Global Urban Sustainability Science

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor Felix Creutzig from Technical University Berlin is speaking on "Data-scientific approaches for a global urban sustainability science". This is very relevant to Australia, where, we have rapid unplanned growth of cities.

Professor Creutzig began by pointing out that cities are growing, and a large proportion of their carbon emissions are from building the cities. He then pointed out the New York City Green New Deal (OneNYC 2050). However, Professor Creutzig pointed out that most cities are too small to employ specialists to work on such strategies. Studies carried out by researchers, he argued,  tend to be on a large scale, without the fine scale specifics to be of practical use, while small local studies do not have the needed scale. We then got the pitch on how "typologies" with machine learning could be used to fill the gap.

Professor Creutzig started with some simple statistical analysis of cities characteristics. He the introduced a simple topology of cities, by characteristics features such as energy use, GDP, and population density. What I found odd was that the data analysis for this was carried out using published case studies, not actual data from the cities. It worried me this did not seem to e "big data" or machine learning, just a conventional meta-analysis. Also this has built in the biases of whoever collected the data, as to what they though important about cities. Researchers and statistical agencies collect data based on existing theories of cities.

What "big data" and machine learning now offers is the opportunity to use much more fine grained data. I thought Professor Creutzigwas going to go on to discuss this. But instead he talked about an analysis of papers on the use of machine learning applied to climate change mitigation. This might be of some use for someone who was considering setting out to apply AI to urban planning. However, it is not actually applying AI to urban sustainability.

Professor Creutzig has published extensively on the topic.

Data Drives the Smart City

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Australian National University (ANU) are holding a half day event on "Data Drives the Smart City", in Melbourne 7 May, Canberra 8 May and Sydney 10 May, 2018.

"The half day conference will explore the challenges and progress made in the technology and underpinning standards framework needed to enable smart cities. You will hear from leading experts in the field on how challenges are being tackled. ...

Our world is increasingly being shaped by the vast amount of data being produced in every aspect of our lives. As more devices get connected through the Internet of Things (IoT), harnessing big data in an integrated way can offer valuable insights that can help achieve smart city goals. This comes with important and interesting challenges to solve in order to actualise the smart city vision.Challenges include data collection, integration and privacy.

TOPICS:

Topics to be addressed include perspectives from Government, tech industry leadership, Web standards for spatial data and city sensing, technical solutions to privacy management, and smart grid futures. A panel session will discuss capacity building for smart cities.

SPEAKERS:

Speakers include Dr Ian Oppermann (NSW Chief Data Scientist), Dr Ole Nielsen (ACT Chief Digital Officer), J. Alan Bird (W3C Global Business Development Lead), Dr Mukesh Mohania (IBM Distinguished Engineer in IBM Research), Dr David Hyland-Wood (Blockchain Protocol Architect, Consensys), Dr Lachlan Blackhall (Entrepreneurial Fellow and Head, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program), Dr Kerry Taylor (Chair, W3C Spatial Data on the Web), Dr Peter Christen (Professor, Data Mining and Matching, ANU), and Dr Armin Haller (W3C Office Manager, ANU)."

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Australian Education City Proposed for Victoria

An organization called "Australian Education City" has proposed an education, R&D and residential development, most likely to be near Melbourne.

The education component would have precincts, each with a campus shared by Australian, Chinese and UK universities. No universities are mentioned in the education campus outline, only the Beijing based Education International Corporation (EIC) Group, student recruitment company.

Residential development is a component of the "Australian Education City" and perhaps the key to financing the project.  The Melbourne contact address and telephone number given for the project are that of the offices of "Investors Direct Financial Group", a residential property investment company. 

This combination of residential, hi-tech and education are common to smart city proposals and smaller developments (many so called smart cities are really towns). As an example, the Australian Education City references an IBM infor-graphic about the Indian township of Palava. Also the IBM "A vision of smarter cities" is referenced (although there does not appear to be any IBM involvement in the Australian proposal).

Not all such smart city and tech-campus proposals are successful. Malaysia's Cyberjaya has required government investment to survive. Australia has its own attempt at a high tech city with the Multi-Function Polis (MFP), a Japanese 1980s proposal for a city of the future to concentrate on IT, education and environmental management. What resulted was a modest suburb in Adelaide and the renaming of an existing technology park.

On a smaller scale the ANU recently unveiled proposals for redevelopment of "Union Court" in the center of its Canberra campus, with provision for accommodation. The ANU has released a "Plan for Reimagined ANU Union Court and University Avenue" and is seeking investors, but the project might need to be changed to make it financially viable. Currently the project is envisaged with buildings far below even the current modest height limit set for this part of Canberra. With taller buildings, an investment at Australia's leading university (19th in the world) could be attractive to developers.

Another brown-field site available is the Australian Technology Park (ATP) in Sydney. This is located adjacent to a major rail corridor and close to the Sydney CBD, but has limited space. The ATP started with considerable promise, but failed, perhaps due to the lack of a residential and retail component.