Smart Cities, Smart Buildings

FountainBlue's December 9 VIP Roundtable was on the topic of 'Smart Cities, Smart Buildings'. Our executives in attendance represented a wide range of backgrounds, experiences, roles, industries and organizations, but they agreed on many things.
Foundational to the success of smart cities and smart buildings is the collaboration and infrastructure to 1) design, create and deliver a wide range of connected sensors, 2) integrate these sensors with the tools and applications which will track, measure and disseminate the volumes of data generated by these sensors in a secure and efficient manner, and to 3) create, implement, and sustainably deliver actionable real-time dashboards leveraging the most relevant information. It takes leaders and innovators working in collaboration throughout the process to envision, manage, integrate, implement, maintain each piece of this puzzle.
Below is a summary Smart City and Smart Building use cases provided by our executives in attendance:
Smart Cities:

• Proactive management of transportation systems can lead to more reliable, more efficient, and more popular commuting options.

• City-wide adoption of sustainability and Net Zero standards can be supported by a host of tracking, measuring, reporting, and usage applications. The trick is to determine which solutions provide the most useful data, which dashboards will lead to timely decision-making, and which stakeholders can collaborate to achieve win-win results. 

• Tools and solutions which leverage AI and ML can make predictions on autonomous cars for example. With large adoption and implementation, traffic may be improved with more functional, useful cars and more plan-ful maintenance of all vehicles on the road. 

• Disaster management may be supported at the city-wide level, again with the adoption of collaborative solutions which benefit all stakeholders. 

Smart Buildings:

• Detailed metrics on energy usage can help track and report on current and projected future usage, with the intent of reaching sustainability goals.

• Managing, tracking and integrating various IT solutions and applications within buildings can help manage energy and water usage as well as carbon emissions goals.

• Automated solutions can help manage wasteful use of energy and water, as well as optimize heating and cooling, in order to better serve employees and residents.

• Proactively designing office space for the hybrid, collaborative, and flexible workforce of the future supports the bottom line, while also better serving employees. 

• Proactive building management might also focus on the safety of residence - protecting from gas leaks, unapproved access, and even IT and data privacy and security breaches.

• Studies around the 'fingerprinting' of individual water and energy usage patterns can help operators and managers more proactively serve building renters, owners and lessors. 

Our executives concluded that we have come so far, but there is so much more to do to better equip our cities and our buildings, and to better serve people living in them. It will take a human-centric, collaborative approach and progressive, proactive management by governments to ensure that the infrastructure and policies are in place so that leaders and innovators can better serve a larger swath of people living in smart cities and smart buildings.