The Internet of Things promises to make our lives more organised, cost-effective and environmentally friendly. They say it"s the future. But is all this "connectedness" really a good thing? Dave Waller investigates
From Charlie Chaplin"s Modern Times to Wallace and Gromit"s The Wrong Trousers, a life of connected automation has long caught the imagination - whether it"s meals being brought to diners" mouths by a mechanical "feeding machine", as in the Chaplin classic, or an alarm clock that triggers a system to tip you out of bed and into your clothes and then fire Plasticine toast at your head.
Somehow neither of these technologies found a market in our mechanised age (otherwise Dyson would have been all over them). But with digital technology now becoming ubiquitous and sparking a data revolution, the concept of intelligent kit is suddenly getting very real. In the not-too-distant future, the typical daily commute may run as follows: leave the house, which turns off the lights and heating behind you; get in the car, which checks it"s you behind the wheel before letting you set off, and then takes over the driving itself once you"re on the motorway; and then get sent on a diversion by the traffic lights, which have heard from the fire station that there"s a blaze ahead and they need to keep the road clear for the emergency services.
Welcome to the "smart city", an urban environment powered by the interaction of the internet and the physical world, where vast networks of computers, sensors, cameras and apps gather data on all aspects of citizens" lives and share it among themselves to function more intelligently. This network is known as the Internet of Things (IoT), a system that, with the necessary devices now available at affordable prices, isn"t merely some distant figment of the imagination. In fact, it"s being touted as the next industrial revolution. Think-tank IDC reckons we"ll be surrounded by 50 billion connected devices, generating a staggering $7.1 trillion in sales, by 2020.
The fact is we"re already hooked up. Take the NEST Learning Thermostat, for example, launched in 2011. This is a smart system that not only senses when you"ve left the house and regulates the heating accordingly, but lets you monitor your property remotely. In other developments, fridges can now talk to smartphones to tell them you"re running out of milk. Soon it may be normal for your fridge to relay your shopping list to Tesco. From there, merely a small leap to the dentist getting a call from a toothbrush saying it"s time to book an appointment.
Everything everywhere
While that last example is a touch far-fetched, health is earmarked as a key beneficiary of the IoT. For wider society, it"s about more efficient use of resources, a reduced environmental footprint, and a more efficient running of everything from utilities and transport to law enforcement and rubbish collection.
As well as several pioneering attempts to build a fully smart city from scratch, existing cities are being smartened up too. Since 2011, Chicago has been developing its "city as a platform", which has already charted, for example, the correlation between the timing of alley lighting and the theft of rubbish bins. In Rio"s smart Centre of Operations, built in partnership with IBM and Oracle, rubbish trucks are coordinated through GPS, and can be repurposed for other tasks in an emergency. Meanwhile, Boston has launched several smart city projects, allowing citizens to report civic issues via their smartphones. Take Street Bump, a mobile app that uses phones to monitor the smoothness of vehicle rides, and inform the city that roads need repairing.
“We"re just beginning to discover the potential that waits for us at the intersection of networked information technology and everyday urban experience,” says Adam Greenfield, Senior Urban Fellow at the London School of Economics. “But what I see so far, just about everywhere, is partial, tactical, disarticulated propositions. Very few places on earth have yet quite grasped the potential that arises when all of these things exist all at once in a conscious informational ecosystem, and each element is able to feed on the data produced by every other one.”
One touted benefit is that with the channels of communication opening up between government and citizens, everything suddenly becomes more trusting. At least that"s the theory. “What we wind up with, when every object and surface and transaction in the city is made visible to the network, is an extraordinarily detailed picture of our movements, our behaviours and our patterns of association,” says Greenfield. “There"s obviously an enormous amount of value locked up in that picture, value that will yield readily to the application of advanced analytics - but I"m not sure any of us as individuals, let alone any human society, is quite ready to face up to total transparency, or will quite like what we see in the mirror these technologies hold up to us.”
If you"re seeking a clearer idea of what that reflection may entail, look at law enforcement, one area where the data raises unprecedented questions. Earlier this year, an executive at Ford commented: “We know everyone who breaks the law, we know when you"re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you"re doing. By the way, we don"t supply that data to anyone.” He later retracted the comment. But it"s worth noting that European officials have considered requiring all cars entering the European market to feature a mechanism that allows the police to stop vehicles remotely.
From small acorns…
Whatever the moral questions - and distinctly dystopian overtones - in all this, the money is certainly flowing. According to Gartner, apps, services and analytics capture 80 per cent of the value created, while $1.1bn was deployed into relevant start-ups globally in 2013. The UK has seen £95 million of research through Research Councils UK, a £50 million investment over 10 years in the London-based Future Cities Catapult centre, and £33 million awarded to Future City Demonstrator projects in 2013. Transportation and public safety are the "low-hanging fruit" that will see significant investment in the near future. Energy and natural resource utilisation will also potentially benefit rapidly, as will the ability of cities to respond to natural disasters.
At this point it"s worth asking how viable this is for a place like the Channel Islands, which isn"t necessarily known for putting tech at the centre of everyday life. There"s a measurable return on investment in making kit smarter. All it takes is to put sensors on existing infrastructure, like sewer systems or electric grids. Sensors lead to data, data to insight, and insight to efficiencies. And let"s not forget that the vast majority of the population are already in possession of the one tool that will drive a huge part of the smart revolution: the mobile phone.
While things have been slow to get off the ground here, it is happening. Take JT"s work with vehicle tracking, part of a package it"s rolling out to the UK where drivers get a lower insurance premium if they fit their vehicle with tracking technology and a gyroscope to monitor acceleration and braking. But, as Dave Newbold, Chief Operations and Technology Officer at JT says: “There"s not a lot going on in the Channel Islands with the IoT. There are some SIMs in containers, some smart homes, some smart meters - but not a lot. You need people on board, and you need someone doing something with all the data when it comes in.”
Yet the IoT could benefit the islands in terms of employment, as it offers a potential opportunity to diversify the economy beyond financial services. “Other regions may suffer employment issues as the machines take over and certain roles are deemed no longer necessary,” says Newbold. “But if we can participate in the smart industry, we can be one of the jurisdictions driving the changes. The IoT would be good for employment if we can get proficient at supplying this business. It"s not an issue of financial investment - you just need the will. A leader needs to step into it and get the islands running.”
As Newbold suggests, the IoT is yet another sector in which the islands can sense a clear opportunity. But they need to switch on to it, and quickly - and that won"t happen automatically.
Bricks and mortar - with brains
Europe"s most eye-catching smart city project is PlanIT Valley in Portugal. Situated outside Porto, it"s both a functional smart city and an incubator for tech start-ups that provides a live test bed for their ambitious ideas.
At the core is its patented Urban Operating System, powered by 100 million real-time sensors, designed to integrate and control renewable energy production, distribution and storage; waste and water treatment and management; and logistics, transportation, building controls and urban analytics. Imagine air conditioners shutting off when everyone leaves the room, apartments telling the fire brigade when they"re on fire, and cars honing in on empty parking spaces - that kind of thing.
Similar principles are driving smart city developments around the world, including Masdar City near Abu Dhabi, Kenya"s Konza Techno City, and Songdo, near Seoul. Dubbed the "city in a box", the latter is being designed from the ground up with smart technology built into its very fabric. Homes, offices and public buildings will be connected by a video conferencing system known as a "telepresence", household rubbish will be taken away by underground tubes, and the city will be full of EV charging stations.
Largely up and running, Songdo is set for completion by 2015, and while less than 20 per cent of its commercial space is occupied, it"s hoped it will become home to 65,000 people. By comparison, 225,000 people will be living in the $19bn PlanIT Valley when it"s finished. Having been delayed by Portugal"s economic woes, the first phase is due to be operational before the year is out.