In this the final article in this series on Smart Cities, we'll take a look at the issue of Sustainability.
One of the crucial challenges facing Smart City managers is how to ensure their city remains smart in the future. In reality there are two key areas that Smart Cities need to focus on if they want to be sustainable: reduction and growth. Sounds like a bit of a contradiction, doesn't it? However, both items are crucial from a sustainability standpoint and need to be at the forefront of Smart City planning and implementation efforts. Reduction is in the context of lowering the city's carbon footprint, and growth is in the context of increasing the city's scope for commerce.
Let's start by looking at some of the key elements involved in any strategy for reducing a city's carbon footprint. These include:
- The lowering of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions: By toughening and enforcing emissions standards for industry as well as for transport, thus reducing the number of heavy polluters. Studies have indicated the use of information and communications technology can significantly help in reducing overall CO2 emissions.
- The use of smart grids: Using IT to help monitor demand and regulate usage in order to manage power grid supply and demand more efficiently.
- Optimisation of transport: Transport is the second-highest air polluter after industry, and so the focus here is on finding solutions to ease traffic congestion and ways to reduce the volume of CO2 emissions emanating from road users.
- Finding building and infrastructure efficiencies: Studies have shown building management systems can help to reduce building energy consumption by anything up to 40%. The use of IT to increase efficiency in building design, construction and operation presents a great opportunity for reducing a city's carbon footprint.
- E-substitutes: Using technology to accomplish tasks and activities such as meetings and conferences virtually. For example, a teleconference can replace an actual physical meeting and thereby help to eliminate travel and other activities that contribute to the general carbon emissions load.
Overall, the reduction of carbon emissions will be a key factor in ensuring a better quality of life for city residents and helping to attain Smart City sustainability.
At the same time they deliver on their reduction strategy, Smart Cities will also focus supporting the growth of their commerce. There are a number of key elements involved in any strategy for growing a city's commercial potential including:
- Support for innovation by finding ways to foster creative and innovative approaches in the various aspects of city management. For example, technology can support the provision of smart e-based community services in key areas such as health, business supply and overall governance of the city.
- Support for engagement and partnering by developing an environment that facilitates political, business and social interaction through the leveraging of innovative partnerships with trusted technology, government, local business and civic organisations, thus creating a framework for providing urban improvements and long-term sustainability for the city.
- Support for infrastructure needs by optimising the integration and use of the infrastructure that supports city commerce either physically (such as mobile phone towers, optical fibre conduits, power sources and buildings) or virtually (such as IT networks and wireless systems).
Many cities around the world are looking at these kinds of sustainability challenges, and Vancouver, on Canada's Pacific Coast, is one that has taken a proactive stance in response. Indeed, so committed is Vancouver to this issue that the city has come up with a 100-year plan for its sustainability, which can be seen at www.cnv.org/default.aspx?c=3&i=541.
Vancouver's leaders have a clear mandate to ensure sustainability approaches are incorporated into all city operations, and this includes cleaning up the city's transport fleet, lowering civic energy demands, making buying practices smarter, protecting the urban environment and passing legislation supporting sustainability best practices.
At the same time, Vancouver's leaders acknowledge they must actually lead if they expect others to follow, so the city has set clear targets for the reduction of emissions from its own operations, necessitating changes in the way the city operates facilities, fleets and other aspects of its day-to-day business.
Vancouver's sustainability plan focuses on seven key areas:
- The Environment: The city is committed to ensuring environmental considerations are factored into all of its operational decisions and that the city complies with environmental legislation and educates and encourages citizens to comply with environmental bylaws.
- Purchasing: Vancouver's procurement policy reinforces an approach to purchasing based on sustainability and ethical considerations. The goal is to ensure all suppliers meet minimum performance standards and that all workers who supply the city have safe and healthy workplaces.
- Facilities: Standards ensure increased efficiency (30% higher energy efficiency than industry standards) of design and decreased use of energy for city buildings.
- Fleets: A focus on emissions reduction, elimination of waste and duplication and leverage of transport management synergies.
- Social Sustainability: With two dimensions involved _ 1) human capacity: support for individual well-being through education, skills, health, values etc; and, 2) community capacity: support for the relationships and networks that improve the quality of life and support sustainability.
- Economic Development: Vancouver's Economic Development Commission is responsible for boosting the local economy, and among its guiding principles is "Improving Sustainability".
- Employee Commuting: The city's goal is to reduce the carbon footprint of its workforce's commute by reducing the number of vehicles coming to City Hall every day, facilitating shared commutes and providing incentives and rebates for using "green" transport options such as biking, walking or rollerblading.
Vancouver may be planning for the next 100 years already, but there are plenty of other major cities that haven't kicked their sustainability programmes into high gear yet, Bangkok being just one example.
However, one thing is clear _ if today's cities wish to be sustainable in the future, then they will need to provide a variety of solutions to the challenges of urban living and engage as many people as possible in creating those solutions.
Niall Sinclair is the director of knowledge management at Bangkok University's Institute for Knowledge and Innovation. He is also author of the KM best-seller 'Stealth KM' and founder of Nterprise Consulting in Ottawa. He can be reached at niall.s@bu.ac.th or nterprise@rogers.com