GÖKAY OTYAM: Good morning, wherever you are, watching us or listening to us. If it won’t distract you from what you are doing, take a moment and imagine a city that is safer, greener, cleaner and more importantly that has less traffic congestion. A city where it is cheaper to live, a city that consumes less energy, Is it possible to have such a city in Turkey? Istanbul, perhaps? We are talking about smart cities. We will be asking these questions. Ozgur Ozluk, the CEO and a founding partner of Verite Analytics is with us this morning.
Welcome, thanks for being with us.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Thanks for having me. Good morning.
GÖKAY OTYAM: The concept of smart cities: at what point are we now? Has it globally matured?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: We can’t say it has fully matured at all. In fact, when you ask people to define it, you will have different answers from different groups. Of course, cities have very long life spans; it is difficult to quicjkly reengineer a city that has been around for centuries. There are two pilot projects that build smart cities ground up: One in UAE, called Masdar City, an enterprise that people have been working on for the last 3-4 years. One in South Korea, Songdo, a project in collaboration with Cisco. Even these ground up initiatives are not easily accomplished. In many cities in the world now, smart city applications have started; the forerunners being Barcelona , San Francisco, New York and Amsterdam.
GÖKAY OTYAM: So what do we in these cities? How do you define a smart city?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Let me give me my own definition. Smart cities are systems where you can take the pulse of the city through democractic participation, using technological advances and bring economical, ecological prosperity to the inhabitants.
GÖKAY OTYAM: For example, we get up and are about to leave our homes, do the smart city applications start right away?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Of course! The moment you are out on the Street, the street lights are collecting information; you go to the parking garage; you get into traffic, you throw away a piece of garbage. All these can have smart city application embedded.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Can you give a specific example?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Sure. For example, in Barcelona they have installed smart trash bins on the streets, they can get real time info on the fullness levels of the containers using sensors. Imagine you are in traffic in Istanbul in the middle of the day and there is a garbage truck blocking the way. You ask your self: does it need to be here? If we can put sensors in our trash bins as well, it will help ease traffic congestion.
GÖKAY OTYAM: And using the “Internet of Things” systems it gives signals to garbage trucks which bins are about to be full.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Exactly, or it may tell you that this street is blocked because of garbage collection and reroute you to another street.
GÖKAY OTYAM: We have the IBB system these that lets us see similar congestion info these days. What else will happen?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: What else? You can get help with crime rates of the city, safety is an important issue. For example, in the US there is a company called Shotspotter,. They can detect gunshot on a street immediately, and then even figüre out what type of a firearm was used.
GÖKAY OTYAM: That level of detail.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: They install microphones on the streets to detect the sound. In the short runm these might help you catch criminals faster and in the future, if you collect enough data you can predict where crime is more likely to happen in the city, not unlike the movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Great. Now we have a news clip to watch: “is it possible to have an eco friendly smart city” we ask.
Narrator: Technology is advancing, cities are becoming smart. It is possible to reduce the problems of the cities and to save time with smart cities.
Brian Selby
Narrator: Using information and communication Technologies smart solutions can be obtained for energy, transportation, infrastructure and waste management.
Brian Selby
Narrator: More than half the world’s population now lives in cities. Pollution, traffic and the problems caused by overcrowding are being tackled using technological advancements. Big World cities such as New York, London and Singapore are taking measures to become smarter cities.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Dr. Ozluk, traffic congestion is hard to tackle but as I understand there are some solutions to provide some ease
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Indeed
GÖKAY OTYAM: You say there are pilot projects in traffic management. When will we start seeing the benefits?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Traffic congestion is a global issue, not just limited to Turkey. According to a study, an American spends around 30 hours stuck in traffic per year, in Los Angeles, their Istanbul if you will, this figüre goes up to 65 hours. According to a Turk Telekom analysis, the number is 125 hours for Istanbul. I mean, of course traffic management is harder in a city with poor infrastructure, but if signalizations are done correctly, you can have amazing results. In Los Angeles, 60% of the traffic lights are adaptive, which means at intersections based on the traffic levels, they can automatically change the length of a red light versus a green light. In Pittsburh, as a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, they are implementing a pilot for 20 traffic lights. I think such pilots will become more commonplace soon in Turkey. In fact, there is a project in Eskişehir, ground work for a similar project is happening in İzmir, Bornova. Turk Telekom has an initiative in Karaman, I believe. In the next 5-10 years, we will see more I hope and will benefit everyone.
GÖKAY OTYAM: In reality, we will also see energy savings along with smart citiies probably. For example, smart street lights with LED transformation. Right now, lights are either all on or all off, sometimes on at unnecessary hours of the day.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Exactly.
GÖKAY OTYAM: When they are smart, they will go on/off depending on people passing by.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Street lights in a city is one of the main arteries. If you can put sensors at the right locations, you can collect an unbelievable amount of data. Currently, in Turkey, there are 17 million street lights. According to the calculations of the Minister of Energy in 2012, we spend 650 million lira on these lights. Even if these lights are not smart, we can save around 50% just by replacing them with LED technology.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Really?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: If you add a sensor to this. I saw a pilot project of GE in Budapest. At nights, a university campus is being lit at 40% when there is noone around. If a person or a vehicle enters, they don’t feel the 40%, since the light level goes up to 100% in a circle around them using sensors. The energy savings can go from 50% to 80% if done correctly. These are incredible projects.
GÖKAY OTYAM: I understand that these are costly, aren’t they? Are these transformation a luxury?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Not really, they amortise themselves in 5 to 15 years. Secondly, the traditional sodium based lamps work for only 10000 hours but these LED lights can work up to 150000 hours. Amazing savings. Also, traditional lights burn out and you are in the dark; LEDs have multiple components, so you don’t get total darkness if one piece stops working. So it is safer as well. In addition, you can add incredible sensors to these lights. You can examine pedestrian traffic, parking spaces, air quality. One day, Auntie Ayse will be able to see the CO2 levels in the area on her way to the market and we will be able to tell her “You have asthma, avoid these streets”
GÖKAY OTYAM: How soon will these happen? Is it too far in the future:
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Not far, I don’t believe so. Technology is advancing so rapidly that within 5-10 years, we will witness systems like these all over the world as long as the city infrastructure allows.
GÖKAY OTYAM: And these, are they happening in Turkey? Can they happen?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: So the smart traffic signals projects are being piloted in many cities. Smart trash bins are in Konya ans Basaksehir Istanbul. The LED transformation is in its infancy, we will see more of that soon in Turkey too I think.
GÖKAY OTYAM: If we try harder, are there other predictions for a smart city? What kind of a life is expecting us? How easy will it all be?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Think of it this way. In the future, the moment we leave our houses on our way to work, when we are done with our workday, on our way to dinner, we will be able to receive all kinds of information and if done correctly, we won’t just get real time data but we will get predictions about one hour into the future, one day, maybe one week.
GÖKAY OTYAM: If the right statistical analysis can be done
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: That is what our company does, data based future prediction. The more we collect data, the more we collect better quality data, we are more likely to see clearly into the future.
GÖKAY OTYAM: So the margin of error will get smaller and smaller.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Indeed
GÖKAY OTYAM: And this will happen thanks to “Internet of Things” and I think that that infrastructure is more or less in place nowadays.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: It is on its way. If we have time, I will give you a short example.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Briefly.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: A data scienties has a 5 year old son, with diabetes. He wears a device around his waist that constanly measures his blood sugar level. The data scientists hacks into this device and collect its data. Using this, she can predict the blood sugar level of the kid with 95% accuracy up to 3 hours.
GÖKAY OTYAM: You mean, predicts the future?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Yes. İf the data predicts a blood sugar level drop, she immediately gives her a cracker. In the future, we will do the same for the cities. Their blood sugar level will never drop.
GÖKAY OTYAM: Similar to Minority Report, you say.
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: Exactly.
GÖKAY OTYAM: We will be able to all future possibilities then. How different will our lives be then?
ÖZGÜR ÖZLÜK: I think it will be great.
GÖKAY OTYAM: We thank you very much. This morning Ozgur Ozluk, the CEO of Verite Analytics, was with us. We talked about smart cities. See you in the next program.