Tag: Smart Cities

Categories
Augmented Reality Business Strategy

Frog Design’s Top Tech Trends in 2012

Frog Design's post on top technology trends for 2012 is highly insightful. First, the graphic. It's Alice who just can't resist a peak into the future!

Then the list of trends begins with the trend on which I spent considerable time with in 2011 and see expanding in 2012: using mobile AR and similar interfaces to engage with the data available (published by) Smart Cities.

Although many others saw its potential a decade ago, and numerous cities have been working on it since this decade began, there's still a lot of research to do before a basic formula emerges, a set of best practices or guidelines shakes out. Here's how Frog Design's Chief Creative Office describes the modern city:

"The modern city is becoming a pointer system, the new URL, for tomorrow’s hybrid digital–physical environment. Today's Facebook will be complemented by tomorrow's Placebook. Explosive innovation and adoption of computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing the cities in which we live, work, and play. It's about us, and how computing in the context of our cities is changing how we live. A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences that complement, and in emerging cases, replace the physical experience. In the meta–cities of the future, computing isn't just with us; it surrounds us, and it uses the context of our environment to empower us in more natural, yet powerful ways."

This description assumes, thought isn't explicit about having a sensor-rich environment (aka Internet of Things). Isn't the "digital landscape overlaying our physical world and expanding to offer ever-richer experiences" a beautiful image?

Many of the other 14 trends are also well synchronized with the topics of this blog.
I hope you will find this presentation as valuable as I have. I recommend that you view in full screen mode.

Tech Trends 2012  

 

Categories
3D Information Business Strategy News Research & Development

London’s Imperial College

On July 27, 2011 the UK Research Council awarded a £5.9m grant to the “digital city exchange” programme of Imperial College. According to the press release, the funds are to be used to establish a new research center focusing on “smart cities” technologies.

A multidisciplinary team, involving businesses, public administrations and academia, is being put in place to use the city of London as a test bed for emerging smart cities hardware, software and processes. The article in the Financial Times very perceptively puts the focus on the following statements issued by spokesperson, David Gann, the head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at Imperial College.

"New sensors and real-world monitoring can be combined with “cloud computing” to bring greater efficiency and new services to cities. For instance, data about peak traffic periods and local sensors could be used to avoid congestion for supermarket deliveries.

“London, with all its economic and social diversity, will be a very good place to launch some of these capabilities into new cities around the world and create new jobs and growth. The act of invention is at the point of consumption.”

Another article about the grant emphasizes, as did the press release, more of an urban planning angle.

It's very exciting to have this center establishing itself, although the size of the grant does not seem in line with the ambitions and objectives as they are described, and there should be others of its kind connecting to it as well.

Categories
3D Information Augmented Reality Research & Development

AR for Blacksburg

The AR-4-Basel project is a pilot for what could become a widespread trend: a municipality or any size area can make data sets it owns and maintains for its citizens available to AR developers who then can prepare AR experiences for visitors and inhabitants.

Ever since starting the AR-4-Basel project in May, I have been planning how to expand and apply the lessons learned to other cities. The first to follow is definitely Barcelona, Spain. The AR-4-Barcelona project is already ramping up. Then, Berlin is my next target. I’d like to explore the possibility of getting something started in Beijing as well, if there is going to be an AR in China conference in 2012.

Another “B” city which has all the earmarks of a future haven for AR experiences is Blacksburg, Virginia!

“The 3D Blacksburg Collaborative is a consortium of multi-disciplinary researchers, experts and students from various universities and governments, who are creating a data and delivery infrastructure for an interactive virtual 3D city model.”

Which “B” city would you nominate for a future AR project?

Categories
Internet of Things Policy, Legal, Regulatory Social and Societal

Smart Cities and Big Citizens

The AR-4-Basel project is a framework by which public data about a city, the city of Basel more specifically, can be put in the hands of Augmented Reality developers using a variety of tools and platforms and to encourage the development community to be creative. Many scenarios for AR in urban environments are for consumers. The end goal being that if we knew more about our immediate environments, we might make different decisions.

The departments of the city of Basel with whom I'm in communications are primarily thinking of the Internet of Things, and AR in particular, as a professional tool, enabling people to do their job more efficiently when in the field, perhaps to save on resources/reduce waste (increase efficiency) and to make better decisions which might impact their lives or those of others.

So, in the context of this project, I'm spending a lot of time speaking with experts and reading the opinions of those much more informed in these matters of "smart cities" than I. Martijn de Waal is one of those that has invested highly of himself in this topic and clearly "gets it."

One of the posts that I found particularly enlightening is a "dialog" of sorts between Ed Borden of Pachube and Adam Greenfield of Urbanscale. Rather than read my paraphrasing, please read it.

At this point, the jury is out on if these are really different positions and if different, which of these positions best characterizes the situation. It is early enough that cities (BigGov) and their managers (politicians) could "wake up" and take a more active role in their own technology use. But not all citizens want or should be participating in the decisions that require having all (and some of it sensitive) data. And, it is definitely true that citizens can and should be involved in some of these services which primarily benefit them.

I look forward to seeing this dialog continue and to learning more from the experts in this field. Maybe as a small citizen of a small urban area in a small country, I will be able to make a difference in how others live.