Technology for Greener Cities

I mean, those are big cities. Some cities just seem like they go on forever. But the first thing I learned from the report we're going to talk about today is that while they can't seem endless, cities only cover three percent of global land mass but account for seventy percent of global emissions. Because of that, cities around the

world are turning their focus to sustainability. Focus to sustainability, improving air quality and using their resources more efficiently, using electricity more efficiently, making their cities cleaner and more livable, and making them more resilient to the effects of climate change. Today, on the show, We're welcoming back krty Vasta, Technology and

innovation analysts for b NF. She'll tell us about how cities are pushing towards the state ability, why now, and how different cities are approaching the challenge in different ways, and how all cities are using technology as a key component to their strategy. Our discussion is based on a report titled Digital Technologies for Smarter, more Sustainable Cities Being If you just can get this report on BNF go and the Bloomberg terminal, BENF dot com and the BNF

mobile app. As a reminder, BETF does not provide investment or strategy device and you can hear the fullest claimer at the end of the show. Mark Taylor and you're listening to Switched on to BENF podcast cut Welcome, thanks for having me. So let's start off as we always do on the pod, just really basic. So we're going to talk today about, you know, cities being more sustainable.

Why are cities focusing on sustainability now? I think cities are actually facing a number of really complex challenges right now, not just around sustainability. You know, to think more than half of the world's population actually lives in cities, and this is only projected to expand over the next decade, which is then creating huge challenges around resource constraints, public health and safety issues such as you know, traffic congestion,

increasing air pollution. And then at the same time we're also seeing the effects of climate change and extreme weather events like the floods that we recently saw in Germany, and this is really putting a lot of people and infrastructure at risk. So CITI has already had a lot

of this to think about. And then of course along came this global pandemic which just exposed cities vulnerabilities to health related emergencies, and city authorities have really been at the forefront of tackling the pandemic and you know, enforcing socially distanced walkways and managing public spaces, and in some ways, I really think it's the pandemic that has actually marked this historical moment for cities to really start to reimagine

urban life now with things like sustainability, you know, improved air quality, improved resource efficiency, and of course resiliency at the heart of of what they're focusing on. I remember last year in London it was just you know, clear as day, it was, it was just clear, you know, during the height of the pandemic is terribly unfortunate, of course,

but it was noticeable. Yeah, No, air quality has actually been really one of the biggest benefits that we've seen an improvement in and I think because it's you know, so stark, we can see it, it's right in front of us. It's it's really driving this movement towards people starting to reimagine what city life could be like with things like sustainable practices in place. Air quality is one of the big changes that we've seen that people want to hold onto in this you know, future of cities

with a sustainable focus. And I don't know, it's maybe it's just this week, or maybe this is a you know, a sign of things to come. I don't know, but like, yeah, you mentioned that the floods in Germany but also China, and the air quality in New York City from the fires, and there was this massive storm in London last week, and the heat in Portland, like it all just seems to be kind of adding up right now to make it a really rough time to live in a lot

of cities. So kind of to review you you just mentioned some of the things that are that are happening are public health concerns, pollution, climate change, and I guess energy security or security of of living in a city in general. Our cities taking these challenges on like I know, you know, you're not going to act based on just what you heard what happened last week, but our cities

developing sustainability goals. Yeah, absolutely So. Actually has been a record year where we've seen over nine hundred cities and regions setting net zero emissions targets, and altogether this represents about eleven percent of the global population. So if these goals are fulfilled, it's likely to really make a significant

dent in the global cobbon footprint. In the report, you said, I think it was seventy percent of emissions come from cities, Is that right, Yeah, and it's just three percent of the landmass that that that figure was just amazing to me. It is, it's really it's really surprising. And also, you know, cities consume about eight of the world's energy as well, so governments are now really recognizing that in order to hit these national level climate commitments that they're making, cities

are going to play a really huge part. And you know what I find really exciting about cities net zero goals and sustainability policies is that they've also started to align with digitalization policies. What I mean by that is that governments are recognizing that the real power of digital technologies to advance sustainability outcomes, especially when they're applied in areas like technologies to monitor emissions or in transport, you know,

smart mobility. Basically national and city level sustainability policies and now directing funding to digitalized infrastructure adopt IoT sensors use analytic software to really better understand and then optimize operations. That's really cool, and so we'll dig into how these digital technologies are being used to further these sustainability goals in a bit, but first, can you tell us a

bit more about the sustainability goals themselves. In the report you mentioned four main areas where cities tend to focus. We've identified these four broad areas where we're seeing cities actually set sustainability goals, and that's air quality, resource efficiency, energy efficiency and use, and then the fourth area is resiliency. Now, just to kind of explain a little bit about each of these, about four point two million deaths are caused by air pollution each year. And a lot of cities

are trying to tackle it. You know, they're investing investing in better monitoring air quality monitoring technologies and satellites. But what's really interesting to see now is that cities also leveraging technologies to encourage walking and cycling through things like journey planning apps or using AI to have demand responsive transport, which is then reducing the number of vehicles on streets, which then reduces traffic congestion improves air quality in return.

So there's a number of ways which data and technologies are really driving an improvement in air quality for cities. That's really cool. So on air quality for for work, I actually go to used to go to Jakarta every year to talk to people in the geothermal industry, and one thing you'll notice about Jakarta is just there's just

tremendous traffic and bad air quality from if I'm honest. So, what are some kind of examples of things that are being done in cities, maybe like Jakarta to reduce air pollution. So I think Shanghai is a really good example. What they've recently done is Ali Baba launched an AI based app called the City Brain to really try and improve

traffic congestion and improve their quality as a result. And this is kind of like a service that works a bit like a ride sharing app, where commuters buy a bus ticket via this app and enter their start and end locations, and the app then calculates the number of buses required on the streets and it optimizes the journey

as a result as well. And I think this has been really effective in kind of reducing the journey times and also just improving commuter fatigue and just generally improving air quality in cities which are really congested and have this have this problem widespread. Okay, so we're gonna take a quick break. Stay with us. So resource efficiency, what

can you tell me about that? Resource efficiency is actually another another big area where city leaders are really thinking about ways that they can optimize, you know, managing water and reducing waste, implementing recycling and circular economy practices, and also just thinking about methods that can be implemented to introduce sustainable construction, which I think is a really interesting area and there's a lot of interesting ways that technologies

can be applied to kind of improved the types of materials that are being used in new building construction to account for sustainability. One of my favorite examples is the city of Amsterdam, which is using what's called a material passport, which is actually really interesting. It's quite a new sort of technology that's being piloted in a bunch of cities.

But it's basically working on creating a catalog of all the components used in every public building to develop a database of the materials, and then that database can then help future building constructors. We use those materials in the future. So you're saying, if somebody uses certain types of I don't know, rebar or nuts or bolts or whatever, and somebody and they're going to tear down that building and somebody else needs those later, they can reuse those materials exactly.

So wrap this protupt So what does it mean to be resilient for a city? So we have all these things for about sustainability, but resilience seems to be a bit at arts and just preparing for the worst. Is it? Resilience is actually the most central part of a city strategy,

and it really goes hand in hand with sustainability. Given that you know, what we're talking about when it comes to resiliency is having systems and approaches and the flexibility within a city to deal with unpredictable events and really

recover quickly when things go wrong. And I think what's interesting now is what everybody is talking about digital resilience, which is using data and analytics and software not just to respond quickly and effectively to shocks, but also to reduce the likelihood of emergencies happening in the first place.

And I think a really interesting example is the city of l A is using a AI based disaster assessment platform which basically pulls in a lot of data on city infrastructure and previous disasters that have happened to then try and predict the likelihood of a future disaster events carring in the city. And the platform claims to estimate events within accuracy within fifteen minutes of the data coming through, And so this can have a huge impact on disaster

events and have a life saving impact. That's really amazing. But it makes me think like, Okay, but that's that's kind of good for l A because you know, it's a wealthier city as opposed to many of the other cities around the world that can afford to do types of things like this. From the note you said, there is kind of a relationship between a city's characteristics and it's frankly wealth and the types of things that it

can do. So let's dig into the technology a bit and the options available to cities based on kind of what they are. As as you mentioned, you know, the wealth of a city is really important when it comes to understanding the types of technologies that cities are adopting. Deployment is largely dependent on data availability as well, and

I can't really stress the importance of this. It all starts with having you know, this base level of data and information to really begin to understand where the weaknesses lie in city infrastructure, and that in turn can then help cities build the technology systems they need to to kind of target their week week soft spots. So you're saying tech is really kind of a first step in a way to deploy sensors and things like that, so you can collect the information so then you can deploy

the solutions later. Is that right? Yeah? So just you know that, I'd say the primary, you know, the first step would really be to just understand your systems, collect data and and and actually integrate that data. So one one thing that I think has been really successful for a lot of cities is using open data sharing platforms.

London is a great example. There's the London Data Store, which is a free and open data sharing portal and it's used by both public and private entities to better understand the city generally and come up with solutions to many of its problems as well. And I think this sort of platform is is great because it allows data to be integrated and I mentioned but it also means that the right information can be found in haste during an emergency because it's all integrated, it's in one place

that's centralized. So yes, the first step would be having the right information and the data available. What we go through in the note is looking at three types of city groupings. So we look at high income dense, high income sprawling, and low income dense and it's quite interesting to see the differences between them because they are quite stark. So if we look at high income densities, for example, you know they often do have a lot of better

connectivity and data. City infrastructure tends to be well connected, however, it can be aging and quite inefficient. Older cities also tend to have more experience in managing shocks and stresses, but more recently they're becoming a lot more prone to things like cyber attacks because their city infrastructure is interconnected, and so actually, in high income dens cities, we're seeing

that resiliency is really the top priority. With their being wealthier cities, they often have bigger budgets to allocate towards digitalization as well. So this is going to be like New York, right, Yeah, cities like New York, like London, we're already seeing technologies like AI digital twins starting to be experimented with and implemented in some places. And then if we think about high income sprawling cities, this is more about I guess the priority here is really air quality.

Given that people living in wealthy sprawling cities have a greater reliance on cars, they often travel large distances from the suburbs to the center, which then creates traffic jams, and so often these types of cities are thinking about ways that they can implement journey planning apps or AI for demand responsive transport. Also, as as sprawling cities are constantly growing, city to hevelopers may also find more opportunities to pilots and deploy technologies like pipe leak detection in

urban areas for example. And then if we think about the less wealthy cities tend to target the technologies that have low data requirements as they often you know, already lack the connectivity and data infrastructure with the type budgets that they already have for digital projects. Often it's you know, low income cities that depend on private companies as well to invest in the digital infrastructure, and that then helps them actually really understand the pain points in their systems.

That's interesting points. So how does the private company benefit from installing digital infrastructure for a city. Do they get a city contract or are they trying to get the data? Actually, it's it's it's known to to be quite a complicated system for you know, particularly small companies gaining these large

contracts with city governments. With private companies in lowing cities, they often need the infrastructure themselves as part of you know, their own operations, and so by having better internet connectivity within regions where maybe it's it's not as dense, often it's you know, an advantage to the private companies as well to have access to say, better connectivity, better digital

infrastructure outside of the city or wherever they're based. That then feeds into the city government as well, which is then used by the broader city as well. And so it's it's actually a benefit, it's a benefit overall benefits

both sides. Yeah, Okay. Taking us back to the example of Jakarta again, it kind of remind kind of reminds me of I don't know if this is the case, but it would seem to be the case for like a company like go Jack, which is like like Uber in Jakarta, that they would want to install or have information about traffic patterns in Jakarta so that they can better provide their users with trip planning or trip timings for the different journeys. Is that kind of what getting out?

So benefits the city from having the information, but it also benefits go Jack to be able to tell their customers how long their trip is going to take. Absolutely, yeah, And it's and it's this case of like collecting information and data and having that information feed into different other areas of the city as well. So that's exactly that's

exactly that. Okay. So looking at these different types of cities, the three different categories that that that you mentioned, is there kind of a trend in who is setting up sustainability goals. I mean, you mentioned that the focuses are different, So on wealthy cities you'll have more on resilience, lower income cities you'll have more on installing digital infrastructure to get data. But is there a trend on who's setting

sustainability goals generally? Is it all the wealthy cities or and you know, few of the lower income cities, or vice versa, or is everybody doing it? I think it's it's been There's been a range of announcements. I think much of it is coming from the wealthier countries, but actually much of it is coming from NASH and level

policies as well. So you know, a lot of these green recovery packages that we've been seeing being launched last year and this year are really driving funding into smart cities and and often it is it is the wealthier cities now, but of course they're implementing these technologies and in some ways they're like pilot projects or experimentations which would then be rolled out into the different cities, you know,

across across the country. And and you know, I think it's important to say, you know, within a country you get the whole range of types of cities, not all of them within a wealthy country would be wealthy cities. Right, that's also, you know, something to kind of take into account. Yeah, it's been interesting to see how national level policy has

been feeding into city level policy as well. And I think if we take the example of the e use Green Deal within that, it actually emphasizes that cities really need to leverage technologies like AI just to reach climate neutrality. And they've they've dedicated about forty three billion just to low carbon technology specifically, and I think I think that's really a big sign just to say this is where we need to focus. Okay, so it has a kind of a chain for a country to reach a net

zero target, you have to tackle the cities right. You have to get the cities right, and to do that you need tech. It seems to be a huge part of the whole picture. So talking about national level policy, our team actually publishes a annual country Digitalization ranking where we review the level of digitalization across a range of

countries and rank them. And I think as part of that research, what we've what we've seen is there's been this overlap between digitalization policy and sustainability policy as well. And I think, you know, again that feeds directly into what this note is about as well, where we're seeing the same thing happening within cities. Yeah, definitely, Well when is that out next? So we'll be publishing that in the second half of this year, around end of Key three.

I'd say, okay, So I've got kind of two questions. One is, you know, from doing all this research, what do you see as the most there's the single most impactful thing a city can do to be sustainable or decarbonized. I got excited about seeing traffic control options in Jakarta, for example. We talked about that, but like, what do you think? So I can't stress the importance of data availability and open data platforms are really a key part

of that. You know, having information available at city leaders fingertips to really act and and you know, make decisions quickly has been a crucial part of what we've seen during the pandemic with you know, enforcing lockdowns and understanding and how to manage the spread of the virus. But it's also a bigger part of how cities should be running on it on a day to day and I think it's particularly important for sustainability as well. And finally,

so what's next for cities? You know, as I've mentioned thousand times on this show, I I live in London and so I've looked for these city projects quite a bit. You know that they just installed the bike lane down at the end of end of my street. When will I start to see things happening in this guard in in my city or in other cities. I think there's the pandemic has really you know, marked this historic moment

to kind of push towards reimagining city. So I think we're definitely going to reach a point where slowly we will start to see changes, you know, maybe broader cycle lanes as you mentioned, or you know, increased incentives to actually cycle around the city or walk. But I think, you know, the use of technology is is going to be gradual. Even though you know there's it's happening now,

it's it's still going to be gradual. And I think as soon as we get the use of AI across public sector operations, I think that's really going to be transformed transformative, particularly in the public sector operations, so like creating efficiencies and cutting costs for general administrative tasks. I think this will then eventually free up city budgets to direct investments into digitalizing infrastructure as well. And I think that's when it's become going to become really visible and

impactful in our day today lives. Thanks so much for joining us, Thank you for having me. Today's episode of Switched On was edited by Rex Warner of gray Stoke Media. Bloomberg an e F is a service provided by Bloomberg Finance LP and its affiliates. This recording does not constitute, nor should it be construed as investment advice, investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to an investment or other strategy. Bloomberg an e F should not be considered as information

sufficient upon which to base an investment decision. Neither Bloomberg Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this recording, and any liability as a result of this recording. It expressly disclosed