Advances in technology, from ever-more intelligent smart devices to autonomous transport, will transform not just how we live and move around, but how we access services in the future.
Birmingham and the wider Midlands have the potential to become true tech leaders, building on the strong heritage of innovation across the region and a growing scitech cluster reflected in growing expertise in medtech, fintech and more.
As well as strengthening deep connections and becoming closer to our clients and partners, organisations like Arup, by moving back into Birmingham’s city centre, demonstrate this potential and the rising confidence in the city and region.
As highlighted during the recent Birmingham Tech Week, the Midlands’ largest tech festival and conference, all businesses are on a shared digital journey.
All of us, by working together, are helping to shape what future services will look like and tailor them to individual needs. Organisations like Arup are helping to design better city-wide outcomes and improve collaboration for the benefit of citizens, workers and visitors with access to transport networks, digital infrastructure, healthcare and the world of work.
Birmingham: sustainable and inclusive
Arup has examined digital innovation through the lens of sustainable and inclusive cities, examining how data-rich reporting can be transformed into digital solutions that address specific as well as community needs and accelerate a clear pathway for actions from both the public and private sectors. While some suburbs may need investment in transport, others may rely more on digital services provided at home.
Cities are complex structures with complex and overlapping needs. Some parts of the population will benefit more from advances in digital healthcare, social and care services and access to education, skills and training.
Our work demonstrates how a diverse application of digital and tech can effectively shape cities and their diverse populations, drawing on services already offered, tools and frameworks already out there identifying the digital gaps and using that information to drive ever greater innovation.
For example, we use remote sensing and AI to help understand the impact of changing environments on the most vulnerable people in society and how to mitigate those effects. How can digital services improve how victims of crime report it and interact with the police, for example, or access to the full range of local government and health services that have become completely digitised in countries like Estonia, Denmark and South Korea?
We can use modelling to help understand the impact of policy changes on different communities and use AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) to help empathise within those communities so we can more easily consider the needs of others.
Digital change should help society
Everything we do helps make our cities more connected, inclusive and sustainable. Today’s digital citizens will undoubtedly reap the benefits of this work. Still, we want to ensure these changes and improvements help everyone in society, and not just those already digitally plugged in.
Concrete examples of this in Birmingham might look at the impacts of the Clean Air Zone, new tram extensions, existing bus services and the re-opening of suburban rail services, for example. However, the modelling isn’t just about transport, it’s also about how the built environment has a socio-economic impact on all of our lives.
Arup’s corporate journey into the digital age is worth highlighting as an example many will equally be going through. Although the background of Arup is as an engineering and built environment consultancy, through a focused digital transformation of its own, it is now utilising new digital technology in the way it works and delivers for its clients.
Embracing digital is a key factor in achieving Arup’s commitment to reach net-zero carbon across all operations by 2030. All key systems that run our new Birmingham office are smart-enabled, such as access control, HVAC (heating ventilation and air conditioning), energy metering, lighting, and lifts.
This means we can closely check building performance and, over time, optimise how systems interact with each other to deliver ongoing energy savings and reduce the ‘performance gap’ new buildings often experience. Similarly, data from our in-office systems will show how we use our workspace, allowing us to optimise how we use our office daily, such as powering down areas during off-peak hours or seasons like seasonal holidays to reduce our overall carbon emissions.
All of us will benefit from a more connected, information-rich way of living and working – and the role of the city around us will change for the better, whether from a retail, living, family or working point of view.
Cities will become much more strategic as they recognise the need to deliver ever-more complex services in a customer-focused way. The populations of our cities will become ultra-connected, and tech-attuned to harness and apply these solutions will reap rewards.
Arup will launch its third largest global office in Birmingham city centre at the start of 2024, providing a new base in the heart of the UK to enhance its delivery of large-scale complex, multidisciplinary projects that impact cities and communities locally, nationally and globally.
[Read more: Why we must design at a neighbourhood scale to cool our cities]
