Smart people in smart cities: technologies and a sustainable lifestyle
With 75% of CO2 output and 80% of energy consumption taking place in cities, the key to developing a sustainable future lies within the cities. Most Smart City initiatives are technology focussed but fail to address the opportunity of using this technology to address the issue of sustainable lifestyles. In the Smart City of the future, smart people will have to make a considerable contribution by adopting a sustainable lifestyle. In the age of social media, it should be possible to use technology to align sustainability targets with real behaviour in cities. Data transparency and creating effective rewards systems are the key to kick-start this change process.
Urbanisation and the need for a sustainable lifestyle
2 million people are moving into cities per week. Urban regions, especially in India and China, are struggling with road congestion, pollution, water supply issues and grid instability bringing some of these cities close to demographic collapse.
Technology, infrastructure and rigorous execution of a City Master Plan are an essential part of maintaining the quality of life in cities. In order to facilitate an urban population of 6.4 billion people living on 2% of the earth’s surface by 2050, infrastructure and roll-out of smart technology might not be sufficient. Instead, a considerable contribution will have to come from people adopting sustainable lifestyles.
Sustainable lifestyle changes that need to be made: the way we consume resources, primarily energy, produce and deal with waste and think about mobility,...
Urban, sedentary lifestyles are a major health issue
Many citizens adopt a sedentary/unsustainable lifestyle resulting in a diabetes epidemic that large part of the developed and developing world is suffering from. With lack of physical activity and bad nutrition, lying at the core of this development, diabetes is expected to affect 1/3 of the population in the future, 94% of the cases today are avoidable and missed the opportunity to implement effective intervention programs. It is the ideas and technologies used in these intervention programs that can be re-used in aligning sustainable lifestyle targets with real behaviour in cities.
Technology and lifestyle intervention - smart people in smart cities
As a result from research programs, 2 important pillars for successful lifestyle intervention can be found: Transparency (creating visibility on actual performance) and Reward Systems (rewarding for performance - user specific triggers for motivation).
Applied to smart city programs, this could mean the following:
(1) Transparency:
Massive amounts of data are being collected in cities and the availability of cheap sensor technologies allows for collecting even more data. City authorities should not bunker that data, instead make it available to the public. 2 examples of cities doing this are:
Copenhagen : together with Hitachi, Copenhagen has developed www.citydataexchange.com to make data available to the public. App developers are already starting to integrate this data in popular apps that become part of daily life.
Singapore has defined data openness as one of the key KPI’s in their policy for years, resulting in the portal data.gov.sg. The presentation layer of this portal is optimised to prioritise the display of data that is requested the most.
The open display of data fosters a culture of collaboration and trust with the government which is often perceived to follow personal and distant political agendas. Public involvement will increasingly become a success factor in the transformation towards a smart city with smart people. Data transparency is an important step towards reaching this goal.
(2) Reward System
In Singapore, the launch of a pedometer based walking app (www.steptember.sg) has measurably altered lifestyles. Although the reward system is not financial, adding gaming elements as well as the satisfaction of doing something for a higher cause (Cerebral palsy) has proven to be sufficient motivation for a measurable change in Lifestyle (more physical activity).
The Netherlands is notorious for being a country of traffic jams – being very advanced in implementing modern ITS infrastructure, new ways are sought to change driver behaviour. The Dutch road authority has allocated budgets for creating an incentive system for drivers to follow advice on their trip such as taking an alternative route or following certain speed guidance. Subscribers to the ZOOF service (www.zoof.nu/) collect points that can be redeemed in a partner network.
Reward systems can be both material and non-material – important is that acting in adherence to the sustainability goals (broken down in individual goals on mobility, energy, waste,…) is rewarded in a way that is perceived as valuable. In this age of social media, sometimes social status uplift or gamification elements (remember Pokémon) can measurably alter behaviour.
Call for action
Cities and national authorities should take this “Urban Lifestyle Intervention” seriously as failing to do so will most likely affect more than 1/3 of the population who miss the economic power to escape the negative effects of an overstressed urban environment.
Some cities are taking the lead and engage in a sustainability discussion with their citizens (e.g. York (UK) – One Planet York), introducing a point and ranking systems for sustainable lifestyle adherence using a mobile phone application.
With first steps being taken, the challenge will be to find the right communication (means and tone) and reward system that leads to altered behaviour on a large scale resulting in smart people living in smart cities.
