Smart Planning & Smart Cities

In the light of a comprehensive social and technological change, spatial planning is confronted with major changes in its basic conditions. It is faced with an increasing ubiquity of spatial relevant information of which the potentials and risks need to be discussed in the use for planning purposes. Besides the increasing pervasion of sensors in everyday life and the use of mobile communication devices, the networking and communication possibilities will play a major role in the conception of a connected and “smart” city. In addition to the above mentioned aspects and social networking capabilities, it seems that committed citizens appear increasingly as active stakeholders for planning purposes via inductive processes. Based on the mentioned technological possibilities, topics such as Smart Cities are increasingly being discussed in the public debate in recent times. It is unclear if the term “Smart City” is based more on a scientific foundation or on marketing ideas. And what can planners do, to make the city more smart and especially to make it a better place for people to live? This paper embraces an examination of the various technologies an methodological approaches in relation to planning-relevant information and knowledge creation. Besides the proclaimed potential of making a city more efficient, there will also be a critical consideration of the problems of having a city, where all urban data is connected

Smart Cities and standards – The approach of the Horizon2020-project ESPRESSO

A Smart City integrates physical, digital and human systems to deliver a sustainable, prosperous and inclusive future for its citizens. Many of these innovative solutions will be based on sophisticated information and communication technologies. However, technological complexity, as well as the complexity of the various sectoral services involved within a Smart City, require a system approach to standardisation. Such an approach must promote the greatest possible reuse of existing open standards to accelerate the Smart City deployment. In an effort to leverage the promise of a system approach, the Horizon 2020-project ESPRESSO (systEmic standardisation apPRoach to Empower Smart citieS and cOmmunities) will focus on the development of a conceptual Smart City Information Framework based on open standards. A further goal of ESPRESSO will be to envisage the impact of those technologies for urban planning and also in societal terms. The partner cities will be engaged to analyse how their services can be streamlined and improved through large-scale use of standards. This will be done by analysing the downstream changes from the new scenarios enabled by large-scale interoperability and what this could bring for a future Smart City. Based on a detailed requirements-engineering campaign executed in close cooperation with cities, standardisation organizations, administrative bodies, and private industry, the project will identify open standards matching the elicited requirements and will establish a baseline for interoperability between the various sectoral data sources and the Smart City enterprise application platform. In a comprehensive set of coordination, support and networking activities, the project will engage a very large number of stakeholders, such as Smart Cities (both existing and those with aspirations), European Standardisation Organizations (ESOs), National Standardisation Bodies (NSBs), Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), public administrations, industries, SMEs, and other institutions. ESPRESSO’s approach emphasises cost reduction and will foster an open market for many actors, avoiding lock-in to proprietary solutions

Der Mensch als Sensor im Kontext der digitalen und sensorgestützten Präventionsassistenz – Grundlagen und Anwendungsszenarien für das Bauhandwerk

Das Thema der smarten und vernetzten Stadt durchdringt mittlerweile sämtliche Bereiche des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Insbesondere auch die zunehmende Verbreitung von Wearables in der Bevölkerung ist dabei zu betrachten, was einhergehend mit der zunehmenden Relevanz des Forschungsfeldes „Humans as sensors“ für den Alltag ist. Neben vielfältigen Betrachtungen in vor allem den Feldern Mobilität und Gesundheit drängen sich jedoch auch weitere Anwendungsfelder auf. Dazu gehört insbesondere das Feld der körperlichen Arbeitsbelastung vor allem im Kontext des demografischen Wandels in arbeitsintensivenFeldern wie der Baubranche. Dortige Beschäftigte sind überproportional körperlichen Belastungen und Gefährdungen ausgesetzt und ihre Arbeiten sind oft geprägt von hoher physischer Beanspruchung. Dies ist einhergehend mit einem verhältnismäßig frühen krankheitsbedingten Ausscheiden aus dem Berufsleben. Ziel ist die Anwendung dieses thematischen Ansatzes im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes Bauprevent, um dieser Problematik durch ein bauhandwerks-spezifisches, intelligentes Assistenzsystem in Kombination mit leichtgewichtiger und flexibel einsetzbarer Sensorik sowie künstlicher Intelligenz zu begegnen. Dazu gehört die Entwicklung eines Systems zur individuellen Belastungsabschätzung der Mitarbeiter auf der Baustelle, zur Integration der Belastungsdaten in die Arbeitsplanung des Handwerks sowie zur personalisierten Prävention von Belastungen des Handwerkers um somit ein “Belastungs-Monitoring der Belegschaft” zu erreichen. Daneben liegt ein weiterer Fokus liegt in der Eruierung etwaiger Einsatzpotenziale im Rahmen des gesamtstädtischen Kontextes

Monitoring Street Infrastructures with Artificial Intelligence

Sensor-based IoT data is enhancing information gathering methods for urban planning in many ways and, due to the growing data pool provided by these sensors, more and more cities and municipalities are consequently putting the use of artificial intelligence-based (AI) methods on their agenda. One area of urban planning that will benefit significantly from the new possibilities enabled by AI is that of infrastructure monitoring. As the topic of the investment backlog of German road infrastructures increasingly pushes into public discourse, many potential areas for application of such a system are opening up. Given the fact that a large part of the German road infrastructure was planned and built several decades ago, and considering that the traffic volume has increased tremendously since then, the urgency in the development of improved maintenance methods is evident: Today's solutions for infrastructure monitoring are either too labor-intensive, too resource-intensive or too inflexible for the scenario at hand. However, a promising avenue for further research opened up through the advent of mobile communication devices, such as smartphones, incombination with artificial intelligence approaches. This paper describes the methodology applied in the ongoing research project DatEnKoSt, in which these comparatively cheap and sensor-laden devices are used to realize low-cost acquisition methods: Mounting the smartphone in a vehicle, a multi-sensor datastream can be recorded, including, for instance, accelerometer data, GPS coordinates, image or even audio data. From the datastream, features correlated with the road condition can then be extracted, e.g., image processing methods may extract individual cracks from the image data, signal processing can aid analysis of the accelerometer data to determine strength of vibrations, etc.. Using supervised learning methods, thesefeatures may be mapped to standardized profiles of the current state of the infrastructure. Even more,predictive methods can, in addition to a mere monitoring of the current state of the infrastructure, enable new ways to provide more precise forecasts and eventually, leveraging optimization algorithms, automatically derive the right maintenance measures for each given situation. The municipal preservation of traffic routes becomes more efficient and sustainable. The methodology enables the potential for further use in the light of real-time as well as predictive road infrastructure monitoring such as winter road services

Der Mensch als Sensor im Kontext der digitalen und sensorgestützten Präventionsassistenz – Grundlagen und Anwendungsszenarien für das Bauhandwerk

Das Thema der smarten und vernetzten Stadt durchdringt mittlerweile sämtliche Bereiche des gesellschaftlichen Lebens. Insbesondere auch die zunehmende Verbreitung von Wearables in der Bevölkerung ist dabei zu betrachten, was einhergehend mit der zunehmenden Relevanz des Forschungsfeldes „Humans as sensors“ für den Alltag ist. Neben vielfältigen Betrachtungen in vor allem den Feldern Mobilität und Gesundheit drängen sich jedoch auch weitere Anwendungsfelder auf. Dazu gehört insbesondere das Feld der körperlichen Arbeitsbelastung vor allem im Kontext des demografischen Wandels in arbeitsintensivenFeldern wie der Baubranche. Dortige Beschäftigte sind überproportional körperlichen Belastungen und Gefährdungen ausgesetzt und ihre Arbeiten sind oft geprägt von hoher physischer Beanspruchung. Dies ist einhergehend mit einem verhältnismäßig frühen krankheitsbedingten Ausscheiden aus dem Berufsleben. Ziel ist die Anwendung dieses thematischen Ansatzes im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes Bauprevent, um dieser Problematik durch ein bauhandwerks-spezifisches, intelligentes Assistenzsystem in Kombination mit leichtgewichtiger und flexibel einsetzbarer Sensorik sowie künstlicher Intelligenz zu begegnen. Dazu gehört die Entwicklung eines Systems zur individuellen Belastungsabschätzung der Mitarbeiter auf der Baustelle, zur Integration der Belastungsdaten in die Arbeitsplanung des Handwerks sowie zur personalisierten Prävention von Belastungen des Handwerkers um somit ein “Belastungs-Monitoring der Belegschaft” zu erreichen. Daneben liegt ein weiterer Fokus liegt in der Eruierung etwaiger Einsatzpotenziale im Rahmen des gesamtstädtischen Kontextes

Requirements for Reliable and Flexible Smart Grids as Energy Networks in Smart Cities

Whenever the characteristics of a Smart City were described, the energy sector with its power grids – the so-called Smart Grids - are considered as a crucial part and backbone of a connected urban area. In this light, an increasing number of plants in the field of renewable energies and the demands of “Sector-Coupling” and power-to-x will make intelligent networking and the exchange of energy data indispensable in the future. The almost entire amount of renewable energy facilities is feeding the distribution grid and define the challenges for its expansion. This paper will provide a synthesis regarding the aspects, which were considered as important for having effects for urban and regional planning. The decentral energy production and consumption with the transformation from consumers to prosumers isforemost the most crucial aspect, especially in the light of the variety with renewable energy production. This means that production and consumption are preferably at the same location and the requirements for “Sector-Coupling”-facilities have to been considered. On a local scale, this means that building and urban planning requirements should foresee regulations regarding installation of energy storages on the respective scale for instance. Furthermore, the energy distribution network on local, regional and even national level and the strategic land use plans must be adapted in the way, that regulations regarding the energy network on a regional scale could also be realized in an appropriate time frame. Another important point is the necessity for handling the flexibilities in the power grid network. The power grid network and its supplying facilities has to be digitized to fit this demand and sensors as well as real-time-monitoring of the energy consumption and distribution could give useful new insights. Furthermore, the network itself has to be open and flexible in order to allow the integration of innovative solutions in the energy sector on a short- and long-term basis (Electric mobility, Smart Fabrics, Intelligent Storage Systems etc.), which could bring enormous challenges for the power grids (more flexible, more decentralized, more dynamic). All of these aspects have to beconsidered in the light of security and data privacy of supply in the critical infrastructures, especially for strategical planning purposes. In order to make energy system transformation smart, cost-efficient and economically viable, several technologies and approaches regarding hard- and software must be combined: expansion and adaption of the energy network, integration of storage facilities, the use of flexibilities for prosumers and openness to new market models. All of these mentioned aspects will influence regional and urban planning on different levels regarding spatio-temporal aspects and have to evaluated carefully for the demands of a smart energy network

Cross-Border WebGIS Database CURe MODERN

As part of the INTERREG IVa-research project CURe MODERN, a WebGIS-platform was developed, which enables a visual comprehension of studies done within the project. This project was realized in cooperation with the university of Kaiserslautern (TU Kaiserslautern), the Department of Computer Aided Design (CAD) & planning methods in urban planning and architecture, the Fraunhofer Institute for Nondestructive Testing (IZFP), the State Office for road construction in Saarland (LFS), the french associate CEREMA (Centre d’études et d’expertise sur les risques, l’environnement, la mobilité et l’aménagement) as well as the Eurodistrict SaarMoselle and the company of Rogmann engineers from 2012 – 2014. Aim of the project was to use non-destructive testing methods for infrastructural and cultural buildings and to make these results available for stakeholders of the german and french side. As a kind of an infrastructural and cultural database, this platform aims to communicate results and experiences within the project as well as between the members of the project and also to politicians and citizens. It can offer policymakers a tool to quantify problems and to clarify where possible weak spots could be present for various buildings. With the integration of three dimensional models inside the platform, details such as the need to repair certain parts of the buildings can easily be shown to any interested citizen. This easy understandable platform was developed without the use of special expensive GIS-software. It was created as a browser based system and so it works with any common computer and helps with the communication between different disciplines

SensorMapRT – a System for Real-Time Acquisition, Visualization and Analysis of Mobile Sensor Data in an Urban Context

The use of wearables in citizens’ daily life will increase significantly in the coming years. By analyzing these sensor data, it is possible to detect the emotional well-being in urban areas, which is highly relevant for urban planning purposes. Through the combination of several physiological and other sensor data such as GPS, "stress spots" in the urban environment can be recognized and located. A major objective of this project is therefore, to combine and evaluate various research approaches in the field of human as sensorswith wearables. This is the reason why the project group will be an interdisciplinary cooperation between spatial planning, psychophysiology and computer technology.Together with the project partner cities of Neustadt an der Weinstraße and Pirmasens in the German Federal State Rhineland-Palatine, the project group aims to show exemplary the influence of potential stressing factors in the urban area such as traffic and noise and creates scientifically-robust models of stress detection in urban areas. Besides this, a visualization for planning purposes with the tool GeoVisualizer as well as an evaluation of the resilience of such informtion and their potential use for urban planning is aim of the project

Towards planning and control in cognitive factories - A generic model including learning effects and knowledge transfer across system entities

Cognitive abilities allow robots to learn and reason from their environment. The gained knowledge can then be incorporated into the robot’s actions which in turn affect the environment. Therefore, a cognitive robot is no longer a static system that performs actions based on a pre-defined set of rules but a complex entity that dynamically adjusts over time. With this, challenges arise for production systems that need to observe and ideally anticipate the cognitive robot’s behavior. Often, digital twins are employed to test and optimize production control systems. This paper presents a generic approach to characterize, model and simulate learning processes and formalized knowledge in hybrid production systems assuming different station types with learning effects. Thereby, quantitative and qualitative learning processes are mapped including knowledge sharing and transfer across entities. A modular and parameterizable design enables the adjustment to different use cases. Eventually, the model is instantiated as a digital twin of a real production system for product disassembly employing cognitive-autonomous robots among human operators and rigidly automated machines. The model shows great potential to be integrated into test beds for planning and control systems of cognitive factories

Experiences and Future of Using VR in the Construction Sector

Living in the era of digitalization shapes more or less all the aspects of one's life. The multitude of available technologies extends the range of tools, established processes, and available affordances in many spheres. Cities of the future will not only impact the living patterns of their inhabitants but also require special conditions and requirements for their planning and design. Virtual reality as an interactive tool for visualization and urban planning is no more tomorrow’s technology, as it can be seen from the appearance of cheaper and portable virtual reality devices. However, we still lack established routine and multidisciplinary best practices for designing VR educational applications. There are also not enough “visionary approaches” attempting to cross-sectoral exploitation of technologies. In this paper we will try to extrapolate and extend learning use cases of construction and mechatronics to the broader areas of construction and planning sector. We will discuss our experiences and use-cases of integrating innovative visualizations tools in the learning context of construction and planning related fields. Based on this, we will discuss potential applications and links to other disciplines and their integration into the construction and planning sector