RICS Cities in a Digital World 2016

RICS hosted a conference event as part of the World Cities Summit being held in Singapore this week. Our moderator for the day was Poon King Wang, Director from the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at Singapore University of Technology and Design.

Practical approaches to creating smarter cities

Our opening speaker Ms Karuna Gopal of the Foundation for Futuristic Cities challenged our audience about the new normal that cities and their leaders need to contend with if they wish to create and sustain smart cities. Key messages from Karuna included:

• Why wait for a crisis to do the best?
• Delink infrastructure from political cycles
• We need extreme collaboration rather than Extreme Engineering
• Technology and design are both important

Our subsequent panel looked a range of key issues

Poon King Wang               “Can RICS develop a hierarchy of need for smart cities?”

Linda Chandler, Microsoft“We need to build bridges across different factions of the city”“People should not be last in the queue when government makes decisions

Chintan Raveshia, Arup“Digital is now central to masterplanning.... We don’t engage with behaviour change enough. We have tools to help design for sun/wind etc – but we also need to do more to ensure behaviour changes too

A key takeaway from this discussion( as well at the World Cities Summit itself) is that inclusion is an important issue for cities today – but leadership of cities needs to change to achieve smarter cities.

The citizen needs to be more empowered. Leadership needs to appeal to emotions and people will need to speak up and demand what they need.

PropTech and Innovation in the built environment

Christchurch is a city that has risen like a phoenix. Mayor, Lianne Dalziel gave an excellent account of how her city is making new opportunities to connect and grow through its major rebuilding effort. Her city is an exemplar of rebuilding with greater resilience to better withstand future seismic events.

The city has had a strong connection to science and innovation in construction and has learnt a lot from recent years.

Lianne’s advice to other city leaders:

“Collaboration is essential– nobody knows the certain future. Whether it be climate change, disasters or social challenges – the only way to solve complexity is together. It needs to be across disciplines, different levels of government and community,

Her view of how to achieve success was that:

“The wisdom of community coupled with knowledge of experts can always outperform acting alone

David Tan from JTC Corporation made a strong case for the future of built environment going “Underground” ! He outlined a case study from the Jurong Rock Caverns project. You can see his talk on facebook live and he made suggestions on how technology can enable more use of underground spaces.

Following this session I had the opportunity to join David Tan and Dr Tan Ming Jen Director of the new Centre for 3D Printing at Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. We had a great discussion on major new technological trends shaping a more digital built environment.

We spoke of BIM, models and platforms that have already emerged. New things on the horizon include: smart materials, smart buildings & cities, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, blockchain technology.

We spoke of emerging 3D printing companies in China and The Netherlands as how the City of Dubai were setting targets of 25% 3D printed buildings by 2030. Delegates at the conference we very interested in how soon prototypes might be translated into scale for wider use.

City infrastructure in the 21st century

RICS President Amanda Clack opened the afternoon session focused on the growth in innovation in infrastructure and construction. From drones, 3D printing, internet of things and automation change is all around us.

Amanda also highlighted the importance of financing and environmental performance of built infrastructure as two of the most important challenges. She outlined that the key task for our sector is how can we use technology to meet these challenges and create the cities of the future that people actually want to live in.

Her view is that measuring at heart of this – reporting the state of infrastructure and functioning of city system is essential. Our standards help deliver this in a consistent and trusted manner.

The real game changers include autonomous vehicles, sharing economy and new methods of construction.

RICS as a profession can play a leadership role in collaborating to bridge the infrastructure gap and meet the needs of future society.

We have to be part of this. RICS is here to help support you take make the future exciting for the next generation.

KT Ravindran  shared the story of RICS’ education initiatives in India. The panel then moved to talk of innovation in infrastructure: disruption to current process eg Hacktrain, new energy provision, compact cities and how will BIM, FM and Asset Management better connect. Some suggestions  

• RICS is embedding BIM in FM courses
• IOT needs more education
• Will Myles used the Australian example of NABERS – where better standards like our IPMS are needed to enable underpin and ensure meaningful environmental benchmarking

Many delegates were concerned about future loss of secure jobs. RICS was encouraged to look at the qualifications and the competencies RICS as a profession will need for "jobs and professionals of the future". We need to adapt and support this change.

 A big thanks to Salim Aslam and John Ramshaw who delivered this thought leading event along with some great speakers from around the world.