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MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
Spring 2013 £9Future cities | Transforming cities for the better
Military engagement | Reacting faster with the latest in ITDynamics AX | Realising the ‘Dynamic Government’ approach
Smart and sustainable Spanish ecocity works with Invensys Wonderware Spain to turn its unique vision into a reality
“Barcelona wants to become a people-oriented city, where
technology contributes to achieving a greater welfare, quality of life and boosting
economic progress”Josep Ramon Ferrer, Barcelonatouch
ONwINDOwS.COM
touchEditor Rebecca Lambert, [email protected] News and online editor Karen MccandlessEditorial team Amber Stokes, Sean Dudley, Lindsay James
Editorial contributorsFernando Reino da costa, unisys; Josep Ramon Ferrer, Barcelona city council; Andrew hawkins, Microsoft AdvertisingFor advertising enquiries, please contact Andy clayton-Smith on +44 116 222 9900 or [email protected]
Publication manager Andy clayton-Smith, [email protected]
Partner managers claire Brown, tim Grayson, christian Jones,Ricky Popat SubscriptionsMichael Geraghty, [email protected] ReprintsStuart Fairbrother, [email protected] Publishertoby Ingleton Art direction Bruce Graham Design Paul Robinson, Libby SidebothamCreative direction Leigh trowbridgePhotography cover photography courtesy of Invensys operations ManagementAdditional photography by www.istockphoto.com Website development chris Jackson, Joe DawsonCirculation Ritwik BhattacharjeeBusiness management Rachael heggs, Lesley Krotochwil,Richard Pepperman, Lynn Yates
Microsoft Tag Scan or snap the tag below for more information on Touch and Microsoft technology for enterprise businesses. to get a tag Reader, visit http://gettag.mobi on your mobile phone browser.
A sustainable futureWelcome to the Spring 2013 issue of Touch. Reading through this issue, you’ll notice
that future cities is a theme we come back to time and again – and for good reason.
Today, according to the UN, around 50 per cent of the world’s population currently lives
in cities. This figure is expected to rise to 75 per cent by 2050. It’s no surprise then that
governments across EMEA and beyond are putting smart city development at the top of
their agendas to not only cope with significantly growing populations, but also to improve
citizen well-being, boost economic activity and ensure long-term sustainability.
In our main feature on page 24, you can find out more about some of the future
city initiatives already being rolled out, as well as the technological innovations from
Microsoft and its partners that are helping cities become smarter and continue to thrive.
In our cover story, we profile a city that is working with Microsoft partner Invensys
Wonderware Spain to realise its eco-friendly vision. From page 18, discover how Ecocity
Valdespartera, the first urban development project in Spain that is governed entirely by
bioclimatic criteria, is taking advantage of real-time operations management software to
run its city operations in a highly efficient manner.
Elsewhere in the magazine, we cover everything from the future of military engagement
through to the latest IT implementation stories across EMEA.
I hope you enjoy the issue.
Per Bendix Olsen
Senior Director, Public Sector Partners
Microsoft EMEA
1
FOREwORDSPRING 2013
COVER STORY
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ECOCITY VALDESPARTERA
Located on a former military barracks
site south of the city of Zaragoza in
Aragón, Spain, Ecocity Valdespartera is a
revolutionary social housing project that
is putting the environment and the well
being of its citizens first.
Ecocity Valdespartera is the first urban
development project in Spain to be
governed entirely by bioclimatic criteria in
line with the objectives of environmental
sustainability contained in the Kyoto
Protocol. It is also the largest social housing
project in the country so far. Spread over
243.2 hectares of land are 9,680 homes,
97 per cent of which are dedicated to
social housing, as well as landscaped
public spaces, social, sporting and teaching
facilities, and direct transport links to the
centre of Zaragoza by tram or bus.
Ecocity Valdespartera welcomed its
first residents in 2007, following ten years
of negotiation, planning and building. It
was in 1999 that the project first began to
take shape, when the opportunity arose to
convert existing Spanish army barracks land
into a modern, environmentally-friendly
social housing urban development. In
2001, the City of Zaragoza signed the first
agreement with the Spanish Ministry of
Defence, the land’s proprietor, and through
a partial plan the foundations were laid for
this revolutionary project. The following
year, the public capital company Ecociudad
Valdespartera was established, comprising
the City of Zaragoza, Government of
Aragón and Aragón’s Caja de Ahorros de la
Inmaculada (CAI) savings bank and Ibercaja
bank. The University of Zaragoza would later
also become involved in the project, taking
charge of assessing energy consumption.
In May 2003, the final plans for the urban
development project were approved and work
began on developing the ecocity’s general
systems. The first building permits were then
issued in 2004, containing the environmental
criteria of the urban and architectural layout.
The ambitious nature of the proposal
– creating a city where bioclimatic
management was not a later improvement
alternative but was built into the project’s
development – meant that Valdespartera’s
management team had to consider
integrating and running all of the city’s
facilities with a centralised IT system. This
Spanish ecocity takes advantage of real-time operations management solution from Invensys wonderware Spain to turn its unique vision into a reality. Rebecca Lambert reports
Smartandsustainable
19
system had to efficiently manage everything
from the drinking water supply network,
sewage and rainwater treatment network,
watering systems and electricity and gas
supplies, to street lighting, pneumatic
waste collection and the housing and
environmental control network to ensure
the entire city operates according to the
original plan’s sustainability criteria. In
addition, the system had to be able to
help evaluate, analyse and disseminate
operational information between all
stakeholders involved in the initiative.
Choosing the right technology
Noelia Olona, technical area manager of
Ecocity Valdespartera, and her colleagues
decided that the best IT solution to
meet the new city’s needs was Invensys
Operations Management’s Wonderware
real-time operations management software.
They felt that Wonderware, used in
conjunction with Microsoft Windows
and SQL Server, would best facilitate the
overall management and analysis of an
urban environment in which a multitude
of systems and technologies were involved.
One key thing the Wonderware system
had to do was support the city’s bioclimatic
requirements. These requirements
are summarised in the partial plan as
three main principles. The first is urban
planning, which, in addition to the design
of optimised general services, such as
pneumatic waste collection, is based on
the orientation of buildings for the best
use of light to the placement of screens to
reduce the impact of wind. Secondly, the
architecture was designed to be sustainable,
with flat roofs to accommodate solar panels,
glass galleries to serve as energy collectors
or various finishes on façades to handle
the effects of adverse weather conditions.
Finally, a suitable construction system
promotes the use of materials with a high
level of insulation and renewable features,
such as locally sourced wood to prevent the
high energy costs involved in the import of
exotic species. As Olona explains: “The city
is a full-scale sustainability laboratory.”
In order to define a technical structure
that would comply with the planned
bioclimatic requirements, Invensys
Wonderware Spain designed nine
Ecocity Valdespartera is a revolutionary social housing development with energy-efficient urban design at its core
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COVER STORY ECOCITY VALDESPARTERA
management networks to manage all of
Valdespartera’s services and processes.
“There is a drinking water network that
collects its supply from various municipal
deposits; a watering network supplied
by the Imperial Canal, which is separate
from the drinking water supply in order to
prevent contamination of the subsoil with
chlorine; and two sanitation networks,
one for rainwater and another for sewage,
differentiated in order to take advantage of
rainwater for watering purposes,” explains
Olona. “A network was also designed to
monitor energy consumption levels in
homes, monitored by the University of
Zaragoza. This analyses whether the energy
saving targets defined in the plan are being
reached. We also developed a network for
electricity and gas, which included building
its own substation thanks to an agreement
with Endesa; and a network with the weather
station to collect environmental information
and contextualise it with other city systems
such as watering, street lighting network and
pneumatic waste collection network.”
With sustainability a priority, it was
important to define the actual behaviour of
the new urban environment. “It was essential
to verify that the urban and architectural
measures adopted would serve to comply
with the bioclimatic objectives outlined at the
beginning of the project,” explains Olona.
In addition, the city’s commitment to
participate in the Concerto Program, a
European Union initiative designed to
develop energy efficient urban spaces,
required the creation of a knowledge base
regarding the actions taken. “The remote
system with Wonderware would allow us to
gather real-time data for later analysis and
dissemination,” says Olona. Therefore the
main objective was to obtain an integrated
view of the behaviour of all the operations
in the urban service networks, defining
a common data capture infrastructure to
measure and transmit information to a
unified control centre that would monitor
compliance with the environmental criteria.
Integrated services
The integral remote control project was
structured in three stages to coincide with
the phases of the city’s civil engineering
works. The pace of the construction work of
the spaces progressed during the first and
second stages, as buildings were constructed
and conduit infrastructure was introduced
for the fibre optics and electrical installations
of the fieldbus that would manage all
the remote control system devices. In
addition, the contractors began to deploy
the instrumentation equipment, which
would later serve to manage the network –
motorised valves, pressure and light sensors,
flow meters, level systems and pumps.
The communications infrastructure was
consolidated during the third stage, wiring
the conduits already installed and finally,
the Wonderware software was deployed to
connect each of the management systems
with the operations centre.
Once this was all completed, the control
system was structured into three main
21
areas. The first control ‘galaxy’ contains four
programmable logic controllers comprising
the critical services related to the core
operations of the hydraulic system: the
filtering system for the watering supply taken
from the Imperial Canal; the tanks where the
rainwater is collected; the municipal deposits
of drinking water and watering supply; and
the operations around Lake Penélope Cruz,
which is used as a backup system.
A second ‘galaxy’ has been formed by 196
control points receiving information from
the various components of the nine service
networks: water flow rates, consumption,
water supply quality, rainwater control,
consumption and programming of watering
allocations, street lighting consumption,
electricity consumption, waste volume and
classification, meteorological parameters and
so forth. The final area contains 78 ‘cabinets’,
one for each urbanised parcel, which gather
information on electricity, water and gas
consumption provided by the 9,000 digital
meters installed in each of the dwellings. In
total, 21,483 signals are received across 30
kilometres of fibre optic cable structured in
five rings of redundant communication via
fibre optics and wireless signals.
All of these networks are centralised in
a Sustainable Urban Centre (SUC) on two
servers running Wonderware – one contains
the system’s logic and the other stores all
historical information about the ecocity. In
addition to having workstations, operators
of the remote control infrastructure have a
video wall to oversee all operations. Users
can access the system by using specific
passwords according to the process they
want to monitor (water supply, watering,
sewage, street lighting).
The information collected has two main
destinations – it is automatically distributed
to the various technical services responsible
for operations within the city council, and it is
stored to create a database of public interest
knowledge related to the management of
urban energy efficiency. In fact, the University
of Zaragoza is already conducting the first
analysis of how Valdespartera is functioning
and will produce data on the true impact of its
bioclimatic design.
Building a common infrastructure
“An urban planning model such as
Ecocity Valdespartera Zaragoza cannot be
conceived without having a control and
analysis system to manage these integrated
operations,” explains Olona, emphasising
that Wonderware, in addition to providing
this functionality, has also allowed
them to connect all networks without
the need to acquire new technology.
“We have a common infrastructure
today with an integrated view of all the
municipal services and housing.” The
fact that Wonderware is standard is, in
Olona’s opinion, a key benefit for the
projects implemented within the public
administration, where “the existence of a
multitude of specifications, construction
companies and, therefore, systems cannot
be avoided.”
The Invensys solution helps the city efficiently manage its operations in real time
www.onwindows.com
COVER STORY ECOCITY VALDESPARTERA
“One of the key innovations of
Valdespartera from a technology perspective
is the comprehensiveness of the integrated
management system. Many cities have
experimented with ‘smart’ components, but
here we have a highly advanced model,” says
Jordi Rey, managing director of Invensys
Wonderware Spain. “Valdespartera is a
unique example of how the cities of the future
can be designed using data to make intelligent
decisions on a wide range of public services.”
Real-time insight
The ecocity is already taking advantage of
the Wonderware remote control system
in a number of ways and new features will
gradually be added to the network that go
beyond integral monitoring. “Protocols have
been defined for water operations according
to the time of year – spring, winter, autumn,
summer – and the days and hours on
which they have to be activated have been
determined,” says Olona. “If an error occurs,
the same system would alert us in real time to
resolve it, and if the weather conditions vary
in relation to the defined protocol, we can
manually reprogram the system.”
Valdespartera’s ability to run multiple
operations and connect seamlessly with
external systems from a single location
in an efficient manner makes this project
particularly unique. By using Wonderware
technology to monitor daily operational data
and processes, the management team can
cross-check information to ascertain how a
particular action impacts on others and thus
verify compliance with the environmental
requirements specified in the original design
of the city. “The remote control system helps
to resolve two key issues for an intelligent
city such as Valdespartera. It guarantees the
remote control and management of municipal
networks, and helps to assess and analyse the
environmental impact of their operations in
an integrated manner,” says Olona.
Adding new functionality
The management team also appreciates the
flexibility Wonderware gives them to add
functionality as and when they require it.
“We added processes and signals to the
system whenever we wanted without having
to restructure everything again,” Olona says.
“The system not only allows us to check that
all our services are running and functioning
correctly, but it also allows us to open and
close valves, and shut off certain operations
to perform maintenance. This allows us to
achieve considerable cost savings in terms of
managing tasks, which earlier required the
presence of an operator and today can be
handled directly from the control centre.”
Today, the SUC has access to data relating
to meteorology and pollution in Valdespartera
and this can be contextualised with other
points in the city and area, such as general
and specific consumption in the housing
estate, housing behaviour in relation to
energy efficiency and comfort, energy and
environmental data specific to buildings and
their own ancillary, renewable facilities and
information on the supply of drinking water.
This can be compared to statistics from other
areas of the city council, as well as information
on the collection of urban waste and sewage,
among many other issues.
With the project now fully up and running,
a study is currently underway to access the
feasibility of adding new functionality to the
system, such as video monitoring of all the
technical facilities in Valdespartera (tanks
and filter station). The possibility of giving
the city council direct access to information
on household energy consumption for billing
purposes is also being considered.
Based on the success of this project so far,
management at Ecocity Valdespartera have
applied for a patent, which protects both the
project development’s methodology, as well
as its technical and technological structure.
Data is currently being collected and analysed
to identify the energy and cost savings already
being achieved. The aim is to demonstrate
that energy-efficient urban design is not only
feasible, but it can be deployed in a highly
successful and cost-effective manner.
“The remote system with wonderware would allow
us to gather real-time data for later analysis and
dissemination”
Noelia OlonaEcocity Valdespartera
City management can use data to make intelligent decisions about the running of public services
Avantis Eurotherm Foxboro IMServ InFusion SimSci-Esscor Skelta Triconex Wonderware
Traffic that flows. Intelligent buildings that save energy. A public infrastructure that delivers whole new levels of service at lower cost. Systems, assets, people and the environment living in harmony.
You have imagined ArchestrA, the Wonderware technology that lets you manage your infrastructure as you like in an integrated way. Open, scalable, affordable.
Turn imagination into reality with Wonderware. Visit wonderware.com/Infrastructure for more info.
© Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. Invensys, the Invensys logo, Avantis, Eurotherm, Foxboro, IMServ, InFusion, Skelta, SimSci-Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware are trademarks of Invensys plc, its subsidiaries or affiliates. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Facility Management • Environment • Power • Smart Cities • Transportation • Waste • Water & Wastewater
www.onwindows.com
FEATURECITIES OF THE FUTURE
“What is the future of cities?” asks David
Burrows, managing director for EMEA
government, Worldwide Public Sector at
Microsoft. With the UN Population Fund
predicting that by 2050, 75 per cent of
the world’s population will live in cities,
this is a good question. And according
to Burrows, if these densely populated
cities are going to thrive, we need to do
something about creating opportunity,
improving education skills and
enhancing economic activity, which will
lead to job and wealth creation, while at
the same time making them attractive
and sustainable places to live and work.
But why are we talking about cities
and not countries? McKinsey Global
Institute has found that cities generate
the vast majority of a country’s GDP
– 64 per cent for Western Europe.
According to Manuel Sanroma, CIO
of Barcelona, they also tend to be
more permanent than the countries
they are based in: “Barcelona has
been around for 2,000 years. I’m not
sure how much longer Spain will
be.” Meanwhile, Joe Dignan, analyst
at Ovum, believes that countries
are more of a 19th or 20th century
concept and the thinking needs to
start at a more local level. Underlining
this city emphasis, US President
Barack Obama has been challenged to
come up with an ambitious proposal
for his second term: to create a new
federal Department of Cities by cities
guru Richard Florida.
But as Ruthbea Yesner Clarke,
research director of smart cities
strategies at IDC, points out, this
doesn’t necessarily have to be a city
in the traditional sense. “It could
be a town, a province, a county, a
metropolitan area or even a university
campus,” says Clarke. “It is anything that
Karen McCandless takes a look at the technology and initiatives that are driving the development of cities of the future
Urbaninnovation
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FEATURECITIES OF THE FUTURE
has a local governing authority and uses
ICT to help achieve its goals.”
The catalyst for creating a city of the
future is often a major event, adds Dignan.
Take the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de
Janiero, the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar
or the 2014 Commonwealth Games in
Glasgow – a city which has just won a £24
million grant from the UK’s Technology
Strategy Board to become Britain’s first
‘future city’. Events like these are helping
to transform cities for the better as it means
there is an immovable date by which
integrated services need to be in place.
And why is the concept of a ‘smart city’
so important? Clarke explains: “Developing
smart cities is key, as we look at a globally
competitive environment with increased
personal mobility. The ultimate goal is to
attract businesses and citizens to a vibrant
economy and provide a better quality of life
in a sustainable way.”
“Cities are starting to compete against each
other to attract talent and are viewing the
concept of cities of the future as a key way to
do that,” says Jordi Rey, managing director
of Invensys Wonderware Spain. “And with
the exodus from the country to the city,
cities need to provide extra employment
opportunities, better infrastructure and a
more pleasant living environment.”
To enable this, cities need to use IT to
deliver better services and work towards a
model that puts the citizen at the centre of
these services. “Technology is often viewed
as a short-term solution to problems,
rather than a longer-term driver of social
and societal change,” says Bjorn Schmitz,
Microsoft partner manager – Applications
& Solutions, QNH Consulting. “However
as the world’s cities struggle from over-
crowding issues, environmental concerns,
travel congestion and economic pressures,
technology has emerged as the front-runner
in the battle to facilitate a sustainable city
for the 21st century.”
“Governments can use technology to
expand social and economic opportunities
and better serve and protect citizens,” says
Burrows. “This could be for economic
development, to help new companies to start
up, or to enable the delivery of core enabling
technology such as wireless networks.”
According to Dignan, the four riders of
the IT apocalypse – cloud, ‘the Internet
of Things’, consumerisation of IT and the
economy have driven the market forward.
“The market has changed from vision to
deployment – it’s moved from how do you
do it to let’s do it,” he says.
And cities around the world rely on
technology from Microsoft and its partners
to help address their needs related to
challenges in six key areas: education,
environmental sustainability, government,
health, power and utilities, and public safety.
As cities compete against each other to attract talent, they need to use IT to deliver better services to their citizens
27
EducationTo enable these future cities, local authorities
must provide education institutions with the
tools to develop students as global citizens.
In turn, educators need to connect everyone
in a learning community to the people,
information, and resources they need and keep
students, educators, and staff connected and
engaged, anytime and anywhere. This could
be through technologies such as Skype or
Polycom’s RealPresence video solutions.
“Enabling long distance learning through
Polycom video conferencing solutions will
increase accessibility to education and training
for citizens,” says Marci Powell, global director
for Education at Polycom. “In addition,
resources such as lectures and course notes can
be made available through video on demand.
Allowing citizens to access these video
resources via libraries or other community
centres can increase participation and a sense
of belonging in the community. For example,
allowing those whose native language isn’t
English to learn via video link will help them
integrate and connect with the culture and
people around them. And with RealPresence,
we can more efficiently deliver programmes
that attract and retain the most talented
students and staff from across the globe.”
Government“Citizens are demanding better, faster, easier
services from city governments, no matter
where they are, when it is or how they are
choosing to communicate,” says Burrows.
“They also want better accountability,
transparency and service delivery. This could
be through the cloud, where with Microsoft
Windows Azure, we can bring services and
information to citizens anytime, anywhere.
Mobile devices, tablets and social networking,
meanwhile, can enable a better connection
between citizens and government and enable
citizens to access services anytime, anywhere
on a device of their choosing.”
Alphonzo Albright, global director of
government solutions at Polycom, adds:
“What I envision is citizen services solutions
centres, which are secure, single-stop
community organisations. They will connect
local governments to citizens through video
kiosks, which can also be placed in libraries or
community centres. Using this technology, city
Viewpoint: Håkan Kårdén, Eurostep Group
Digital data sharing
The issue of resource scarcity has never been as critical as today due to rapidly increasing consumption of energy and material resources in industrialised and developing countries. In order to deal with the problem of resource scarcity and waste generation simultaneously, we need to think of both evolutionary and revolutionary approaches. The EC working paper Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe published in 2011 outlines resource conservation and resource management in the lifecycle perspective as key approaches to deal with this problem.
Eurostep and The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, have together with a number of other European organisations outlined a project to develop an innovative and practical framework, supported by a lifecycle management software platform for the industrial implementation of closed-loop manufacturing systems.
Eurostep’s software platform Share-A-space is to be used in the project and is ideally suited as it covers the complete life cycle of products and collaboration amongst many partners. The systems engineering capabilities in Share-A-space as well as the capabilities to keep track of configurations in an installed base will be important for the projects.
The concept of cradle to cradle, or circular economy, is described in an easy to digest way at the website of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org
Håkan Kårdén is CEO of Eurostep Group
Håkan Kårdén explains how his company’s Share-A-space solution is enabling energy and resource conservation
!
Viewpoint: Bjorn Schmitz, QNH Consulting
How to create a smart city
A smarter city may mean one that uses data on traffic to ease congestion or one that aims to join up services to provide better information for citizens. In an ever-connected world it makes sense to hook entire cities up to the network. For many, it is about making cities greener and more efficient. For some, it is about how to live longer, how to be happy and how to be healthy by optimising your lifestyle and surroundings.
Moving to the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 as part of an IT modernisation strategy is a good step to creating smarter cities. Office 365 will increase efficiency and help
departments and agencies better serve the needs of citizens without compromising on security or privacy. The OneGov solution – of which QNH is one of the three solution providers – can also help. It makes it possible to deliver digital customer-oriented and innovative services to citizens.
Bjorn Schmitz is Microsoft partner manager – Applications & Solutions, QNH Consulting
Cloud computing can help public sector organisations better serve citizens’ needs, says Bjorn Schmitz
!
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FEATURECITIES OF THE FUTURE
authorities can record information and send
it out as a webcast, a video on demand or via
social networking. This could enable citizens
to do their taxes over video, council workers
could carry out case management tasks, and
social workers could correspond with children
and families virtually to lighten the case load.
Citizens can also pick which government
department they need and engage with them
in a video chat.”
This can be facilitated through Polycom’s
RealPresence CloudAXIS Suite, which allows
users to connect with anyone using different
video chat applications, like Skype and
Facebook. According to Albright, this will
create opportunities for citizens to have a say in
the way that services are delivered and improve
community engagement. The government
becomes a platform for citizen participation
rather than simply a service provider.
“As well as improving community
engagement, this is a massive cost savings
initiative,” he says. “With the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute finding that Americans
US$6.1bnThe smart city technology market will grow from US$6.1 billion annually in 2012 to US$20.2 billion in 2020 Source: Pike Research
50%At least 50 per cent of smart city programmes will be initiated at the line-of-business or city-function level
Source: IDC
Saab’s SAFE solution offers enhanced situational awareness capabilities for mission-critical operations
Solution profile: Invensys Wonderware
Managing infrastructure through one platform
Most cities have been formed and evolved over time, with a patchwork of roads, buildings, utility systems and infrastructure. Much like the situation a few decades ago in industry, within these municipalities, there are often islands of automation, as systems have been implemented and run in silos.
Invensys wonderware can help cities to connect all the components – such as mobility and transport systems, waste and recycling, street lighting and environmental sustainability – in an automated manner. It provides efficient management of city services through a real-time integrated platform, as well as remote execution of operations, and offers connectivity to most device standards in a secure way. Connecting these elements enables more intelligent operations and allows systems to work in a
predictive way. For example parks are watered according to the weather and time of year, citizen emergencies are detected by cameras and automatically warn those responsible for incidents, and lighting is automatically controlled based on the time of year. we work with cities like Barcelona, as well as airport operator AENA and the Generalitat de Catalunya railways, to better manage civic infrastructure through one platform.
with this technology, cities can manage their infrastructure in an integrated way, thus enabling them to control budgets, improve environmental sustainability, better manage their resources and ultimately provide a better place for citizens to live.
Jordi Rey is managing director at Invensys Wonderware Spain
Jordi Rey explains how Invensys’ Wonderware technology can enable the cities of the future
!
wasted an average of US$818 each sitting
in traffic in 2011 – amounting to US$121
billion in total – the money saved through the
decrease in travel would be significant.”
HealthAccording to Christina Bivona-Tellez, global
manager of Health and Human Services at Esri,
health is one of the core foundational elements
for a prosperous city. “Businesses need a
healthy workforce to enable economic success
– whether that be the employees themselves
or their family members,” says Bivona-Tellez.
“This isn’t just about traditional healthcare.
It extends to air quality, environmental
sustainability, noise, green space, and social
and emotional wellbeing. With research from
journal PLoS Medicine revealing that a healthy
social life may be as good for your long-term
health as avoiding cigarettes, our challenge
to improve communities is to have more vital
citizens who are engaged in the community.”
Bivona-Tellez also believes that citizens
should be encouraged to take control of
their own well-being, something that Esri’s
geographic information system ArcGIS can
enable. “ArcGIS allows messages to be sent
out to alert citizens of problems, for example
when a water main breaks in your area, or
preventative care like health screenings or
blood tests,” she says. “It could be used to
correlate with social media the incidents
of asthma inhaler use at certain times and
locations.” Esri technology is already in use
in Geoloqi, which sends messages when it
encounters a geo fence to alert citizens of
closures, emergencies, location of services,
clinic openings and medication reminders.
Andrew Graley, healthcare director at
Polycom, agrees that cities need to encourage
citizens to become accountable for their own
health and wellbeing. “Governments are
facing a multitude of problems such as ageing
populations and increasing obesity, and these
are consuming more of the healthcare budget
than ever,” he says. “To alleviate this problem,
citizens need to be able to manage their own
conditions through better access to modern
technology, be it a slate, smartphone or tablet.
This could provide access to discussion
forums, exercise classes and dietary plans.”
Power and utilities Power generation, conservation and the smart
grid are foundations of an energy efficient city.
With energy transmission and distribution
systems often complex to manage, utility
companies are using phasor measurement
units to monitor and manage the health of
their systems. According to Rick Reeder, senior
consultant, Dell Smart Grid & Healthcare
Solutions, utility companies are looking to
Dell’s Smart Grid Data Management solution
to make it easier do this, as well as improve
customer service by minimising and potentially
avoiding outages. Dell introduced the solution
in partnership with Intel, National Instruments
and OSIsoft.
Reeder says that city authorities are
becoming increasingly interested in microgrids,
which are small-scale versions of a centralised
electricity system. They generate, distribute,
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FEATURECITIES OF THE FUTURE
and regulate the flow of electricity to
consumers at a local level. Reeder says: “With
smart microgrids, cities can isolate problems
quickly, for example if something goes wrong
in one neighbourhood then authorities can
pinpoint the location of the outage, identify
what happened and send repair trucks to the
exact place it happened.”
To expand its research into smart grid
technologies, Dell joined the Pecan Street
Advisory Board, a non-profit energy and smart
grid research and development organisation
headquartered at the University of Texas in
Austin. John Pflueger, principal environmental
strategist at Dell, explains: “Pecan Street
works with local utilities to build datasets
around local consumers’ energy use. Pecan
Street believes these datasets and their analysis
provide new insights into ways to improve
and manage energy consumption. In some
cases, these will be simple guidelines for
home or business energy efficiency. In other
cases, analysis will lead to new commercial
opportunities and use models for technologies
such as residential solar installations. As a
member, Dell will provide technology and
IT expertise to Pecan Street to advance its
work in leveraging big data to understand
energy-related issues. Through smart grids
and the better management of energy, we can
support our growing society through economic
development, job creation and reduced impact
on the environment.”
Environmental sustainabilityEnergy consumption and renewable energy also
tie in with another important area of cities of
the future – environmental sustainability. Frank
Holsmuller, regional marketing manager, EMEA
at Esri, explains how the company’s geographic
information system can help build a sustainable
environment. “ArcGIS collects and stores
geographical data that can then be examined
to find relationships, trends and patterns. This
data can be used to improve the sustainability
of cities through better urban planning. It
enables local authorities to make location-based
decisions about where new buildings and
infrastructure such as parks, roads and hospitals
should be built, taking into consideration
environmental issues such as geology,
hydrology and climate. This information can
also be provided to citizens to improve their
experience of living in a particular city. This
concept is taking shape in Seville in Spain
where our ArcGIS Online platform presents a
gallery of interactive maps for all kind of aspects
citizens might be interested in: planning zones,
monuments, bike paths and so on.”
Public safety (and emergency response)As pressure increases on cities to deal with
unexpected security and public safety threats
– Frost & Sullivan named safe cities one
of its top five mega trends for the next ten
years – local authorities increasingly need
to provide citizens with a sense of public
safety. Technology is the tool that can provide
decision makers with the collaboration and
insight they need to make informed decisions
that protect the public.
Martin Slijkhuis, Public Safety and National
Security Industry lead at Microsoft Western
Europe, believes that smartphones will be the
technology at the centre of future public safety
initiatives. “Smartphones will enable better
communication between citizens, governments
and first responders. For example, governments
can provide citizens with alerts in times of
emergency or crisis. An example of this is
AMBER Alert – an alert system in the US that
enables police to immediately warn the country
of an abducted or missing child through
websites, e-mail, text messages, TV and radio.”
Slijkhuis continues: “Equally citizens can
connect with governments and first responders
via social media, reporting suspicious
behaviour in a location-based way. Then when
an incident occurs, enhanced information
should enable the emergency service providers
to respond more quickly and effectively. The
number and severity of accidents and incidents
can be reduced through a better understanding
of how people behave.”
The Swedish County Ambulance Service is
improving its incident response service using a
support system in line with the methods used
Solution profile: Saab Security and Safety Management SAFE
Optimising public safety
with the growth in urbanisation, the demands on infrastructure, communication and interoperability between authorities are increasing. A growing number of people are depending on the assistance of emergency care agencies that have to provide more care with the same resources, adding stress to the staff and putting citizens at risk.
There is a fundamental risk and potentially large consequence to society if these systems malfunction or fail to provide the expected services. From the ambulance to the emergency room, from the scene of a crime via the police car to the prosecutor on call – Saab’s SAFE solution can help by keeping the chain of information and communication intact.
SAFE is a command, control and communication system for mission-critical
operations. The solution is designed to provide superior situational awareness, managing both day-to-day tasks, as well as major incidents. It connects the systems and the resources, making sure all necessary information such as journals or other relevant data is accessible at all times, through the entire workflow. A SAFE-based system enables any type of operations to optimise the use of resources – and time – while increasing the level of security and safety. It allows for all areas of public safety, or other parts of society, to work together seamlessly and in a controlled way. Linda Wallin is product manager and head of communications at Saab Security and Safety Management
Linda Wallin discusses how Saab’s solutions enable emergency services to better respond to incidents and ensure public safety
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locally for pre-hospital command and control,
and its pre-hospital trauma life support system.
The result has been an ongoing collaboration
between Saab Security and Safety Management
and the Research Center of Disaster Medicine
and Traumatology in Linköping, Sweden,
creating a complete emergency care solution.
The challenge for local authorities comes
in integrating all these separate elements and
programmes. Explaining how Microsoft can
help, David Burrows, the company’s managing
director for EMEA government, Worldwide
Public Sector says: “Innovative technology,
tools and solutions from Microsoft and
our partners can help city leaders analyse,
evaluate and tie together the data they need
to see the big picture. This integration can
help authorities make faster, more informed
policy, budget and management decisions.
This results in a more liveable, appealing and
economically viable city, which is attractive to
new citizens and businesses and can meet the
highest expectations for environmental social,
and economic sustainability.”
FEATURECITIES OF THE FUTURE
50%50 per cent of the world’s GDP is produced by cities with a population of 750,000 or over
Source: Frost & Sullivan
70%In 2013, 70 per cent of worldwide spending on smart city projects will be focused on energy, transportation and public safety
Source: IDCCase study: Municipality of Matosinhos (Portugal)
GIS supports Matosinhos’ inspection services
!Illegal occupation of public spaces, unauthorised publicity, illegal building, holes in the streets, broken lamps and malfunctioning traffic lights: these are some of the most common problems that the Municipality of Matosinhos in Portugal can now solve without having to wait for citizens to report the violations.
Mobile Platform Quality 100% is an application based on Esri’s technology, which
enables real-time and in-the-field information gathering and the inspection, maintenance and management of public spaces. A team of employees can now query information about a given area on the spot, record a video or photograph of the event, geo-reference the place of occurrence and send it to specific central services so that the situation is resolved immediately.
An app from Esri is allowing supervisors to solve problems in the field
Case study: Nissan LEAF
Leading the electric vehicle charge
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Urban mobility and transport is vital for the functioning of cities. The Nissan LEAF – which makes use of Microsoft windows Embedded technology for its in car technology – was the first mass produced electric vehicle. with around 54,000 units sold globally since its introduction in December 2010, Nissan LEAF is the world’s best selling electric vehicle.
The new LEAF, which goes on sale in Europe beginning mid 2013, marks an important milestone in Nissan’s global zero-emission leadership. It will soon be joined by pure electric versions of the NV200, to be called e-NV200, in both light commercial van and five-seat combi versions. Development is also underway on a dedicated EV taxi based on the e-NV200. An Infiniti EV is expected in 2015. Production of the new version of the LEAF began in Sunderland, UK on 28 March this year.
As well producing no CO2 at the point of use, the lack of tailpipe emissions extends to zero NOx and particulate emissions. All are detrimental to health and many municipalities are working hard to reduce them to avoid EU fines.
As part of these efforts, Nissan launched
The Big Turn On last year. This was designed to encourage consumers from France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK to consider the benefits of zero-emission driving, and to promote the Nissan LEAF as a safe, environmentally friendly and economical vehicle - with the range between charges being easily sufficient for the vast majority of daily trips.
The Dutch town of Linschoten was named the most ‘switched on’ in Europe, after receiving the greatest number of pledges of support for electric driving of any town or city in Europe during Nissan’s campaign, The Big Turn On. This was a 100-day campaign to demonstrate the benefits of electric vehicles, and to bust the myths that surround them through online influencers, owners and celebrities.
Underlining its commitment to zero-emissions mobility, Nissan readies LEAF for the future