How Stuff work produced this illuminating article on how Space Architects Will Help Us Live and Work Among the Stars cannot go noticed. Hence it is republishing here.
Above is this rendering showing another view of Team SEArch+/Apis Cor’s Mars habitat. The unique shape allows for continuous reinforcement of the structure and allows light to enter through trough-shaped ports on the sides and top. TEAM SEARCH+/APIS COR/NASA
Space Architects Will Help Us Live and Work Among the Stars
This 2020 concept of a moon village created by XTENDdesign is located on the rim of Shackleton crater on the lunar south pole. The Moon Village Association (MVA) is a nongovernmental organization (NGO) whose goal is to create a permanent global forum for stakeholders interested in the development of the Moon Village. NASA
If you’re of the Elon Musk mindset and think that humans, to survive, will have to become a multiplanetary species, we’re going to need a place to live and work. Out there. In space. On other planets.
We’re going to need somebody — a lot of somebodies, really — to build us houses and apartment buildings and offices and space Walmarts and modes of transportation to haul us between all those places. Heck, we’re going to have to build a lot of places to do everything we do here on our rapidly decaying home planet.00:17/01:43
We’ll need architects. A lot of them. We’ll need a different type of architect, to be sure, for our ventures into space. We’ll need … space architects.
Luckily, that’s already a thing.
The Idea Behind Space Architecture
Olga Bannova doesn’t carry a business card that reads “Space Architect,” though she admits that would be pretty awesome. Instead, Bannova’s title (or one of them) is director of the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) — it’s been a thing since the late 1980s — in the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering. SICSA is home to the world’s only space architecture graduate program. A diploma nets you a Master of Science in Space Architecture.
It’s not a huge program yet, churning out only a few graduates every year. It is, like much of the whole idea of multiplanetary expansion, an emerging field.
But for those who believe that our very existence relies on someday moving to a different galactic neighborhood, space architecture has us covered. It is, in a very real way, simply the latest exploratory mission away from Mother Earth.
“You can’t stay in your house forever and think that somehow everything else will be the same … everything is changing, including our Earth, including us, including the solar system, including the galaxy. It’s all changing and moving,” Bannova says. “That’s why it’s important. It’s mostly about understanding more about ourselves.”
Team SEArch+/Apis Cor won first place in the Phase 3: Level 4 software modeling stage of NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge for deep space exploration.TEAM SEARCH+/APIS COR/NASA
What Is Space Architecture, Really?
Space architecture, really, is just what it sounds like. Bannova heads an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) committee, the Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) that concentrates specifically on the field. The SATC, on the site spacearchitect.org — if it has an internet site, you know it’s a thing — describes it like this:Space Architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space (it encompasses architectural design of living and working environments in space related facilities, habitats, and vehicles). These environments include, but are not limited to: space vehicles, stations, habitats and lunar, planetary bases and infrastructures; and earth based control, experiment, launch, logistics, payload, simulation and test facilities.
Space architects, then, are charged with designing buildings and houses and offices and a whole bunch of other stuff that humans need to survive — those interstellar Walmarts, perhaps — both here and in space plus devising ways to get between them. All this, not for nothing, while dealing with problems that Earthbound architects don’t even dream about. Don’t need to dream about. Maybe can’t dream about.
Say, for example, a lack of oxygen or atmosphere. Weather patterns that make our current climate-change problems look like a calm day at a sunny beach. A lack of sunlight. Too much sunlight. Microgravity.
A lack of material to build what you need. Or no way to ship material that you need to where you need it. Or no way to get it there in a timely way, considering the vast distances between points in space.
It’s not hard to imagine the problems that space architects will face, now and in the future. It’s not hard to imagine, either that we can’t even begin to imagine some of the challenges they’ll be up against.
Carving out a space in space for our species to continue is a huge undertaking, perhaps the most audacious ever for mankind. It must be what the possibility of flying to the moon — of human flight at all — must have felt like to Galileo.
But, yeah, we knocked those out, didn’t we?
Team AI. SpaceFactory of New York also participated in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge, and won second place for its space factory habitat on Mars.AI SPACEFACTORY/NASA
The Challenges Ahead
Identifying the multitude of challenges in our move into space, thinking them through, and realizing that so many have yet to be recognized is a sizable part of what space architects now, and space architects in the future, must do. The field cries out for critical thinkers who have an understanding (if not necessarily a doctorate-level degree) in a multitude of specialties; not only architecture and its different branches, but the different areas in engineering (industrial, aerospace, systems and aeronautical, to name a few), physics, geometry, mathematics, logistics, computer science, human biology and many more.
In meta terms, architecture embraces both art and science. It addresses how we build, how we live, in the space we inhabit. You don’t build a library without figuring out how we move about it, where the books go, where the light comes in.
If our living space is to become outer space — a habitable space that humans have been learning about, up close, for at least 20 years — well, we better start cracking the books.
What’s a habitat on Mars to look like? How do winds there affect what you build? What about gravity? How do you construct a farm, if one can be built, with the radiation of another planetary body beaming down? How do we build living quarters on a ship that may take decades to get where it’s going? How can we make sure that a flying habitat flies?
What can we learn by building these habitats on some of the less-hospitable areas of Earth? How can what we learn help us while we’re still here?
You want to be a space architect? Get yourself a planet-sized toolbox.
“Space architecture is not for the technically timid. To play this game, one needs to educate oneself about the harsh realities of life beyond Earth, and the science and technology for fashioning habitable bubbles in deadly environments,” Theodore Hall, a former chairperson of the SATC and an extended reality software developer at the University of Michigan, said back in 2014. “Only then is one prepared to stand toe-to-toe with the engineers and strive for architectural aesthetics that treat the human as more than a deterministic biochemical subsystem of a soulless machine.”
Those still interested in space architecture — and, again, we’re going to need a lot of forward-thinkers to sign up — shouldn’t be intimidated, though. Plenty of problems are there to be faced, certainly, and it will take all kinds to determine how our species can best live away from home.
Problems in finding a new home among the stars? Space architects are on the job.
“It’s impossible to predict everything, in space especially. It’s hard to design some close-to-perfect habitat even on Earth,” says Bannova, who carries an undergraduate degree from the Moscow Architectural Institute, dual masters degrees (in architecture and space architecture, both from UH) and a doctorate from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology. “We have more questions than answers. It’s the nature of the profession. But it gives you an opportunity to see and decide for yourself where your passion is.”
Published on 20 September 2021, in E&T, AJ Abdallah’s question of How will artificial intelligence power the cities of tomorrow?
How will artificial intelligence power the cities of tomorrow?
By AJ Abdallat, Beyond Limits
Achieving a decarbonised future will require efficiency-boosting measures that AI can help to identify and implement.
Artificial intelligence is taking the stage as smart cities become not just an idea for the future, but a present reality. Advanced technologies are at the forefront of this change, driving valuable strategies and optimising the industry across all operations. These technologies are quickly becoming the solution for fulfilling smart city and clean city initiatives, as well as net-zero commitments.
AI is becoming well integrated with the development of smart cities. A 2018 Gartner report forecast that AI would become a critical feature of 30 per cent of smart city applications by 2020, up from just 5 per cent a few years previously. Implementation of AI is rapidly being recognised as the not-so-secret ingredient helping major energy providers accomplish their lowest-carbon footprints yet, along with unparalleled sustainability and attractive profit margins.
What makes a city ‘smart’ is the collection and analysis of vast amounts of data across numerous sectors, from metropolitan development and utility allocation all the way down to manual functions like city services. Smart cities require the construction and maintenance of arrangements of sensors, equipment and other systems designed to create sustainability and efficiency.
Altering the strategy behind a city’s utilities operations is one of the major keys to making it smarter and more sustainable. AI solutions are already making significant strides where this is concerned. As the CEO of an AI company creating software for the utilities sector, the impact that advanced solutions are already having on the industry is something I’m very excited about.
One real-world example of AI powering smart city utilities is the Nvidia Metropolis platform, which uses intelligent video analytics to improve public services, logistics, and more. Nvidia describes it as being designed to: “create more sustainable cities, maintain infrastructure, and improve public services for residents and communities.” The company collects data from sensors and other IoT devices, city-wide, to provide insights that can lead to improvements in areas like disaster response, asset protection, supply forecasting and traffic management.
Another solution at the forefront of building smarter cities is a project led by Xcell Security House and Finance SA that aims to build the world’s first power plant guided by cognitive AI, driving utility development in West Africa. As the earliest implementation of an AI-powered plant from the ground up, it will employ advanced sensor-placement technology and techniques that embed knowledge and expertise into every part of the facility’s processes. Stakeholders will have streamlined access to facility-scale insights, creating a plant environment with greater risk mitigation as well as maximised efficiency and productivity.
These are just two of many emerging applications of AI in smart city development. When applying AI, the sector also stands to achieve greater cost and operational efficiencies in several key areas such as predictive maintenance, load forecasting/optimisation, grid reliability, energy theft prevention and renewable resource optimisation.
When discussing energy efficiency, many factors enter the picture, including the impact of environmental factors as commonplace as temperature and humidity levels. Historically, experienced human operators were best equipped to identify efficiency-boosting adjustments. Today, cognitive AI is making moves to encode that human knowledge and expertise across providers’ entire operations, delivering recommendations at a moment’s notice. Explainable AI creates the trust necessary for operators, engineers and stakeholders to solve acute issues quickly. The system’s shrewd situational awareness helps detect, foresee and solve problems, even when circumstances are in constant flux – scenarios as critical as an entire city’s water and power supply.
AI is already playing a principal role in supporting the move towards smarter cities by helping entire sectors get closer to efficiency and net-zero objectives. Achieving a decarbonised future will require more resourceful processes that boost efficiency and reduce waste. AI for utilities can elevate productivity, yielding more attention around resource consumption, and hastening the adoption of renewable, carbon-friendly strategies on a global scale.
According to a report from IDC, smart city technology spending across the globe reached $80 billion in 2016 and is expected to grow to $135 billion by 2021. It is imperative that companies, industries, and other entities looking to participate in this important stage of digital transformation seek out industrial-grade AI companies with software that provides holistic, organisation/sector/city-wide insights through sensor placement technology and data collection techniques.
Governments at every level, as well as public and private organisations, are facilitating technological implementation and digital transformation. Private and public partnerships have become a major mechanism by which cities can adopt technology that makes them smarter. The best course of action is to embrace AI that blends knowledge-based reasoning with advanced digitalisation techniques, helping stakeholders distinguish unanticipated scenarios and make tough choices.
Choosing the most dynamic form of AI to transform the utilities sector will contribute remarkably to the development of smart cities. Enhanced communication, strengthened collaboration, increased fuel savings and decreased waste will help companies – particularly in high-value industries – to increase their profits. Indelible process improvements, like streamlined operational capacities where all facilities function more efficiently in harmony, are the future of smart city technology.
Zawya’s TECHNOLOGY gives Shaping the future of Human Resources by Dr Ahmad Khamis, all the importance that is due to it in the GCC region.
The above image is for illustration and is of Entrepreneur.
The presence of rich data resources has enabled businesses to segment and personalise their products and services, which has provided an opportunity for these companies to rapidly expand into new spaces of innovation. All these adjustments have had a profound impact on the structure and functioning of the workplace. As a result, this has created a need for organisations to rethink how they hire, engage, develop, reward, and lead their workforce
OPINION
Technology is changing the way we live and work, stirring businesses into adapting effortlessly. Every business, regardless of industry, now has the need and potential to evolve digitally and consequently, globally.
The presence of rich data resources has enabled businesses to segment and personalise their products and services, which has provided an opportunity for these companies to rapidly expand into new spaces of innovation. All these adjustments have had a profound impact on the structure and functioning of the workplace. As a result, this has created a need for organisations to rethink how they hire, engage, develop, reward, and lead their workforce.
From “for whom” to “with whom”
High performing organisations have begun to operate as empowered networks, coordinated through culture, information systems and talent mobility. This requires companies to redesign the organisation itself with new operational models to be implemented at different levels. The fast-paced business activities demand that firms are not encumbered by legacy practices, traditional systems, and behaviors that consume resources such as time and money but do not deliver the desired results in return. This has led to the popular question; “for whom do you work?” to be replaced by “with whom do you work?”
HR Management was primarily designed as a compliance function in an organisation, with a focus on managing talent, processes, and transactions. However, constantly changing business and organisational structures require a flexible, data-driven, and highly skilled human resource system that can attract, retain, and develop talents. HR is transforming into an innovative consultancy with a broader scope and responsibility to design, formulate strategies, and enhance the entire employee and employer experience.
Transforming a business environment requires a new HR system that is more tactical and strategic as opposed to administrative. A strategic HR team has the potential to build a team of employees most suited to the company’s requirements. Moreover, digitising functions will enable senior management to focus on functions such as increasing the market share of their business, growing their customer base, driving product innovation, increasing sales, and helping the company be more responsive to the market, among other operations.
Shifting to a company-wide interrelated function
An organisation’s HR has evolved from a silo away from core business plans and activities to a department that cofunctions with management, to further understand business needs, and most importantly, to enable and empower their key resource: employees. With the rise of disruptive technologies such as block chain, AI, machine learning VR/AR, and people analytics, the suitability of HR practices has greatly expanded. Every HR department owns a variety of data, including payroll, social media, employee engagement surveys, leadership assessments and developments, performance reviews, recruiting, and exit interviews, which if conducted correctly, can guarantee key insights for future business decisions.
The two shifts taking place that play a significant role in shaping this industry’s future are the options on how companies support traditional HR practices, and talent retention in an environment where employees are capable and eager to transfer to new workplaces. The GCC region has a stable regulatory framework, excellent infrastructure, and a diverse range of talents and capabilities among its residents and expats. Furthermore, the region’s present interest in harnessing technology and innovation is projected to assist GCC enterprises’ human resources departments. It is estimated by the World Economic Forum that 41% of all work activities in Kuwait are susceptible to automation, 46% in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, 47% in the UAE, and 52%in Qatar. As compared to 2015, 21% of core skills required across all occupations was different in 2020 in the GCC.
Professionals that can combine extensive industry expertise with cutting-edge analytical tools to quickly modify corporate strategies will be in high demand. Crowdfunding sites, remote and virtual work, and other online platforms are gaining popularity. This necessitates HR departments in GCC organisations managing a distributed and virtual workforce, integrating freelancers, and mitigating the constraints of online work. Furthermore, it necessitates businesses to foster a culture of continuous learning and knowledge of the changing infrastructure among their staff.
Organisations can utilise people analytics and predictive talent modelling to identify pain points and prioritise future analytics investments. Data analytics can also help businesses correctly identify employees who are on the verge of leaving and persuade them to stay with more informed efforts. This not only increases customer satisfaction but also lowers costs.
Rebranding human resources
Several significant innovations are having an impact on today’s HR functions. Companies choose solutions that allow for ongoing performance monitoring, obviating the need for formal quarterly or half-yearly staff reviews. The process will become increasingly automated and streamlined as firms adopt a single data model to enable real-time KPIs to measure and analyse performance. Firms demand real-time management, and HR must respond by leveraging analytics and data in creative ways to improve staff management.
The majority of today’s workforce are incredibly tech-savvy and want a consistent and distinctive experience on a daily basis. The workforce will increasingly include millennials who expect cutting-edge technology to support them in their employment, necessitating the organisation’s ongoing invention of new ways to engage the workforce.
As the power of technology grows, technology needs to become a trusted partner at work, augmenting an individual’s role in smart ways so that the employees can focus on those aspects of the job that require human touch and skills. Artificial intelligence enables large-scale efficiencies and serves as a foundation for many of the new technologies that businesses are adopting.
In many firms, HR functions have been rebranded, with phrases such as “employee experience”, “people management”, and “human capital” to signal a shift in the brand. Organisations are still grappling with how digitisation will fundamentally alter human work and in what ways humans and the emerging machine co-workers will work together. This is likely to create new value for customers and the firm. It is high time to reimagine work across the enterprise and HR with digitisation and automation.
Dr Ahmad Khamis is the co-founder & CEO at BLOOVO, a technology company founded in 2014 specializing in the provision of AI-powered recruitment solutions. Ahmad is a seasoned private equity and venture capital professional boasting over 17 years of multi-national experience. His career has seen him in senior roles at several blue-chip companies in the MENA region and premier consultancies. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from University College London (UCL), Diploma in Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics (LSE), Masters in Finance from the University of Leicester and a Doctorate in Financial Economics from Manchester.
Printing our way out of the Netherlands housing crisis by Ivo Jongsma, Eindhoven University of Technology could not only resolve the Netherlands’ housing crisis but an intelligent way of sorting out the MENA region’s shortage of endemic lack of proper accommodation, particularly in those heavily populated areas. It is worth noting that the end product bears similarities with the vernacular architecture of many of the MENA housing typologies.
Printing our way out of the Netherlands housing crisis: ‘It is desperately needed’
Eindhoven leads the way: for the first time, Dutch residents are moving into a 3D-printed concrete home. Professor Theo Salet of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is the driving force behind Project Milestone, which is more relevant than ever before due to the housing crisis. An interview with an impassioned man: “We are facing an unprecedented challenge.”
It sometimes seems as if freshly printed concrete has a will of its own. The mixture constantly reacts to changes in temperature during curing and tends to collapse like a plum pudding when there is insufficient stiffness. To complicate matters further, the printing process needs to account for inclined walls and the changing weight of the structure.
With a little imagination, you can compare concrete printing to walking on a very thin tightrope: you must not print too quickly (the structure then becomes unstable) but also not too slowly (the printed layers will no longer adhere). It’s no small feat.
Customization on a large scale
Under these difficult conditions, Theo Salet and his team have spent years looking for ways to develop safe, rigid structures through which unique homes with a distinctive character can roll out of the concrete printer. Customization on a large scale instead of standardization.
The project caused him some headaches. Salet is a professor and dean of the Department of the Built Environment at TU/e and the driving force behind the Project Milestone, a collaboration between TU/e, Eindhoven municipality, construction company Van Wijnen, building materials manufacturer Saint Gobain Weber Beamix, engineering firm Witteveen + Bos and housing investor Vesteda.
For years, Salet worked with Ph.D. students Rob Wolfs and Zeeshan Ahmend and various master’s students and third parties on the construction of the first completely 3D-printed house that meets all building requirements. He regularly had to swallow disappointments, such as during the search for the right combination of concrete and insulation material for the sandwich walls, but these were just as often followed by the realization that his team was making progress.
“The fact that we’ve already come this far makes me a proud man,” Salet says as he strolls the grounds near the 3D-printed home in Eindhoven’s Meerhoven district this morning. He is also proud of how the knowledge developed has found its way to industry so quickly. Printing a wall is one thing, but producing a complete house is a different kettle of fish. This can only be done with the right industrial partners, emphasizes the professor.
“What’s nice is that there’s still so much to be gained just by learning from this experience,” he explains as his eye travels across the structure. The shape of the house is inspired by that of a boulder, a polished version of the housing that used to be featured in the Flintstones cartoon, with a sleek and modern interior.
First occupant of 3D concrete printed house in Eindhoven receives the key
The first tenant of the first Dutch home made of 3D-printed concrete will receive the key today, April 30. The house in Eindhoven, the first of five from Project Milestone, fully complies with all strict Dutch building requirements.
The house is a detached single-story home with 94 square meters of net floor area, a generous living room and two bedrooms. It is located in the Eindhoven neighborhood of Bosrijk. The home consists of 24 printed concrete elements, which were printed layer by layer at the print factory in Eindhoven. The elements were transported by trucks to the building site where they were placed on a foundation.
There’s a reason Salet is putting his heart and soul into this project. The urgency is profound, he stresses several times this morning. “This is not about the ambition of some scientist, it’s about the rock-hard necessity of making major changes to the way we build,” Salet says, referring to the ever-expanding housing shortage and the pressing climate issue, among other things. “Understand that we need to build in the Netherlands alone a million homes in 10 years and make 7.5 million homes drastically more sustainable in 30 years. In addition, infrastructure from the 1960s and 1970s is heading towards the end of its design life. We are facing an unprecedented challenge.”
Unprecedented challenges call for rigorous measures. In fact, the professor argues, you need to turn the entire chain upside down. The construction sector must be more focused on the demands of society and, at the same time, more productive and sustainable. People, profit, planet, to put it briefly. According to Salet, this is the path along which we must pursue the transition. Close collaboration between academia, industry and the government is of great importance—the triple helix model. Salet: “Make that the quadruple helix model. You have to involve the public as well. Isn’t it crazy that residents barely have a say in their own built environment?”
In order to break the chain, the need must first be felt by all parties involved. Salet: “Take the government, which must realize that the housing shortage is an issue for which it does not have an answer, simply because no one has the answer. The academic world can stimulate innovation, but there has to be a concrete question on the table. Industry must also be given the opportunity to make the transition to high-quality manufacturing. The municipality of Eindhoven understood this in the Milestone project and dared to take on this unique challenge.”
Indeed, the government can create the conditions that foster partnerships which accelerate innovation. “Create pilot projects to experiment with and then scale them up. In tenders, look not only at price but also whether the construction project scores highly in areas such as circularity or innovation in the construction and manufacturing industries. If the urgency is felt, parties will seek each other out.” The professor points to Eindhoven-based VDL, for example, which will be working with Van Wijnen in Heerenveen.
Industrial customization
In the media, Salet regularly reads that standardization should become the new norm. Modular construction is gathering more and more attention, but he dismisses this idea. “We’ll then start delivering mass production and, in a while, the same houses will line every street. That would be extremely monotonous; no one is waiting for that and it isn’t necessary either. You have to digitize the entire process from design to construction. A robot doesn’t care what shape it has to print, so you then get industrial customization with variation. Let’s make that step in one go, as challenging as it may be.”
If the construction industry can make a dramatic shift, as Salet says it can, the benefits of industrial customization will be huge. Productivity will skyrocket. Additionally, you will need less high-quality craftsmanship in a market with a desperate shortage of skilled workers. The heavy work will disappear. This will make more room for women in the sector while the health of employees will also improve; a bad back or worn knees will be a thing of the past.
The biggest gains, however, will be in the areas of sustainability and circularity. “The amount of material we currently use in construction is unprecedented. We need to cut down.” Concrete, for example, is one of the largest emitters of CO2 worldwide. By both adjusting the composition and reducing the user quantity, giant leaps can be made. The reuse of materials and elements of a 3D-printed house should also become possible in the future. “We’re currently working hard on that.” Salet is hopeful and sets his sights high: “It’s absolutely possible to use 50% fewer raw materials and increase construction speed by 35%.”
Second floor
For this reason, the professor would prefer to continue developing the printing method as quickly as possible. The momentum is there. In addition to the first home, he wants to realize a second house in the near future which will be a step further along than its predecessor: a second floor. In total, Project Milestone covers five concrete-printed homes. Salet: “I now want to work from industrial product to design instead of the other way around. For the first house we first created a design without an estimate of whether the printer can produce certain shapes, so we tried to force the printer. The question should be: which products can the printer handle? From there, we can create a variety of designs. Artificial intelligence is going to help with this and will become necessary in order to keep the quality of the printed work consistent, especially if we’re going to print a home on site.”
Meanwhile, research into 3D concrete printing is gaining popularity around the world. “We’ve set the tone,” says Salet. “In terms of technological development, we’re at the forefront. Printing layers and building a wall can be done by others. But producing an entire house that meets the strict requirements of a building permit and is also inhabited, that’s truly unique. We can be very proud of that. We’re increasingly understanding the will of printed concrete.”
WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM (WEF)’s Charlotte Edmond, Senior Writer, Formative Content, wondering whether these 5 global cities are leading the charge to a renewable future, came up with this snapshot picture of today’s urban context in which much of human life takes place.
The Image above of Keit Trysh is for illustration and is of Dubai.
These 5 global cities are leading the charge to a renewable future
Among the steps being taken to achieve a renewable future are energy-efficient buildings and cycling/walking schemes.Image: Unsplash/Sava Bobov
A billion people live in a city with renewable energy targets or policies.
Cities contribute three-quarters of CO2 emissions from final energy use.
New report highlights some ways cities around the world are getting greener.
As urbanization continues apace, cities have an important role to play in helping curb greenhouse gas emissions and achieve Paris climate agreement objectives to limit global warming.
In a new report, REN21, a global body of scientists, governments, NGOs and industry, has highlighted some of the cities leading the way. Here are five of the most effective and innovative projects from around the world.
What is the World Economic Forum doing to ensure smart cities?
Cities represent humanity’s greatest achievements – and greatest challenges. From inequality to air pollution, poorly designed cities are feeling the strain as 68% of humanity is predicted to live in urban areas by 2050.
The World Economic Forum supports a number of projects designed to make cities cleaner, greener and more inclusive.
The World Economic Forum announced on June 28, 2019 that it was been selected to act as the secretariat for the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance.
Led by the World Economic Forum, the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance is the largest global initiative of its kind, with its 16 founding partners representing more than 200,000 cities and local governments, companies, start-ups, research institutions and non-profit organizations.
Together, the Alliance is testing and implementing global norms and policy standards to help ensure that data collected in public places is used safely and ethically.
Renewable city targets.Image: Renewables in Cities 2021 Global Status Report, REN21
Adelaide, Australia
Adelaide’s municipal operations have been powered entirely by renewable energy since July 2020. The city gets energy from wind and solar farms as part of a long-term commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2025.
Among the steps being taken to achieve this are energy-efficient buildings, initiatives to promote cycling and walking, and schemes to support the uptake of hybrid and electric vehicles.
The city has also invested in energy storage technologies, including the Hornsdale Power Reserve. It is one of the world’s largest lithium-ion batteries, and allows for greater use of a variety of renewable energy sources.
Adelaide is also investigating the opportunity to harness biogas from wastewater treatment plants as an additional energy source.
Cities around the world have set renewable targets.Image: Renewables in Cities 2021 Global Status Report, REN21
Seoul, Republic of Korea
Seoul has a strategy to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 built around five key areas – buildings, mobility, forestry, clean energy, and waste management. On the path to 2050 it has two interim goals – achieving 40% emission reduction by 2030 and 70% reduction by 2040 (compared with 2005 levels).
The city also has measures in place to cut back its reliance on nuclear energy by adding solar capacity. One of the key challenges is finding sufficient space to install photovoltaic (PV) panels. To tackle this, it is identifying new installation sites on urban infrastructure, and providing subsidies for PV panels integrated into buildings.
Cocody, Ivory Coast
In 2017, Cocody released a plan to reduce carbon emissions by 70% by 2030. The city faces a particular struggle to achieve this because of rising energy demand driven by rapid urban development and economic growth.
The city has put in place a reforestation and carbon sequestration programme, under which more green spaces will be created and 2 million mangrove trees will be planted or restored.
Other initiatives include using solar energy to power large public buildings, installing solar lamp posts and traffic lights, and supplying households with PV power kits.
Older cars are gradually being removed from the roads and others are being fitted with catalytic exhaust systems to reduce pollution.
The plan moving forward.Image: Renewables in Cities 2021 Global Status Report, REN21
Malmö, Sweden
Malmö has made a name for itself as a sustainable city. The Western Harbour District has operated on 100% renewable energy since 2012, while the industrial area of Augustenborg has solar thermal panels connected to a central heating system.
The city plans to run entirely on renewables by 2030, up from around 43% in 2020.
Construction is under way on a geothermal deep-heat plant, which is expected to be operational in 2022. By 2028 it is hoping to have five of these geothermal plants.
Cape Town, South Africa
Coal is the dominant energy source in South Africa by some margin. The government wants to increase the share of renewable energy from around 8% in 2016 to 40% by 2030.
Emissions from transport are also a major problem for the city. It is exploring the use of biofuels in transport, and has run a pilot programme with locally made electric buses.
A surge of PV panel installations in the past decade means Cape Town had the highest concentration of registered rooftop solar PV systems nationwide in 2019. The city is also targeting greater use of solar-powered water heating systems in low-income areas.
Renewable energy provision at scale is also an option being seriously considered.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
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Privacy settings
Privacy Settings
This site uses functional cookies and external scripts to improve your experience. Which cookies and scripts are used and how they impact your visit is specified on the left. You may change your settings at any time. Your choices will not impact your visit.
NOTE: These settings will only apply to the browser and device you are currently using.
Google Analytics
To provide me with an idea of my site’s performance
