Connectivity, sustainability, and mobility are the pillars of today’s ‘smart cities’; however, infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and utilities must also be considered as these modern marvels evolve. While many existing cities are being rewired for a cleaner, safer, and more efficient future, others are being built from scratch, with all the benefits of the latest tools, technologies, and software.
What Makes a City Smart?
The term smart city recalls futuristic visions of moving sidewalks, flying cars, and robot assistants, but the real features and benefits are not always obvious. Smart cities utilize a combination of IoT sensors, AI, data analytics, and wireless communication to optimize traffic flows, energy consumption, waste management, security, and other services that improve the quality of life for residents.
Cities like Singapore, Helsinki, and Amsterdam have already integrated a wide range of innovative technologies through public and private investment, and new smart cities such as The Line in Saudi Arabia are being fabricated from the ground up. These emerging cities leverage built-in renewable energy production and pre- wired infrastructure to eliminate all carbon emissions and preserve the surrounding environment.
The Importance of Smart Construction in Urban Planning
This ground-up approach to smart city development requires innovative construction tools and practices like building information modeling (BIM) to model entire communities in the digital realm, and construction cost management software to unify the various processes involved in construction projects, optimize resource allocation, and link cost and design elements digitally to find the best alternatives. These software tools also make it easier to assess the long-term sustainability of a project by performing embodied carbon calculations and facilitating the selection of sustainable materials and technologies.
Smart cities leveraging IoT-enabled monitoring, highly energy-efficient structures, and centralized security grids take construction processes to a higher level, so these advanced software tools are needed from the planning stages through completion and beyond.
Cloud-based construction software helps to improve collaboration and minimize mistakes by providing a centralized source of information that keeps all stakeholders on the same page.
Digital Tools Leading the Charge
BIM, construction cost management software, and digital project management solutions are just a few of the modern tools that are making smart cities possible. As these new or newly refurbished towns move from the drawing board to reality, a wide array of digital tools and technologies come into play, including:
? IoT devices, such as sensors, cameras, and smart meters to collect and transmit real-time data
? Artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze city data, identify patterns and trends, and optimize operations
? Drones to perform aerial surveys and create high-resolution maps
? Digital twins to mirror all aspects of the smart city and make maintenance, traffic, energy consumption, and safety issues more apparent.
Although BIM is often thought of as a digital design tool, it helps to streamline all aspects of smart city construction projects, with innovative solutions like RIB Software used to perform integrated quantity takeoffs, create highly accurate schedules, and optimize sustainability performance using BIM inputs.
Managing Costs in the Age of Digital Construction
Efficiency, safety, and environmental stewardship are among the hallmarks of smart cities that have survived from the earliest visions through today’s real-life urban centers. While sustainability and convenience are also important benefits, cost management is the underlying practice that unifies them all.
Construction cost management software tools used to track budgets, expenses, and timelines during construction also make it possible to streamline maintenance processes, identify risk factors, and optimize the deployment of labor, equipment, and material resources once smart cities are fully operational.
Information collected throughout the complex construction process becomes a valuable resource when expansions and upgrades are completed, sustainability metrics are assessed, or new communities are planned to continue the trend towards smarter living and working.
Conclusion
Smart cities, factories, buildings, and stadiums are the way of the future, and smart construction processes ensure the physical elements of projects are just as intelligent as the 3D modeling and cost management software platforms that enable them. These new communities demonstrate that quality of life, sustainability, and efficiency can all be attained simultaneously with the help of advanced software.
What was once a novelty will soon become the norm, so the technology must continue to evolve to support the creation and success of these communities. Smart construction and smart cities will continue to be linked as these modern locations span a connected planet.
