How the cloud is streamlining urban life

Big-city life isn’t always busi­ness friend­ly. Bro­ken esca­la­tors cause delays in rail­way sta­tions, faulty trains mean meet­ings are can­celled and fail­ing broad­band wrecks impor­tant con­tacts. If busi­ness­es were able to see when prob­lems were about to occur, they could work around them. But what if the city itself was able to fore­see snarl-ups and stop them in advance?

Cloud soft­ware is giv­ing smart cities that capa­bil­i­ty, enabling admin­is­tra­tors to see through walls and pre­dict the future when it comes to dai­ly city life. The same cloud tech can also help a busi­ness run trans­par­ent­ly and remote­ly, whether it be a sand­wich fac­to­ry or an accoun­tan­cy office.

Smart cities, like Nava Raipur in India, are now so advanced they can pro­vide dig­i­tal 3D mod­el­ling of the entire city, enabling foren­sic analy­sis of prob­lems before they occur. In Barcelona, esca­la­tor fail­ures are avoid­ed because a cen­tral data sys­tem can spot the unit is overused or pro­gres­sive­ly slow­ing down, or that the water pipe lead­ing to an orna­men­tal foun­tain is start­ing to vibrate under increased pres­sure. With all these pieces of inter­linked data stored on the cloud, city admin­is­tra­tors can see and assess them instan­ta­neous­ly.

In Mex­i­co, a net­work of 13,000 cloud-based cam­eras, installed by Eagle Eye Net­works, not only spots crimes unfold­ing, but helps emer­gency ser­vices nav­i­gate traf­fic con­ges­tion as well as issue ear­ly-warn­ing mes­sages to cit­i­zens. 

Dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, the same cam­era sys­tem now assists post-lock­down offices. As staff move through a screen­ing area, the cam­eras take their tem­per­a­ture and noti­fy human resources by email if an individual’s tem­per­a­ture is too high. Noti­fi­ca­tions are deliv­ered along with an image of the per­son, the tem­per­a­ture detect­ed, as well as the name and loca­tion of the cam­era that detect­ed the high tem­per­a­ture. COVID or the flu stays at the door.

Cloud cover shines light over cities

Smart cities’ pow­er is in their shared con­trol, says Ravi Gopinath, chief cloud offi­cer at AVEVA that has pro­vid­ed the soft­ware for smart projects in Nava Raipur and Bre­men, Ger­many. Ten years ago, he says, a con­trol room oper­a­tor would man­u­al­ly mon­i­tor util­i­ties, but you would have “island­ed sys­tems” that worked opaque­ly or even against each oth­er. 

“You’d have one prod­uct which tracked when the next bus is com­ing or what car park is full, allow­ing you to plan a jour­ney. But these sys­tems were not inter­linked,” he says. “What cloud tech­nol­o­gy does is bring every objec­tive and tool togeth­er, from main­te­nance to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, under one dash­board that is con­sum­able by gov­er­nor and cit­i­zen alike, con­stant­ly improv­ing and rein­vent­ing itself.”

In the future, each cit­i­zen will use the city cloud to smooth their pas­sage through dai­ly life, with data from each jour­ney feed­ing back to the city itself. “You will be able to see if there is a rel­a­tive­ly emp­ty bus com­ing just after this one,” says Gopinath. “But, on the reverse, admin­is­tra­tors can see how much a bus is used, how late it is and how much fuel it is using.”

Come and explore your “city in a box”

Cloud soft­ware pro­vides a view­able “city in a box” for admin­is­tra­tors, a 365-degree pic­ture that allows com­plete account­abil­i­ty, says Saya­ji Shinde, smart city con­sul­tant who has over­seen more than twen­ty smart city projects in the past ten years, includ­ing in Da Nang, Viet­nam, and Davao City in the Philip­pines. 

“With the cloud vis­i­ble by all, offi­cials and admin­is­tra­tors can no longer pass the buck or blame bud­gets because every process, per­for­mance and pen­ny is account­ed for,” he says.

This trans­paren­cy is demon­strat­ed by the Swedish uni­ver­si­ty city of Umeå. The city had set pub­lic cli­mate change goals and, in a bid to reduce car­bon emis­sions, had been invest­ing in cycle lanes with some suc­cess. When this suc­cess plateaued, the cloud soft­ware that tracked city emis­sions showed exact­ly why. 

Climate benefits from gathering clouds

Cli­mat­e­View is a cloud-based tool to track local cli­mate change, help­ing cities that have cli­mate goals, but no idea how to reach them. Every piece of envi­ron­ment and emis­sions data for par­tic­i­pat­ing cities, includ­ing Cam­bridge, Mannheim in Ger­many, and La Pal­ma in the Canary Islands, is cloud-acces­si­ble for all cit­i­zens to see impacts and results. 

Data from Cli­mat­e­View revealed Umeå had reached peak mass with cycle lanes and com­muters who didn’t cycle need­ed anoth­er green alter­na­tive. Umeå’s plan­ners realised new elec­tric bus­es would have a greater impact both envi­ron­men­tal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly than more cycle lanes.

“Pre­vi­ous­ly every piece of cli­mate data and emis­sion indi­ca­tor was kept on sep­a­rate spread­sheets and man­u­al­ly inputted,” says Erik Eklund, Umeå’s envi­ron­ment and ener­gy offi­cer. “To get a com­plete view you would have to speak to mul­ti­ple depart­ments. Cloud soft­ware changed that.”

Pub­li­ca­tion of Umeå’s data prompt­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion with anoth­er Swedish city, Eskil­stu­na. “Even large local com­pa­nies like Vol­vo, ABB and Met­so are now able to get involved with our cli­mate goals seam­less­ly,” says Eklund.

Tomer Shalit, cre­ator of Cli­mat­e­View, says host­ing entire­ly on the cloud allows you to “com­pare apples with apples” with­out suf­fer­ing death by data. “You get clar­i­ty of rea­son­ing, devel­op strin­gent mod­els for future plan­ning, and waste less mon­ey and less resources. Promis­es can­not be hid­den behind,” he says.

Archa­ic mixed tech­nolo­gies are rapid­ly being brought under one sys­tem, says Gopinath of AVEVA. “In yesterday’s offices, under­ly­ing sys­tems need­ed their own serv­er and infra­struc­ture, but by using cloud the cost of own­er­ship of the soft­ware comes down as well as improv­ing the secu­ri­ty, as all updates and secu­ri­ty are done cen­tral­ly. Not only do you get more var­ied use­ful data, you con­trol the gov­er­nance of that data,” he con­cludes.