SMART CITIES
“ More than half of the issues identified also improved energy efficiency , and these outcomes would have great potential at a city-wide level ”
DAVE HOPPING CEO , SOLUTIONS AND SERVICES , SIEMENS SMART INFRASTRUCTURE
test bed for future smart city technologies , nobody can deny that it ’ s one to watch .
Another is Woven City , a 175 acre smart city site being built by Toyota at the base of Mount Fuji in which electricity generated by hydrogen powered fuel cells will be the main energy supply and trials of new ideas for systems and services that expand mobility will be tested .
Plans for this new city were announced in January 2020 and construction started early 2021 . In its mission statement , Toyota calls the new city a “ Test Course for Mobility ” while the strapline “ Woven City - Toyota ’ s Living Laboratory ” appears throughout its communications , indicating that research and development is its primary reason for being .
In June this year , Toyota and subsidiary Woven Planet Holdings announced a working prototype of their portable hydrogen cartridge - designed to facilitate the everyday transport and supply of hydrogen energy to power a broad range of daily life applications in and outside of the home . Proof of Concept ( PoC ) trials are to be conducted in various places , including , you guessed it - Woven City , “ a human-centred smart city of the future .” Whether the reality will live up to the rhetoric remains to be seen , but again this is a good example of a working laboratory .
Smart city technologies being tested now On a smaller , but no less impressive scale , smart city technologies are being trialled in enclosed ( and open ) environments that already exist , all over the world . I spoke to Dave Hopping , CEO , Solutions and Services , Siemens Smart Infrastructure to find out more ….
BK : Do you have any examples of enclosed environments like university campuses , or military bases being used as test-beds for smart city technologies ?
DH : In theory , any smart campus or urban environment could be considered a test bed for smart city technology ; it ’ s really a question of whether that technology can then be scaled to solve a city-wide problem , or create a specific outcome .
A great example of where we ’ ve worked with a university campus to implement digital services is at Tampere University in Finland . Working with the university , we built a data-driven maintenance model which ,
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