By Philippe Cases, Co-Founder and CEO of Topio Networks
The Age of Autonomy is approaching fast, but what will it mean for Smart Cities and Intelligent Infrastructure?
Autonomy is poised to power resilient and responsive communities, enable safer roads and smarter cities, and create inclusive innovation ecosystems that leverage real-time information in sustainable and responsible interactions. Examples of practical applications are plentiful. For instance, to achieve Vision Zero or improved care at the time of an accident, local healthcare platforms will have to react in real-time with local EMR services and intelligent transportation systems to make sure that the right level of care is provided as fast as possible at the accident scene, in the ambulance or at the hospital.
Integrated Intelligent Infrastructure that combines services such as rail, road, and digitalization will provide a new fundamental shared platform for public services, effectively manage risks, create a more resilient infrastructure, and do so in a way as carbon-free as possible. Too idealistic? Not so sure.
In the Age of Autonomy or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, intelligent objects and robots cooperate and communicate with intelligent and connected spaces and cloud-based systems in real time. That intelligence will update augmented humans, enable real-time business, improve productivity, and provide more agility.
The Age of Autonomy is only possible because we can place sensors and cameras everywhere and collect and process data cost-effectively through real-time, IoT-enabled, cloud standard-based, distributed, and interoperable platforms. Combining those shared interoperable platforms composes an extended Intelligent Infrastructure which connects 1000s of plug-and-play and standard-based devices and can power 100s of applications.
The new demand for AI and autonomous decision-making will drive a transition to intelligent collaborative systems that can process and analyze data to extract knowledge and make the most impactful decision at the right time. These technologies will also require ethics, sustainability, and data sovereignty built into the system natively rather than as an afterthought.
The number of services developed will likely be endless, so platforms must publish their data in data spaces and make it readily available to trusted partners. Each platform will be responsible for its data, guaranteeing authenticity and controlling responsible usage. They will need to assess and affirm the trustworthiness of their partners.
Intelligent Infrastructure is still a very nascent market. We are still learning to implement and operationalize such a new concept fully. On this premise, Topio Networks has created a community and space, bringing together collective minds from the public and private sectors to discuss and align on the paths forward.
Topio’s annual Intelligent Infrastructure conference, now in its second year, will address how to build the new public infrastructure, whether in cities, states, or nationally. The only way to ideate and operationalize such a concept of a national infrastructure will be through interoperability of each local infrastructure similar to the Internet, a combination of inter-networks sharing data and services.
This year’s conference program addresses the critical challenges in making Intelligent Infrastructure a reality, including finding new models for collaboration on shared infrastructure, new models for sharing data, new approaches to standards, regulation, and compliance, and implementations of the latest technologies. The critical technologies for Intelligent Infrastructure are edge computing, allowing data analysis close to its origin in an efficient and privacy-friendly manner, data spaces, AI, and simulation.
Join Topio in Austin, Texas, on June 6th-7th, where industry leaders will come together to discuss this new and massive disruptive opportunity. The conference will also recognize diverse, breakthrough achievements with the Awards evening happening on June 6th; the conversation will continue through the conference’s Networking Reception, and female leaders in this space will have the opportunity to network exclusively at the Women in Intelligent Infrastructure Networking Lunch on June 7th.
Register for the conference here.