Sunday, October 29, 2017

Smart Cities - Where are they now?

I have become highly interested in Smart City technology. Not just because of the potential for improvement in the efficiency and management of public resources and services. But because we are at the emergence of another transformation in technology. Another jump in capability, and with it the disruption of the status quo. The negation and rapid decline of old, established business models and the appearance, and rapid adoption of new ones. And I am fascinated by the public opinion, policy and ethical implications around where this will take us.

This is not unlike the emergence of the Web in the mid-90s which disrupted the publishing and media industries and retails sales business model. The tail end of this is still being played out today with large established retailers going by the wayside. Shopping malls have become ghost towns. Amazon rules, and continues to dominate, the online retail space.

Today the emerging tech platforms are the Internet of Things ("wearable web servers") and the miniaturization of technology into the palm of our hand, coupled with the continued advances in ultra-high speed wireless networks and cloud computing, will have a profound effect on our environment at home, in our communities and in our economies and daily lives. There are huge possibilities in better management of our environments, as well as huge risks as Internet access becomes ubiquitous - everywhere and everything.

In recent years, Smart Cities programs and projects have been started all over the world. In the US, a Smart Cities Initiative was officially launched under the Obama administration in 2015, including some allocation of Federal research funding of projects in areas including public safety/ emergency response, transportation, energy efficient/ low emission, environmental monitoring, open public data, and public/private partnerships. But Smart Cities projects and initiatives have been going on since the early 2010s.

The City of Portland where I live has a Smart Cities Initiative and is proposing a number of pilot projects to research, test and evaluate the application of emerging technology. In transportation, the development of self driving features and the goal of autonomous vehicles will have a profound effect on the local environment and economy. Once cars are autonomous, you don't need to park. An autonomous vehicle acts like a chauffeur driven car. Once you are dropped off, it can drive itself somewhere else. Return home, or perhaps even go out and "work" by providing car share rides to other people. The parking business is huge, occupying a lot of space within city limits, and particularly within core, downtown areas. Both private (parking garages) and public (street parking) derive revenue and provide jobs to monitor and maintain these facilities. Technology has certainly already impacted the jobs in these businesses with parking attendants/cashiers being replaced by kiosks. But autonomous vehicles will basically put these businesses out of business. And the City? Currently the City derives a lot of revenue from parking. Once this revenue begins to dry up, what will replace it?

Autonomous vehicles will also impact the auto-industry. Car ownership has been the bedrock of American society since the 1950s, and it is still a primary way that people commute, and also get around town to meetings, events, visit friends and family. However, it is horribly inefficient. Many families have multiple cars, which predominantly sit in the driveway at home or in parking lots. 99% of the time. Once we have autonomous vehicles, they can be put to work, rather than have them sitting around. Once everyone is sharing their cars, the cost of ride sharing plummets (supply and demand). Once cars use alternate energy (electric and related electricity generating technology), they can be refueled off alternative grids. It is estimated that we have 8-12 times the number of vehicles in circulation than we need to meet our transportation requirements. The need to purchase cars will become obsolete. Car companies already lease cars as an alternative to purchasing. Car sharing programs like Car2Go and ZipCars already provide on demand renting of cars. A logical extension of this is that in the future car manufacturers or car sharing companies will have fleets of autonomous cars that you can simply hail on demand.

Autonomous vehicles will also impact the shipping and trucking industry which is currently a huge employer. Self driving trucks can drive longer and further without the need for sleep. For a while, we may need an operator in the truck in case of issues, but eventually even this will not be necessary. What will happen to all these employees? Where will they get new work. Couple that with the drone and UAV developments that even commercial TV and movies have portrayed taking over the delivery of physical items, and eventually people, it is going to look a whole lot like Marty McFlys future, even though it will be a little later than October 2015.

Which brings me back to my interest in all this. Basically, we need to be doing the research and planning for this now. Technology has a habit of developing regardless of intent, and if we are not thoughtful about the individual decisions we make, and the path that we set ourselves on, we could end up in a future that we will feel we did not choose or want. We have to think holistically, and look at the broader ramifications. Robots have been predicted and shown to replace human jobs for years. Whilst there will be a need for humans to work alongside, and to support and repair robots, these jobs will be a minute fraction of the jobs that will be lost. Japan realized this problem already, and also the impact on the new business model that made people unemployed. Basically, that you have to be careful not to cut off the hand that feeds you. If people do not have jobs, and well paying jobs, they will be unable to afford all the products that the robots are making. And the factories will be shutdown. So at the same time we are switching to these new business models and economies, we need to be thinking about the humans involved, the potential impacts, and how to mitigate or prepare for them. You need a Holistic Technology Guru!