Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/514326
UTILITY WEEK | 22ND - 28TH MAY 2015 | 19 Operations & Assets The delegates • This is about more than technology. It is about the services and business models that sit behind technology. We talk about future cities rather than smart cities for this reason – it gets past the technology hype. • Population growth and urbanisation marry with other demographic trends – like ageing population – making cities epicentres of social and economic challenge. But they are also centres for opportunity. The global market for joined-up city solutions, which bring new ways of planning and operating cities, will be £200 billion a year by 2030. • Integration and interoperability are now the key challenges to address in realising benefits from future cities. • But the goal of creating integrated city systems is a long way off – a project which Aquamatix is working on to create a smart canal in Basingstoke demonstrates this. The project is being undertaken for Hampshire and Surrey county councils, but there is no agreed procurement specification for the basic technology involved, let alone a specification for data standards and how it should integrate, in a water-stressed area, with other water catchment and harvesting schemes or energy systems. Key points 1 Future cities need to communicate a compelling vision and unifying goal for potential partners. 2 Consistent standards need to be developed for data sharing and procurement. 3 Cites need to develop accessible infrastructure master maps. 4 Regulation needs to allow utilities to serve citizen collec- tives as well as indi- vidual customers if utilities are to have a valued role in future cities. 5 Most of the tech- nology needed for future cities has been proven. Integration is the next step. Speaker insights Speaker insights • Most of the technology we need for these solutions exists. What we need are new ways of operating. Greater Manchester offers some useful lessons. It has a committee that brings together the operators of different elements of city infrastructure including transport and utilities. It discusses the impact of plans to get a better understanding of infrastructure capacity in the city. • A next step for Greater Manchester is to overlay this insight to create an interactive infrastructure master map for the city, which can issue automatic alerts and information when overlapping infrastructure plans require integration or risk unintended consequences for other players. • It is fairly unusual to see utilities at the table in projects of this nature. There has been a tendency for cities to focus on transport when trying to improve planning. Also, where expensive consultants have been commissioned to improve city planning, there is often a failure of collaborative spirit between players. This means data is not shared freely and the chances of significant change are limited. • This shows there is a need for integration not only at a technology level, but at a community and management level. If we can achieve integration of community-level schemes, then the big picture of future cities should become more achievable and affordable. • This will require a change in the way businesses procure and collaborate – at the moment there is a vacuum of mid-sized solutions providers to bridge the gap between very large companies and start-ups. • We should leverage the internet of things to help us bridge this divide, and meet the challenge of integrating a legacy asset environment with the brave new world we imagine. • The internet of things will enable a business shift away from products and towards value- added services by connecting know-how as well as devices. The trouble is we don't have enough system engineers to manage this connection and interaction task – so we need automated tools. Hypercat is an example of such a tool. It is an open data standard that supports the delivery of value from the internet of things in competitive markets. Peter Reynolds, chief business officer, Future Cities Catapult Laurie Reynolds, managing director, Aquamatix Brought to you in association with