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- [Werner Vogels] By 2050, it is predicted that 65%
of the developing world's population will be urbanized.
And a staggering 85% of the developed world
will be living in cities.
City planners as recently as 50 years ago
were not even remotely aware that we were heading towards
this level of density.
Let alone, the city planners of the 16th and 17th century.
Our planet and our civilizations
are changing faster than ever before.
Join me, as I travel the globe talking to startup founders,
using technologies to make our world more interesting,
accessible, and livable.
These are the entrepreneurs that are creating
the future we will live in.
This is Now Go Build.
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As recently as 1800 only 11%
of Europe's population lived in cities.
And keep in mind that those are just percentages.
When you take into account in every rising population,
the cities of the world are going
to be bursting at their seams.
They will struggle to keep up with transportation systems,
social services, garbage collection,
health and emergency services,
air quality, and homelessness.
We can hardly destroy our old cities
to make way for the cities of the future.
But we can turn them into efficient hubs
of human-centric innovation.
Porto, in the north of Portugal, is a beautiful city
with its origins dating back to 300 BC.
It has long been a center for economic and social evolution.
From the original Portus Cale, trading hands
between the Roman Empire and the Moors,
it evolved into a world port
and into a major technology hub.
It is also the second most densely populated city in Europe.
Necessity is the mother of invention
and Porto has become an epicenter
of technological research into the smart city.
One of the startups pushing this forward, Veniam,
has created a mesh network for the City of Porto.
This network is the basis for incredible future possibility.
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Hey, Joao, How are you doing?
- [Joao] I am well, how are you?
- [Werner] Good to see you.
- [Joao] Good to see you.
- Thanks for taking the time.
These mesh networks give us new connectivity
throughout cities.
Tell me a bit about how the future of that looks like,
for, let's say, a city like Porto?
- Well, actually we're in a perfect location.
So I grew up on top of that hill.
And when I was growing up, actually this bridge used
to be cars, and I see this very much as a metaphor
for the new Porto, because you see the brand new metro
on this a 120 year old bridge.
And what you're gonna see in the future is
that we're having more and more shared mobility,
like the metro, but then also vehicles in the future,
autonomous vehicles, basically providing not
just transportation services but actually becoming part
of the city infrastructure.
At the same time gathering data about the city
that is fed into the cloud, where
we can use AI algorithms to actually figure out
how can we lower the emissions of the city.
How can we lower the noise.
How can we make it easier for people
to move around as part of a smarter city infrastructure.
- What is it that you guys really have built?
- So we look at vehicles not just as machines
that carry people from one point to the other
but actually as part of the infrastructure.
So these vehicles are internet access points.
We have looked at them also as mobile sensors.
So Werner, we're gonna drive around Porto.
- [Werner] Okay.
- And this dashboard is gonna show us
how the vehicle is connecting to the rest
of the mesh network of buses and trucks
that are driving around.
- [Werner] Okay, so tell me what I'm seeing here.
- So we are in downtown Porto surrounded
by a lots of different vehicles.
And this car where we are right now, is connecting
to other vehicles and to the WiFi network
and the access points also using DSRC,
which is the technology for vehicle to vehicle communication
and vehicle to infrastructure communication.
In this dashboard we actually see what we can't see,
namely all the wireless connections.
And all of this happens seamlessly,
so the applications and the services don't really care
whether I'm using one network or the other.
And also the human users just care about the quality
of experience that they're getting.
- I can understand this connecting to the hotspots.
But if you see connections, the blue connections
between the buses or between our car and those two buses,
what is being exchanged between those two?
- The vehicles are acting as relays for another.
That means that an access point
that only has maybe 200 meters of range,
with a vehicle now has 400 meters, 500...
So that reduces the need of the infrastructure.
There's a big part of the communication,
which is actually machine to machine communication,
that happens automatically,
so that the transportation system can make decisions.
But also that the city itself is able to have very rich maps
and data sets on which to base routes for garbage collection
or mobility patterns of people.
Understanding ultimately, how we can be more efficient
and more sustainable, also from
an environmental point of view.
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- I took a ride to Matosinhos,
the home of Porto's actual port, to visit CEiiA,
a company developing autonomous vehicles,
micro mobility solutions, like this scooter,
and AYR a carbon credit system
that has been adopted by the municipality.
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When Maria showed me the hanger out there,
on almost every product it says AYR,
so tell me about what that is?
- You know, we got into mobility,
we always make some kind of choices.
It's either I use public transportation
or my bicycle, or my car, or walking, whatever.
It has an impact on environment.
So AYR is a platform that counts the CO2
that you didn't produce by making sustainable choices.
You go to the app and you see the counting
of the CO2 that you are saving in real time.
This is very important for people
to get the impact.
It's not just about explaining it,
it's for them to experience the impact itself.
So what our platform does is it quantifies those savings,
and then we tokenize those savings.
We create a token for every 100 grams
of CO2 that doesn't get emitted.
And enables you to exchange them
for more mobility products, green products,
whatever it needs to locally enhance
more sustainable choices.
- So how do you do the measurements?
I can understand if you drive the electronic car,
now you have no CO2 emissions, I assume.
So where do you compare it?
- Our algorithm takes into account several variables.
One of the things, although you drive an electrical car,
you don't have emissions, but you put some electricity
on the battery and that has emissions.
So we monitor those chargings every 15 minutes,
we know exactly what the energy makes
anywhere in the world.
- So it basically means that the data
that you're collecting with AYR actually gives
you great insight, for example, in the efficiencies
or the inefficiencies of particular routes through the city.
- Yes, that's the kind of data
that we share with the municipality.
So on top of that we put more layers,
like public transportation, local business.
And then you have mobility operators,
maybe the most efficient way for you guys
to put the scooters or the electrical cars, whatever.
It's if you use at this, this, and this spot
because then we'll have interface with local commerce,
this kind of stuff.
So we help them figure this out also.
It's been a journey because at the end of the day
we are talking transformation of the cities.
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- This technology means nothing
if not integrated into cities as policy.
I met with two different government officials
who were doing just that.
- How does a technology platform like AYR help you?
- AYR is for us a revolution on public policies.
Because we can give to the people a tool
where they can measure their own options on clean mobility.
- So you put policies in place to ensure
that any mobility operator that comes into the city
actually makes use of a platform like AYR
to give you the measurements but also to give
themselves the measurements to optimize their productivity.
- It's true and we are telling them
that we will trade the municipality taxes
for operating to AYR credits.
So they can give the municipality taxes
to their own users as in a form
of kilometers of operation, minutes of operation.
We are linking mobility needs to our local economy.
And we are just trying now to get
that next step and link this micro mobility,
electrical clean systems to the public transportation.
When we do this we can give people complete alternative
to private transportation, which is our main goal.
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- I've heard that Porto is
the second densest populated city in Europe.
What kind of challenges does that give
for urbanization and development of the city?
- Well, lots, because when you have a dense city,
there's infrastructures that you have to put in place.
In the same time it's very good to have a dense city
because you can really take advantage
of the infrastructures in order to serve more people.
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- You have policies probably play an important role also
in driving how a city like this changes.
Especially, such an old city like Porto,
must have very unique problems
that a new city would never have.
- Well, for sure, you know you have narrow streets.
You have the parking spaces not so big,
so you need to improve the public transport.
You need to move people around.
You will have a new metro line coming to the centers.
But we need to do it in a way that you continue
to have people living here, you continue
to have people shopping here, restaurants.
And so this has to be a balance.
You know, managing a city is all about balance.
- [Werner] Who is using it?
- So the primary use for us today on the one hand
is to enable new digital experiences for people.
We have found that, for example, public transit becomes
more attractive when you offer free internet.
And so it makes public transportation more attractive
and that makes our cities more sustainable.
- [Werner] The mesh is just a network?
- [Joao] Correct
- [Werner] On top of that you can build all sorts
of different applications.
- [Joao] Yeah.
- Is there a role for this, let's say
in improving public utilities as well?
- Oh, absolutely, we had a project here
with the garbage collection trucks.
Where basically, you have garbage containers
that have sensors and know if they're full or not.
And they are wirelessly enabled.
So when the truck comes by it asks
the rubbish collection site, "Are you full?"
So yes or no, it's actually binary zero or one.
And then, if not, they just continue their routes.
So this again, improves efficiency,
lowers fuel consumption for garbage collection.
Then you start having a wealth of knowledge
and context that allows you
to make better decisions for citizens.
- Why is this important for autonomous vehicles?
- So autonomous vehicles, if they are connected,
they can provide a safer service
with less energy consumption and less computation.
Let me give you an example, if the vehicle in front
of me is communicating directly with me and telling me,
"Hey, I'm gonna turn left at 30 miles per hour,"
Then, I don't need to run fancy AI algorithms
on all my sensors to be able to figure that out
because the vehicle is telling me.
And so this is an example of
how I can trade off communication and computation
and be able even to do micro transactions,
say using blockchain to be able to decide
who gets the right of way, who goes first,
who goes in front and how
we make the best use of the infrastructure.
Ultimately, I think we can have a mobility system
with much less vehicles, much better experience for people.
And leaving all this space that today is taken
by parking and by traffic congestion to have more trees
and fight climate change, which is one of the big purposes
of our company as well.
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- So if you looked at say five years ahead,
how do you see Porto?
- What I see is definitely
the technologies improving very fast.
They will improve a lot to the amount of data
that you can transfer and this will allow definitely
to have autonomous vehicles.
With autonomous vehicles you will lose the vehicles
in the streets and you will gain space for the citizens.
That will be a major change in cities
when you give back what the cars have taken.
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- [Werner] Can humans take back what has been given to cars?
Can we create systems that return our cities
to places that allow for movement
and life that has a quality beyond merely surviving?
Technologies like those at Veniam and CEiiA
are looking at this problem with a view that is
as revolutionary as the car was
at the turn of the 20th century.
Let's hope that the results can shift the way
we live as seismically as the automobile did.
And in a way that puts our humanity at the forefront.
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Amsterdam, I love this city.
My city.
I'm in Amsterdam for one of my favorite gatherings,
the Amsterdam Dance Event.
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It is exciting to see the role
that technologies play in removing the obstacles
between the song in the musician's head
and the wall of sound that helps us do one thing,
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dance.