Are Proprietary Solutions Delaying Smart Cities’ Development?

Are proprietary solutions delaying the development of our smart cities? That's the question we're going to tackle in today's panel here in the Current Insights studio. Let me introduce you to our fantastic panelists. We've got Abdulrahman Ibrahim, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at the Almadena Region Development Authority, and Louis -Frederick Robin, Chairman of the USIFI Alliance and Head of Cities and Public Lighting at Engie. So let me start with you, Abdulrahman. The development of smart cities is a big f- focus in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Why is that such a big part of the development agenda there? So the overall plan is to transform the Saudi cities into smart cities and sustainable cities. One of the big challenges of the governance that always the perception about smart cities comes from the national agenda and not from the specifics. city's perspectives we in Medina we took a step ahead of the other cities that we took the initiative to develop our strategy although this was not a common practice in Saudi Arabia it has to come from the capital city of Riyadh we developed our strategy I need to eat it is sent it is centered around humans not around technology because we are a very unique city it's rich of history culture and religion and luckily we've got the approval for the strategy and we are on the go and what were some of the differences between what you've put forward and what's perhaps being done in Riyadh it's it's not the difference of plans it's the difference of the nature of the cities each city has its own dna for me Riyadh is the political financial hub for the kingdom while Medina is a very serene tranquil you know hosting 7 million visitors annually today with a target of 30 million by 2030 and the nature of their life it's completely different and consequently the nature of the challenges is different so if we solve the city's problems with the concept of one size fits all so we need to figure out our city what are the challenges that we are facing how we want to improve the quality of life of our residents how to enrich the experiences of our visitors for instance the visitors of Riyadh the profile is different than the profile of the visitors of Medina and consequently the offerings should be different And Louis-Frédéric, Engie is a global energy player. How would you describe the market for smart city technology in the Gulf region? As mentioned by Hermann, clearly we see that there is lots of visages around the smart city and each kingdom or country has its own strategy. But definitely what is in common is to create new places, refurbish the existing one to offer citizens more services, more... resiliency, more safety, but clearly there is difference between Medina, between Riyadh, between in Qatar or in the NEOM project like the line we discussed a bit about that project. So definitely I think this is a very wide offer to different type of citizens but really at the end is to rise the level of liveness that they want to improve there. and just to set the scene can you tell us about some of the things you're doing in medina that are smart city technology okay to set the scene first we are working on three strategic pillars or tracks the first one is the strategy framing what is the what do we mean by a smart city what are the challenges defining the challenges involving the right stakeholders including the citizens themselves then the The second track is the city innovation labs where we involve the stakeholders to continually study and detect the challenges and go through the innovation cycle, ideation, development and scale-up. And the third one is the smart city platform. We have designed, developed and now in the implementation phase of the first smart city platform in Saudi Arabia. Raseel. It's an open source data platform and the main concept of it it's it's basic yet crucial. The cities are unfortunately run by silos of different city departments the municipality the traffic department the utility companies water electricity etc but they all work in silos in terms of processes. systems and data if we imagine the cities like human beings the human beings it's it's everything is synchronized cities unfortunately are not synchronized and we cannot standardize the processes definitely we cannot standardize the systems but what we can do is to get the data points from each city department and break the silos in that perspective and that's what we are doing from the perspective of Rasil Smart City platform. Is that quite common around the world then that all these different departments don't talk to each other? Yeah it is quite familiar unfortunately but we inherit this administrative way of working and I'm agree this is where data model will be I would say the key solutions to unify the way the silos the infrastructures the people are working together this is one of the key levers and just give us a flavor for the citizens that live there some of the benefits are you looking at waste collection with smart cities is it parking spaces or what kind of innovations so the first value is the seamless data across the city across the government entities across the private sector as well the second value then we will introduce use more efficient city management solutions, for instance the waste management from the perspective of the municipality. The traffic management, we have a very unique challenge in Medina, the crowd management. We have in one spot the Prophet's Mosque that occupies around half a million worshippers at a certain point of time. five times a day it goes up in the peak seasons up to eight or nine times a day they go in they go out so managing this crowd needs to be synchronized between all the different city departments the third value is the how we can provide services to the consumers the consumers of the city the residents and the visitors building on the capabilities of the seamless data and the city management tools that we have and so at this stage you're kind of focusing on building out the platform and the end consumer that there's not kind of apps and public facing things yet is that right yes the end game we want the citizens to interface with not one application but one back -end platform They can have different verticals or applications, but they are all connected to the same data This is the end game that you want to do. And then you've developed your own smart city platform then, Resil as you mentioned. How does it differ from what's out there on the market? Why did you have to build your own option? This is a very good question because when we started shopping for the plan, one of the first challenges that we've faced that most of the platforms are closed systems it's like a black box we don't understand what inside it the manufacturer only knows about it and with with any change that you want we have to pay for it this is one one challenge the other challenge is the the inter operability of the system itself it's usually difficult to connect other solutions it has to be with the closed systems aligned and integrated with their system only and the composability as well it's one of the challenges consequently we've decided to go with an open source platform and not necessarily that we design it by ourselves, we have partners with us like for instance FIWARE and we utilize the standard data models, the contest broker concept and so on. So again the objective, when the objective is clear then the means will be much clearer. The objective is to make the life of the citizens much easier okay how can we reach that we figured out that this should be happening through the open source platform and ng has some kind of off -the -shelf solutions are they more open or proprietary and are you kind of surprised that this this city had to develop their own no no we are we are not surprised it would be fantastic if we can find on the shelf something that got made everything but the reality is that it doesn't exist. And you need to adapt any solutions on the visionary of a municipality. That means that you will have to create, to bundle your own solutions. So at Angie, with that, we have some digital components, but for us, it is key to make them interoperable in order to hybrid them with other components, some from suppliers, some from the municipality by themselves, and at the end, to create that modular solutions and if it's not interoperable it won't work at all or it will be super expensive because we have to re -code or you won't understand what you're really making in your systems it's very important and Rasil is based on fireware who we're sat right next to here um why did you come to use that open framework rather than something else what drove your decision okay from two angles first we follow a tactic or strategy or whatever you want to call it it's it's based on demand driven not supply driven so we we know what we want as a client and we are not allowing the suppliers to enforce us to use open source or closed source this is one of the reasons that we've went to fireware this flexibility of adapting to our needs not to the suppliers needs the second thing is standardization fireware is a foundation that gathered at the beginning the the european countries so the the amount of adaptability is high the amount of recognition of different systems using the standard data model of FIWARE makes our life easier and makes their life easier because the more, you know, it's like any platform, the more suppliers, the more consumers use, the more efficient is the solution. And were there manufacturers of sensors and so on who said, no, you have to use our platform and as a consequence, did you say, well, we'll use something else then? Was there a lot of that? Yes and no. Actually, it depends on the flexibility of the supplier. We had both cases. Some of the suppliers did make some adjustments to cope with our needs and some didn't. And to the extent of one of the big multinational... technology companies they complain to our governor that you are not flexible they said you weren't flexible when they wanted you to use their platform and can you think of some specific examples of our cases where actually it was much easier to integrate something because of the open framework yeah everything you know it's endless now we are in the phase of one of the verticals for the data analytics. Before when we used to do the shopping, always the clothes systems are very rigid and whenever we ask for certain flexibility, a certain need, now we know the answer. You have to adjust and they do they have do immunification and we have to pay but now with the open source if the supplier doesn't have this we have two choices either the supplier needs to adapt and most mostly because they are open source and as well they adapt or the the we we buy this technology but we go for this specific need with another supplier and both are them of the are open source and both of them are adaptable and it's a win-win-win you know and Louis Frederic you're the chairman of the UCFI Alliance how does the aim of that Alliance compare to what FeeWare and FiWare are doing okay so I think really FeeWare is really close to the to the smart system right probably UCFI Alliance is about the very openness of the data model so we are on a layer a bit above that so we need a firmware for sure to create the system but i think the the purpose of the islands is to pledge about interoperability for any sensors and then those sensors and then solutions will be connected to the smart platform that could be firmware so for sure two interoperable platforms will connect easily but really this is the purpose of the islands to to offer this unified data model that make it easier for any sensors, any vendors to connect to a system. This is really the purpose. Going back to our central question then about whether private proprietary standards are delaying the development of cities. First of all, was it expensive to develop Rasil? I imagine that the budgets in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are quite broad and you might have a lot of money. Could every city afford to do what you've done? Okay, actually it's absolutely the opposite. okay one of the biggest challenges that we are facing in Medina in the applications of the smart city is the lack of fund for the reason that I've mentioned at the very beginning the everything has to go on the national level and if it's not following the the overall direction will not be funded we are moving the opposite way so we lack a lot of opportunities of funding from from the typical government channels what we did is wearing the hat of an entrepreneur and getting funds from here and there okay in unorthodox manners legitimate but surprisingly all the estimates by the professionals the technical professionals and the consultancy firms gave us an estimate of building our smart city platform so far we it costed us less than 15 of their estimates so on the contrary it's much cheaper and by developing your own platform did that introduce any delays because they're wasn't just an off -the -shelf solution or actually has it been fairly straightforward yes and no but what our approach is not built the system of systems at once it's building the the base first and then gradually build the the verticals so it's step by step no one is seeing a full solution today We are just last week launching the very first vertical with the municipality, the Smart Lighting. And we are working on other four verticals that are in the oven to be cooked and introduced to the stakeholders. And we're talking about proprietary versus open. Now that you've done the work to develop Rasil, will you share it with other cities? Is it compatible with other cities? Yes. Definitely, it's compatible and our hope and our vision is the other Saudi cities use the platform. It's there and it's built for the ecosystem that we have in Saudi Arabia and I believe any city worldwide can use it because it's interoperable and it's adaptable. Yes, why not? And Louis -Frederic, we see a lot of vendors try and lock in energy suppliers and other vendors into their system. Do you think that's still... the development of smart cities clearly yes I won't be there if I won't I would say no but no it's it's clear yes and especially we have experiment we experiment as an operator of municipalities that in some regions especially in the Gulf regions the proprietary solutions are making the system not working at all and now some of the goal local governments are facing strong issues and they need probably to reinvest money on the table coming back to a new system which is interoperable. So yes, it's something, it's a real delayed solutions to let on property solutions, because once it's locked, it's locked. And it's, that way we should have to say, yeah. And how can we force more manufacturers then to take an open approach and let them, you know, let cities develop with them? Probably there will be two ways to do it. There is the good way, the positive way with that. Many vendors see that this interoperable framework makes them getting more opportunities for them. It is a way to do it. Then the other solution, that is probably where municipalities and cities have more power than an operator like Engie, is to enforce them in the specification to say you have to be compliant in terms of interoperability because today we want to use your solutions, your sensors. but probably in five years to come, there will be disruptions. We will have to use another solution or probably a next generation of sensors. And we can't imagine to put everything we've invested in the trash. So this is impossible. And we talked a lot about verticals, but let's briefly talk about horizontal, the line in Saudi Arabia, fantastic plan for a new city in Saudi Arabia. If you were given a blank slate like this, what kind of experience would you bring? What would you recommend to? to make that a smart city from the get-go it's very it's a it's a great project to be honest we have also it's a bit controversial okay because especially in that kingdom there is lots of cities that inherit what they are like Medina and they have to take advantage of historical buildings historical streets and the challenge is more even more how to to achieve in the line project you start from scratch so there is one challenge is to create the new conditions for for citizens to find something completely dream true and at same time how you want to attract them in something that doesn't have any flavor in the history so this is really a challenge to attract people give them the possibility to afford that kind of real estate because it's quite it could be costly also but the The experience of living could be fantastic, and I say could be fantastic. This is really, I think, the main challenge NEOM has to achieve in that perspective. How they attract people, offer a kind of fantastic experience at the same time, give that experience a long-term perspective, you know. We can't imagine to just live a couple of months there and then live out, come back to Real and say, okay, this is the real city. The line has to become a real city on the Lantenne. perspective. And what have you learned from your development work in Medina that you would pass on to the NEOM project of the line? We are in contact with NEOM but I don't think that they can learn something from us but it's completely two different animals. We are a city of legacy, good or bad. They are starting from scratch with futuristic. vision with using futuristic technologies as well. We don't have this opportunity to think about using futuristic solutions. We want existing solutions today to fix today's solutions. Well, Abdurrahman, thank you very much. And Louis Frédéric, thank you for joining the discussion. And there'll be loads more discussions like this right here on Current Insights. So stay