.png)
There are few innovations in recent years as impactful as the digital revolution. The world is now looking forward to what may be the ultimate expression of mass digitization: smart cities.
Smart Cities feature the integration of digital technology into the city’s core infrastructure systems to build intelligent buildings, transportation systems, schools, enterprises, public spaces, public services, etc.
The Smart initiatives can help overcome the limitations of traditional urban development. They do this by leveraging the character of data and services offered by digital technologies such as Cloud Computing, the Internet of Things or Open Data. they help connect different city stakeholders, improve citizen involvement, offer new/enhance existing services and provide context-aware views on city operations.
A smart city collects and analyses data from multiple channels to “sense” the city’s environment, providing real-time information to help governments, enterprises and citizens make better and more informed decisions to improve the overall quality of our lives.
With the current pandemic, most of people’s activities are taking place in homes, offices and workplaces now. The need to reimagine their design, planning and construction in order to curtail our consumption is getting more and more important. That’s why there is no denying that smart buildings serve as blueprints for the smart and sustainable cities of the future.
To truly capture the potential of smart cities, urban planners, businesses and communities must embrace the power of new technology including mobile, cloud-based systems, artificial intelligence (AI), self-monitoring and collaborative platforms. Only when we have established expertise in these domains can we find new and innovative ways to bring them together and design our future cities – one smart building at a time.
At this point, many may wonder if the investment is worth it and whether we have considered if the downsides of technology could outweigh the benefits. A quick glance at the numbers says it all. The economic impact of IoT on buildings is expected to reach $6.3 trillion by 2025 and the World Economic Forum estimates that automation will admittedly displace 75 million jobs but will generate 133 million new ones worldwide by 2022.
Much of the new technology and requirements needed to fulfill our vision of a smart city entails us entering an unfamiliar territory. We must not be resistant to change but look at how technology can drive more sustainable growth.
As people and businesses look for ways to prepare for COVID-like scenarios in the future, smart buildings will no doubt be the buildings of the future.
