This month we are delighted to feature an article by our guest blogger Eloise Stephens. Eloise is a climate change advocate with experience in city planning. She divides her free time between training for triathlons and listening to her favourite podcasts.
Technology and urbanisation are dominating more parts of the world every day, leaving environmental catastrophes in their wake. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration details the devastating effects of climate change which include drought, extreme weather events, heat stress, and poor air quality, among others. Things are looking even more dire in the near future, with researchers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warning the public of worsening food shortages and massive coral reef deaths as early as 2040.
Thankfully, people are not only beginning to understand the gravity of the situation, but have made concrete efforts to remedy it. Public opinion and consumer trends point towards environmentally friendly solutions, with our CEO Barney Smith confirming that fighting climate change is becoming increasingly profitable for businesses. In particular, organisations are tapping into the potential of smart cities to incorporate sustainable measures that can benefit the environment. With the United Nations reporting that more than half of the world’s population live in cities, it only makes sense to start significant change from within these areas.
Read on to find out how this new approach to building and redesigning urban spaces can greatly impact how humans interact with the environment:
Smart Transport and Telecommuting
Congested roads are major culprits when it comes to global warming. The carbon dioxide from vehicles wears down the ozone layer, leaving the earth more vulnerable to harmful ultraviolet rays. On the ground, traffic drains individuals and economies around the world of precious time and resources. In the United Kingdom alone, ‘Traffic Jams Cost the UK Economy £9bn a Year’ explains Sergio Barata on Verizon Connect which reveals the magnitude of the current situation — a staggering figure based on wasted time, fuel, and carbon emissions. Smart cities pose an attractive solution to this complex problem through smart transport and telecommuting.
Environmentally friendly alternatives to transport are at the heart of smart cities — whether it’s bike-riding services connected via the Internet of Things (IoT), or car-sharing services that calculate the most efficient routes. Meanwhile, many smart city workers barely even have to leave their homes at all through telecommuting, completely avoiding carbon emissions from the typical daily commute. An article on CNBC on the ‘70% of People Globally That Work Remotely at Least Once a Week suggests that this figure is only going to increase in the coming years. Smart cities will completely embrace technology in the most sustainable way, which means greener transport and remote work for maximum sustainability and profitability.
Process Efficiency and Monitoring
Another critical solution offered up by smart cities is process efficiency through consistent monitoring. By integrating emerging technologies like IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence, smart cities will be armed with the data and insights needed to constantly operate at peak efficiency. Invaluable data points like air pollution levels and water consumption will be churned out on a daily basis to help scientists improve urban spaces.
Additionally, practical applications like smart waste disposal and IoT-operated street lights can save on energy and further reduce emissions on a grand scale.
For instance, rubbish can be collected and compacted based on real-time data instead of fixed truck schedules. Another concept is city-wide smart streetlights that can turn on and off on their own depending on detected time and activity.
Smart cities are slowly moving away from just being a global pipe dream, and are on the road to becoming absolute necessities. The next years are starting to look promising for the planet, what with businesses, policymakers, and individuals all working together to make sustainable smart cities a reality.
We would love to discuss your Smart City strategy or ways to improve sustainability in your organisation, contact us for an informal discussion:
Barney Smith barney.smith@performgreen.co.uk or Clare Hewitt clare.hewitt@performgreen.co.uk or Toby Rhodes toby.rhodes@performgreen.co.uk
If you have an article or blog you would like to share with us you can email it to jo.harper@performgreen.co.uk