or investors want to see a visualization of the project before they have invested funds.

HIGHLY EFFECTIVE CENTRAL TECHNOLOGY OFFICE ROLES The ePMO’s central technology office (CTO) has 11 roles that are critical to the successful delivery of BIM on a smart cities project. By providing an appropriate balance of leadership and technical expertise, the CTO is both providing a high-performance team while also balancing resources across the project life cycle to minimize cost. CTO resources have three main groups: the executive team, the project team, and the process and technology team.

1. Executive team. This is the primary group that interacts directly with the client, focusing on project expectations and performance.



2. Project team. This is the group that executes all the work under the contract and houses the core BIM expertise that will interact with designers, contractors, and other stakeholders responsible for design and construction.

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3. Process and technology team. A unique resource, their primary focus is to provide support to the project team by bringing bestin-class knowledge about BIM technology and processes. They are critical to the development of the BIM execution plan, leading all research and development tasks and taking ownership of BIM training for the project.

Project Executive

The project executive has two primary responsibilities on this project. The first is to maintain client expectations and open communication. To achieve this, the project executive will have regular touchpoints throughout the project life cycle with both the client and the project team. The second responsibility of the project executive is to bring additional expertise to the project to guarantee best-in-class resources are available to the project team. This person will have full access to all in-house BIM experts and resources and have authority to leverage them as he/she deems appropriate.

BIM Office General Manager

The general manager’s primary responsibilities are to ensure the project team is meeting the expectations of the client and to be the main point of contact to the client and their representatives. While the project executive is responsible for establishing expectations, the general manager must work closely with the project manager to execute the project in accordance with those expectations. Most of this person’s full-time involvement will be early in the project life cycle, but he/she will maintain a constant presence through our operations throughout the contract.

BIM Office Project Manager

The project manager is the single most important role on the CTO team. This person is fully responsible for managing the project team and all available resources—but also plays a key role in informing the executive team about project performance, needs, and challenges. The project manager not only understands the full scope of BIM for the project and keeps the project on budget and on schedule, but also maintains relationships with all BIM contributors and project stakeholders. He/she is 100 percent dedicated to only the singular project.

BIM Technology Lead

The BIM technology lead is an expert in a wide breadth of BIM technologies and an expert in how the tools function. This person is a resource to the project team and plays a key role early in the project developing successful



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BIM workflows. He/she works closely with the BIM process lead throughout the project life cycle.

BIM Process Lead The BIM process lead focuses on how the extended project team operates and is an expert in how technology augments or changes design and construction processes. This person’s role is to help the project team develop strategies and methods to adopt technology successfully by modifying existing processes and creating new ones. This person is a critical contributor to the BIM execution plan and to helping the extended project team be more efficient and successful by adopting BIM technology.

BIM Trainer The BIM trainer is foremost an expert in communicating complex BIM workflows. This person will gather and develop all training materials for the project team and will conduct all training—either in-person or through virtual methods. He/she leverages the process and technology leads extensively to ensure training materials and sessions are highly effective and appropriate.

BIM Tech/Modeler(s) Local BIM service providers traditionally dedicate individual tech/modelers to functions and specific BIM tasks (such as coordination, scheduling, or estimating). Due to the extended nature of smart cities projects, and the need to integrate closely with all project stakeholders from the beginning of the project, TDG has deemed it more appropriate to dedicate our modelers to the core stakeholders of the project: designer, contractors, MEP trades, and facility management. This allows the CTO to support all project stakeholders in a more meaningful way—by providing each identified group dedicated modeling support within the BIM office. With this arrangement, all tech/modelers on the team will share responsibility for delivering on all BIM processes identified in the BIM PxP. This creates redundancy in knowledge and execution, while also helping to build stronger relationships with other project stakeholders.

BIM Office Administrator The office administrator supports the entire team, primarily by focusing on communication. The administrator’s primary purpose is to ensure that the BIM project team members can stay focused on execution and takes the lead on all tasks not directly associated with BIM.

S

Supports efforts of leader

I I I

A

S S

V

Research & development

V

L E E I S V I I I

A

Develop processes & standards

1. Development of artifacts used by the production team to execute the workflow 2. Updating the BIM PxP 3. Development of training plan for the extended project team

3

E

Executes the primary work

V V V

E E V

A L S

I

Training

Informs—provides feedback at key junctions, introduces new thoughts

I I I I

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A L S S

1. Identify project resources to be trained 2. Develop training schedule 3. Conduct training

4

Involvement in BIM process stages

Validates team’s work and conclusion

S

1. Detailed investigation of technologies, design, and construction processes 2. Development of an efficient production capable workflow to use the technology 3. Present findings to executive team, make decision to proceed forward

2

Central technology office BIM team.

Leads the effort at this stage, responsible for achieving outcomes

Figure 5.4

L

I

E

L

BIM Office General Mgr. BIM Project Manager BIM Technology Lead BIM Process Lead BIM Trainer BIM Tech/Modeler Client Designers Subcontractors Facility Operators

BIM stakeholders

1. Identification of BIM technology or workflows 2. Quick evaluation of technology compared to project needs and goals 3. Approval to conduct detailed R&D 4. Establishment of team/resources for R&D

Each individual responsible for contributing to the BIM model for the project participates in the life cycle of each process development. The correct expertise is critical at each stage to ensure each BIM output and deliverable meets client expectations.

Identification and strategy

1

Stages of BIM process development Execution

A

Courtesy: Jason Reece

Approval authority for moving to next stage

E E E

L I I S E

V

1. Implement workflow in a production environment 2. Gather feedback and metrics on technology/process performance 3. Edit standards and re-train project stakeholders as necessary

5

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Operations and Governance   113

An area of keen focus will be on the management of how the smart cities BIM matures over time, so it can be useful in the handoff between the design and construction phase to the facility management and operations phase (Figure 5.4). The U.S. National Institute of Building Sciences published the national BIM standard, and it is what our CTO uses to manage our BIM through the Capability Maturity Model (CMM).

CAPABILITY MATURITY MODEL There are many levels of maturity of implementation for the building information model. Your decision related to the maturity of a model may be based on the criticality of the facility to the mission of the organization or the funds available. Since each implementation is going to be different, based on the complexity of the implementation, a notional return-on-investment (ROI) assessment is provided. The ROIs are based on two in-depth ROI models conducted by the Department of Defense at a naval installation and an army installation. Also included in the model is the application of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), which is a set of best practices used to deliver high-quality IT services. The best practices described in ITIL represent the consensus derived from more than a decade of work by thousands of IT and data processing professionals worldwide, including hundreds of years of collective experience. Because of its depth and breadth, the ITIL has become the de facto world standard for IT best practices.

Level 1 Maturity A minimal implementation would consist of basic data about a facility such as those data elements defined in the GSA FRPC “Interim FY 2005 Guidance for Real Property Inventory Reporting,” but no single phase of the life cycle is supported at this level. This level of implementation would not reduce operations and maintenance costs, nor would it improve interoperability of information. It would, however, provide a unique identifier for collecting future information to support specific future needs. This approach would likely be used on existing facilities with a minimal investment and expectation for a return on investment but would serve as a better way of doing business, ensuring all assets were accounted for in the inventory but would still be a separate nonintegrated business process. No knowledge or awareness of ITIL would be assumed.

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Level 2 Maturity This level of maturity would include collecting expanded data for a couple of life-cycle phases, such as planning and design, and would integrate that into the business process to include a specific BIM file structure for the facility. This could include basic 2-D CAD drawings, but the structure would not be typically geospatially located. There would be no interoperability of information planned at this time. Basic initiation of ITIL could be expected at this level of implementation, and basic business processes may start to be examined, although no business process reengineering (BPR) would be underway. Loosely defined roles and responsibilities exist, but there is limited or no training and resources allocated to lead individual process maturity. Processes are irregular, undefined, reactive, and manual. Tools are siloed. The information would be available in a networked environment. This would be the first level where a return on investment should be realized, albeit slightly over break even.

Level 3 Maturity This level of implementation would only add more life-cycle phases, such as construction and supply, and incorporate them into the organization’s business process for collecting expanded data. There are disparate data stores. This level adds awareness of ITIL, which would mean that team-based roles and responsibilities exist but are still lacking program ownership. Adequate training would be available for implementing BIM concepts. Processes would be repeatable and documented, but they are still decentralized and nonstandard. Many tools would be available, but there is no central control. The involvement of construction and supply-related information is going to have a significant impact on the ROI, and one should expect at least a 2-to-1 return.

Level 4 Maturity This level of maturity would begin to interface with other software packages through direct interface translations. Data have now also become information carrying with some structure to ensure they are usable in these other applications. 2-D CAD drawings would reflect actual conditions. One would also spatially relate the information so spatial relationship analysis could be accomplished. A 3-to-1 return should be anticipated.



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Level 5 Maturity This level of implementation would include web-enabled services to further integrate and make available the BIM information throughout the organization. There are now clearly defined roles and responsibilities with program ownership established. There is now extensive training available for BIM implementation. Processes and procedures are documented and standardized across all teams. There are also centralized and robust tools utilized to enable the process. It may involve the use of handheld devices for capturing changes to ensure that the 2-D CAD drawings are kept up to date. By involving more participants, a higher ROI could be realized—an overall 3.5-to-1 return should be anticipated.

Level 6 Maturity At this level of maturity, one would begin taking full advantage of main­ tenance and operations information, as well as having those fully integrated as business processes to not only collect but also maintain BIM information. The returns at this level could be expected to be 4-to-1.

Level 7 Maturity This level of implementation would provide for a BIM connected to business processes that would collect and maintain information as part of accomplishing normal operations and maintenance, as with level 6. There are now quality-based performance incentives. Processes are monitored and measured. There is process integration between services support and service delivery. The BIM would also be integrated as part of a larger GIS model of the region or installation. The model of the building would now be 3-D, so more accurate volumetric information and visualization would be possible. The data would be near real time, since they are incorporated into the business processes, but no central full-time operations center would yet be in place. The savings here would exceed those identified in the NIST report and have been demonstrated to be as high as 4.5-to-1.

Level 8 Maturity The maturity of this level would be a full 3-D life-cycle implementation to include all financial information. This level would also be near-realtime information throughout the organization. Information interoperability would now also begin implementing IFCs for interoperability. An ROI of 5-to-1 would be anticipated.

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Level 9 Maturity This level of maturity would deliver a spatially related IFC-based building information model in a net centric environment. An optimal organizational structure and compliance exists for BIM. Processes are aligned with business objectives and are also optimized toward customer service. There is an emphasis on continuous improvement and an optimized tool architecture, utilization, and efficiency. Data and information have developed to a point where knowledge management techniques are employed to ensure their reusability and availability. The savings here would now exceed those identified in the NIST report and are projected to be as high as 5.5-to-1.

Level 10 Maturity This level of implementation would include full implementation of spatially related IFC-based BIMs throughout the life cycle for each facility used in a real-time, 24/7 environment, which would ideally be connected to other infrastructure activities to include emergency and first responder operations, environmental and utilities control, and communications to include networking and information assurance. The savings here would far exceed those identified in the NIST report and have been projected to be as high as 6-to-1.1 A scheduling process we use in our ePMO for smart cities is proving to be useful in coordinating, communicating, and collaborating from the field to the office. It is called even flow production.

EVEN FLOW PRODUCTION One area of production innovation that we use in our smart cities developments is in how we scale the build out of thousands of residential units in a condensed time period. We modified a well-known scheduling methodology used by large-scale production homebuilders in the United States called even flow production. In the even flow production system, construction scheduling and material procurement are managed from a centralized ePMO. The main objective of even flow is to start one home each working day and proceed evenly through the steps of construction, (installing windows in one home each day, insulating one home, painting one home, and so on) to complete and close one home each day. Approximately 200-210 homes can be delivered in a year in a “pure” one-start-a-day environment within each even flow ePMO.



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In even flow production, it is critical to have a sufficient workload to maintain a consistent, stable allocation of work. This is accomplished by combining the production capacity of multiple communities within one master schedule. The end result is a more reliable, predictable, and consistent production management system. All the homes are built according to a generic schedule template consisting of 69 workdays for all products and options. This system is used outside of manufactured home production, which has a much smaller time period for delivery. To keep production running smoothly and in order, progress of all homes may be halted on a nonworking day. A nonworking day is a day on which weather impacts progress of any of the homes under construction. For example, if the framer can’t frame due to weather, then all construction activity is halted, so as not to interrupt only one part of the production chain. We also require that each of our trade partners “broom sweep” the homes at the end of each working day. Some of the benefits we’ll recoup include ready homes, better qual­ ity, cleaner homes and communities, consistent and faster cycle times, just-in-time and quality material deliveries, accurate and reliable lookaheads, and happy customers. Predictable work allows trades to reduce crew sizes and cycle times for the same volume of work. Reduced costs will allow our company to offer compelling value, creating backlogs that keep the system fed. Even flow production in residential construction fits into the lean production arena through its attempt to improve reliability for trade contrac­ tor planning. Under current production management strategies, residential trade contractor workflow is extremely variable. In concept, an even flow of work has great intuitive appeal; it allows the trade contractors associated with the tract to plan and schedule their work. In our example tract with 100 homes and two starts per week, every trade contractor would expect to start work on two homes each week until the tract is completed. This expectation of a steady flow of work allows labor projections and crew assignments to be consistent. In return for consistency, home builders expect the trade contractors to maintain the same personnel at their tract, in order to capture certain perceived advantages. Chief among these is the opportunity for workers to become familiar with the product being constructed in the tract. This familiarity is expected to bring higher productivity. Further, each trade contractor’s workers become familiar with the expectations and practices of predecessor and successor trade contractors and can make better, more consistent handoffs with less management intervention on the part of the home builder. Finally, if the rate of production is constant, it is much easier for the home builder to forecast when each home will be completed, thereby increasing customer satisfaction.

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GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION (GSA) SERVICES During the ePMO process of the development of a smart city, there will be the phasing into the operational management of these high-performance cities. New roles, processes, and responsibilities will be created that will need disciplined control and a process of handover to a body of government. The TDG General Services Administration (GSA) is an example that provides the interim governance, operations, and management for smart cites while providing training, policy implementations, and handover from a privatized ePMO phase to a GSA phase and to an eventual handover to an operational government. The TDG GSA is an independent agency of the government that will be developing a smart city. It is established to help manage and support the basic functioning of smart city agencies. The TDG GSA supplies products and communications for smart city offices, provides transportation and office space to smart city municipal employees, and develops governmentwide cost-minimizing policies and other management tasks. The two primary functions of the TDG GSA will be the operations and management of the public buildings service (PBS) and the smart cities acquisition service (SCAS). Now that you have the actual blueprint, processes, and details of how to deliver smart cities, let’s take a look ahead to the future.

“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

6 The Road Ahead

T

hroughout this book, I have referenced smart cities projects that we have master planned, some that have been built, and most solutions that have been implemented. In this last chapter, I wanted to explore the future we have the privilege to create—a chapter to dream, push the envelope, and inspire you to release your imagination. Building off the previous chapter’s ideas, examples, and templates on how work gets done, allow me to continue a dialog that will provide a foundation for further dialog and commentary with you online through tools like social media. Here are some scenarios of how smart cities may evolve.

THE INTERNET OF BUILDINGS: THE NEW EPOCH OF COMPUTING In the digital universe, there are two kinds of bits: bits that represent structure (differences in space) and bits that represent sequence (differences in time). Digital computers, as designed by Alan Turing and delivered by John von Neumann, are machines and devices that translate between these two species of bits according to definite and disciplined rules. All kinds of computers—from mainframes to PCs to today’s smartphones—are delivered on this basis of design. This means we have data (numbers that mean things) and executable instructions (numbers that do things), including instructions to transfer control to another location and do something else, such as be communicated through the environment of the internet. Although this basis of design has brought extraordinary strides in improving the human condition over the past 70-plus years since the creation of the first digital computer, it has its limits. The rigidity of the Turing–von

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Neumann architecture of digital computers leads to logical inefficiencies of the machines, which, unlike living information processors, can only do one thing at a time, leaving the majority of the elaborate structure of the Turing– von Neumann architecture idle. We don’t want to ignore the great strides with parallel processing, quantum computing, and other frameworks that challenge the “one thing at a time” paradigm, but maybe there is a new way of approaching “computers.” Due to the limitations of the current state of digital architecture, we are witnessing the birth of a new architecture, an architecture that sits atop our current reliable substrate and takes its form not just from bits and bytes, but also from a new breed of bricks and mortar. Welcome to the new age, the new epoch of computing, the world of buildings as computers. Google represents a first glimpse of how this new age of computing is emerging as an “oracle machine,” using its own deterministic states with the nondeterministic input of human queries. It grows in intelligence organically like an organism, like a primitive form of AI. In the way the Turing–von Neumann machines allowed the understanding that numbers could mean numbers or instructions, our new age creates the under­standing that data can be a noun, a verb, or behave like an element. Witness the following realities in the AEC/FM and corporate real estate (CRE) industries that have emerged over the past few years: • Improved AEC operations that use digital technologies such as BIM, 4-D, and other process improvements in a digital format that creates the digital DNA of each building. • Smart buildings that can use an array of building automation systems (BAS), building control systems, and other operation and maintenance digital solutions (digital work order management, computer-aided facility management [CAFM], and so on) to create authenticated big data about the performance of a building on a continuous basis, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, • Government policies and contractual deliverables that require digital submissions of each building for things like permitting and “as-built/record documents,” and most recently, the migration to using smart contracts on a blockchain. • The growth and dominance of geographic information systems (GIS) to be used beyond mapping and seen as a foundation for other geospatial uses and solutions, as in FM. • The emergence of machine learning/AI tools like Midjourney and ChatGPT that challenge the traditional process of predesign, design, and construction document development.



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The convergence of these realities has produced the initial elements of 3-D geolocated data that are associated with a building. In fact, each building is using, and in most cases creating, data that are geospatially associated with itself, so each building is becoming its own storage container of data (memory or noun) that can be served up on demand like a computer server (processor or verb). Every building has the opportunity to be a server, and when you connect buildings together, you have a network. If you connect networks of buildings together, you have an internetwork of buildings, or the internet of buildings. Years from now, we will chuckle at our current state of having to build high-performance buildings to house our servers, called data centers, in order to have our current world of Turing–von Neumann computers work as efficiently and effectively as possible. In our emerging epoch of the internet of buildings, each building is its own “data center,” although there is no “center” to the data, only geospatial associations to a physical place on Earth (and as we move to outer space, coordinate-based physical places). The distributed nature of data that exploded into the consciousness of humanity through the emergence of the internet is now taking on a new form of existence through the geolocation of these data to specific objects, such as buildings, infrastructure, and other above-ground and belowground assets. This contextualization of data in a 3-D world is the basis of the design of our new age of the internet of buildings. Since the creation and association of the digital DNA of the built environment is based on Turing–von Neumann computers, there is an opportunity to emancipate these data from the limitations of how we know how to compute today into a new state of being. That state will incorporate computers with buildings that will take these data and organically use, store, and compute them as an organism—an organism that will not be a soulless application like today’s Google but an AI that will have empathy to its environment and its inhabitants, focused on safety, security, and a better user experience. The best technologies are those that are transparent to the process, but in the emerging reality of the internet of buildings, technologies are not only transparent but also invisibly integrated into the fabric of life where the worlds of physical and digital are blurred beyond recognition. The U.S. government calls this the cyber-physical world, which describes this phase of technology evolution perfectly. The market is calling this emerging age the internet of things (IoT), while other companies are calling it the internet of everything. It will be impossible to manage the internet of things/everything without providing a context, like a geospatial element (building, bridge, tunnel, and so on). This provides the entrance of the internet of buildings concept to the masses. In the way that people

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are more interested in their conversation and not the complexity of the technology that allows the conversation to happen, the internet of things/ everything needs to move into the background and allow the millions of known and unknown solutions to become associated with the physical world so as to provide context and meaning to the masses. The built environment provides this context. It is familiar, and it is transparent. It is the physical world meeting the virtual world. We have a collision of one of the world’s most populous industries (AEC/FM) with one of the world’s most innovative industries (technology). When a disruption of this magnitude happens, the shift is seismic. Knowing that this collision is happening provides you with the knowledge to either get hit by this trend or align yourself with the trend for success. This collision is resulting in the realignment of power in each industry. Potentially, general contractors, PC manufacturers, and proprietary software developers are about to be tossed into the dustbin of history due to this collision, not because they are bad people or doing a bad job but because their “cheese has moved,” and most of them don’t know it yet. General contractors (GCs) created power by being the “middleman” between subtrades and the contract (also known as subcontractors). The GC is at risk of losing its middleman position as more and more specialty trades are being asked to use smart contracts and other emerging technologies like generative pretraining transformers (GPT).

SMART CONTRACTS Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is the formal term used to create the large bucket of descriptions that the media calls blockchain. In its essence, it is a decentralized approach to managing data in a trusted digital environment. The design of DLT/blockchain is very attractive to the industry for the following reasons: • Our industry already works in a decentralized framework where we use contracts to describe the who, what, why, and how (and how much) to build a building on a specific project. • Blockchain places data into a data block that becomes trusted over time through the chain of immutable data. Our traditional contracts of owner/architect, owner/general contractor, and general contractor/subcontractor that are based on a parent/child framework are a seamless fit for a function of DLT/blockchain technology called smart contracts. A more formal description is that a smart contract is a transaction protocol that is intended to automatically



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execute, control, or document legally relevant events and actions according to the terms of a contract or an agreement.1 A smart contract is one of the major technological breakthroughs for our industry, as it provides a trusted system that is familiar yet provides a stream­lining and improvement of many project functions such as quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC), work in place, project payments, and so on (Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1   Smart contract in the construction process.

An interesting outcome of the current experimentation of blockchainbased smart contracts is the emergence of specifications being drivers of process. As mentioned earlier, data can behave like an element or a compound element like water. Water can be in states of ice (solid), liquid, or steam. The data that make up a construction document specification can also be in different states. Traditional written specs that are part of the specification manual and make up the written narrative of construction documents will continue to be the primary state of specs for the foreseeable

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future. But as smart contracts become more prominently used in the market, construction documents will be referenced as part of the transactional process. This means that specs will be used beyond a reference book; rather, they will be used to measure the performances of building materials, equipment, and appliances over a life cycle, not just during the construction contract phase. This is due to the immutable nature of blockchain and the unlimited transactions smart contracts provide. Another state of specs is when they are used for geolocation in a 3-D BIM. As more BIMs are extending their initial use as part of construction documents and into the use as a digital twin, enterprising companies are also developing the digital twin as a virtual world in the metaverse. This means that specs are being used to provide the 3-D geolocation of objects, assets, and systems that represent the building, giving the foundation for the future of 3-D searching of the metaverse. Other emerging discoveries we are seeing with the use of DLT/ blockchain is the emergence of real-estate-backed digital asset securities.

REAL-ESTATE-BACKED DIGITAL ASSET SECURITIES We are using DLT to create fungible tokens that act as financial security for our digital assets, like BIM. The intrinsic value of the physical real estate asset acts as our digital twin financially, providing a robust trading market for our digital assets—real-estate-backed digital asset securities. The digital elements we create in BIM are more secure against counterfeiting or use without authorization and then pinned against the value of the real estate they represent. We are developing a classification of securities that will move beyond BIM being the only digital asset. DLT allows us to “nest” digital assets, such as nonfungible tokens (NFTs), of various classes of securities into a single physical asset, thus allowing the intrinsic value of the physical asset to be used as the foundation of the digital asset. Any transactions (licensing and so on) of the digital asset then build the value of that digital asset. In time, the real-world value of a digital asset becomes more valuable than the physical real estate it represents. Other measures we are currently developing for digital assets on the blockchain will lead to innovative financial vehicles that we are benchmarking against current securities markets, such as futures, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), mutual funds, and so on. Other areas of interest concerning measures include the real-world revenues and costs of an actual building being used on our blockchain to tie and pin these data to the digital asset as financial performance reporting.



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By associating these key financial performance indicators of the physical real estate to the digital asset, we hope to increase the value of the digital asset to become the foundation measure of digital real estate. Tracking immutable data on the blockchain in a continuous manner provides the trust to put a value on the digital real estate. To open up a portfolio of digital real estate assets as fungible tokens leads us to believe that the next step would be to take each securitized digital asset and fractionalize each digital twin to democratize digital real estate ownership and develop a marketplace where shareholders of these securitized fractions could be bought and sold. Let me provide some background on NFTs. NFT is an acronym for “nonfungible token.” Using blockchain technology, an NFT can be “minted” to document digital ownership of an underlying physical or digital asset and constitutes a unique certificate of authenticity. Further, the blockchain provides the protection and transferability enabled by distributed ledger technology. Representing anything from tweets to real estate—NFTs are ultimately digital collectibles. NFTs are different from other blockchainbased assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoin that are identical, interchangeable, and ultimately fungible. This is because NFTs represent nonfungible, divisible, and transferable pieces of ownership in distinct assets. The cryptographic origins of NFTs ensure their digital scarcity and proof of ownership. NFTs can be used across a variety of applications, such as digital art or collectibles. This type of item is of particular interest to digital artists and IP owners, as it prevents the art or collectible from being endlessly copied, and a specific piece of digital art or collectible can have a verifiable chain of custody. In some cases, the artist (IP owner) can collect royalties on an item that passes between different owners multiple times. The emergence of token standards like ERC721 allows us to customize these ideas even further to create scarce, liquid, tradable goods on a global scale. This allows the design, construction, and real estate industries to reimagine our own digital assets like BIM and think about the systems that make up a building and put an NFT value to that building’s mechanical, plumbing, electrical, and ICT systems. Since each system is unique to that building, the NFT model fits seamlessly into the existing taxonomy and construction documentation, including specifications, drawings, and models. Wrapping a fungible token around the numerous NFTs that make up a building provides the framework for the before-mentioned description of measurable digital real estate.

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THE ROAD AHEAD The road ahead for smart cities is limitless, but I hope the term “smart cities” goes away in the future and we can just call them cities. It is an amazing time to reimagine the who, what, why, when, and how high-performing urban environments can improve the human condition without imposing restrictive technologies and processes that could be used for nefarious intentions such as abusive surveillance, unwarranted citywide lockdowns, and politically motivated incarcerations. Smart cities are not the cure for human greed and neutralizing bad actors; in fact, they may exacerbate some of those situations. The promise of smart cities is to inspire, delight, and respond to people’s aspirations, goals, and dreams in dense, urban environments. It is my hope that highperformance urban environments are not what Hollywood movies and certain books foresee as a dystopian future. Those futures represent a lazy vision empty of creativity. Catering to the dark side of the human condition is easy and only confirms a lack of imagination. The same critique can be given to the futurists who develop utopian visions of grandeur with either indifference or incompetence in their understanding of how humans live. I was reminded of this during our CLARA project, when a member of the Australian Parliament offered some remarks after I gave a presentation to the legislative body of our master plan. He was very generous with his accolades regarding our master plan, saying that I understood the Australian spirit of rebalancing the Australian settlement. He went on to ask a few questions that resulted in his final question, “Where are the brothels to be located in the proposed smart cities in Victoria? Brothels are legal in the State of Victoria, and I do not see an accommodation for them in your master plan.” I was speechless but responded that I would need to get back to him. I mention this situation to highlight that when designing cities for people, one needs to understand that people are going to be people. As humans, we have emotions, desires, biases, and a multitude of feelings, beliefs, and mindsets that make us individuals. Because of this lesson learned, I may not overtly master plan red light districts into my smart cities designs, but I am more careful to design areas of my cities that allow the local community to permit “people to be people” while keeping in mind the local customs, ethics, morals, and beliefs. I have learned that utopia does not exist, but we can try to build upon human wants, needs, and desires to do our best to achieve healthy, livable, and sustainable futures. It is not an easy thing to design, construct, and deliver an operational smart city that the majority of people enjoy. I have to think of solutions



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for problems that have not yet emerged. In the age of autonomous trans­ portation, do we need street curbs? Does the street grid go away, and do we create a great experience for walking in all types of climates by placing buildings according to local conditions? If we dynamically power our EV/ AV vehicles through piezoelectric power generation embedded in the road, who is responsible for the management of that road, the Department of Transportation or the local power company? This book was written with different readers in mind. The broad nature of the topic of smart cities makes a comprehensive compendium almost impossible to deliver, as the topic is still emerging as a definition. The reason and ethos of this book was to begin a conversation as a community about smart cities, while documenting some successes both at an ingredient (innovation) level and highlighting macro success on a project level (recipe). Some readers may view certain chapters as too deep or too shallow in detail. It was my challenge to provide a balance of the topic of smart cities. I am humbled with the responsibility of not just talking about smart cities, but planning, designing, and delivering our smart cities projects and solutions. I am blessed to be in this position at this moment in time. There are tremendous challenges that are still before us and continuously emerging that I challenge the readers of this book to take on as part of their own journeys. The fate of the human race is contingent on how we collectively respond.

Endnotes

Chapter 1





1. Ayyoob Sharifi and Amir Reza Khavarian-Garmsin, “The COVID-19 Pandemic: Impacts on Cities and Major Lessons for Urban Planning,” National Library of Medicine (2020), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC7499053/.

2. “Preparing for China’s Urban Billion,” McKinsey Global Institute report (February 1, 2009). 3. “India’s Urban Awakening,” McKinsey Global Institute (2010).

4. MIT, “Urban Anthologies: Learning from our Cities,” Senseable City Lab (2010).

Chapter 2

1. Timm J. Finfrock, James D. Hill, and David A. Bateman, Hydrogen/ Oxygen Generator with D.C. Servo Integrated Control, U.S. Patent #9,043,167 B2, filed March 15, 2011, and issued May 19, 2015.

Chapter 3



1. Dr. Karen Stephenson, Quantum Theory of Trust (Hoboken, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008).

2. Jennifer Castenson, “Homes Build in Seven Minutes Overseas; Innovation That’s Needed Here and Now,” Forbes (June 23, 2021), https://www.forbes. com/sites/jennifercastenson/2021/06/23/homes-built-in-seven-minutesoverseas-innovation-thats-needed-here-and-now/?sh=43a25921fc40 . 3. James Nevius, “New York’s Build Environment was Shaped by Pandemics,” Curbed (March 19, 2020), https://ny.curbed.com/2020/ 3/19/21186665/coronavirus-new-york-public-housing-outbreak-history.

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132  Endnotes



4. Robert Swope, “Intelligent Transit for the IT City Nashville,” Intelligent Transit whitepaper (2018), https://www.intelligenttransitnashville.com/ the-intelligent-transit-plan.

Chapter 4

1. UK Task & Finish Group for Infrastructure, Business Model, Financing, and Procurement (2019).

2. Claude Viallet and Gabriel Hawawini, Finance for Executives: Managing For Value Creation, 2010 (Southwestern College Publications, 2010). 3. EIB (European Investment Bank), “Shaping Sustainable Cities,” Luxemburg (May 30, 2013), http://tinyurl.com/k2wwxse.

4. SPP Innovation through Sustainable Procurement (2011), https://icleieurope.org/projects/?c=search&uid=ewkb0HCW.

5. Coral Gables Smart City Hub (2019-Present), https://cg-hubdev-cggis. opendata.arcgis.com/.

Chapter 5

1. National BIM Standard—United States® version 3, National Institute of Building Sciences building SMART alliance, 2013.

Chapter 6

1. Stephen J. Bigelow, Blockchain: An immutable ledger to replace the database (TechTarget 2021), https://www.techtarget.com/ searchitoperations/tip/Blockchain-An-immutable-ledger-toreplace-the-database.