Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news, and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:11 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. [on-hold music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:25 An impassioned architect, urbanist, and entrepreneur, my last guest has founded and led high-growth companies in the US and Asia for more than two decades. 0:36 In two thousand and ten, he assumed his current position, which allowed him to embark on his personal mission to transform life in cities around the globe. Please welcome Michael Janssen, CEO of CityZenith. 0:49 Michael, welcome to the show. Thanks, Peggy. Great, great to, uh, be on the show today. Thanks for having me. So Michael, let's talk about what you guys do. 0:59 You're right here in our neck of the woods, and so let's talk and tell our listeners all about what you guys are doing, your history, and how you guys are aggregating all this amazing and normalizing data from any source in the built environment, which I think is really kind of exciting. 1:17 Sure. So we launched a product called Smart World, uh, in May of this year, so it was relatively recently. And that product is probably best described as Sim City-like, but for real cities and real estate. 1:32 And what we do is we, uh, aggregate the massive amounts of data in cities, whether that's public open portal data or IoT data, uh, even three-D BIM or building object model data, all into one platform where it can be uniquely analyzed and served up to help our clients make better decisions during the building design process. 1:55 So our users are typically large architecture and engineering firms, large construction firms, and even now increasingly large, uh, building owners as well. 2:05 And when they use all this data, and we talk about when they have to, you know, collaborate and derive all these insights that you're talking about, who are the... 2:14 You know, and you talk about these, these kind of owners, and they're trying to collaborate and, and now that you've got owners and you've got AEC firms and different kinds of things that are doing that, what are they trying to do when they look at all this information and they're trying to figure out, I guess, this smart world in general that you've just created? 2:34 What is the ultimate goal that they're- Right. -you're trying to do with the product? 2:40 The goal is to be able to take the building during the design process when it exists as an initial three-D model and be able to simply drag and drop that off the desktop into these content-rich three-D city model environments where they can access any type of data relevant to their projects and run almost any type of analysis from traffic studies to environmental impact studies to even financial ROI studies. 3:04 And these things otherwise take tremendous integration efforts b-from, you know, uh, basically software developers and engineers to try to stitch together individually. 3:14 What we do is we allow them to basically take every tool that they've got from the BIM tools to the project management tools to the CAD tools and introduce all of that data into one place so, um, it becomes part of the, uh, analysis and computation. 3:30 So as an example, um, a firm we're working with in Chicago working on a major project is, uh, had cited a residential building on a certain corner of, uh, a new large building site in the city. 3:43 And, uh, we were-- This-- There's a new sensor project there that we were able to pull some data from and show in the model that actually the, the-- from the noise readings in the sensors, um, that particular intersection was the noisiest of, of the entire neighborhood. 3:58 So citing the residential building there probably would have been a problem for the residents ultimately, and they were able then to relocate the building to another area of the site. 4:07 It's a simple example, but an important one that just demonstrates how being able to take this complex sensor data and serve it up into an, uh, an environment where the building industry can actually use it becomes important. 4:19 So when you look at this, and we always talk about sensor data as having a, a real value to the construction industry, are we seeing more when you talk about the, the construction community and the owner community with the cities really starting to embrace... 4:34 'Cause it was funny you made the analogy of a Sim City. Are they starting to m-embrace what they can do with the information and the data and analyze it to make those real-time decisions that are critical? 4:47 Or are they still trying to figure out how to best take that information to improve productivity, to improve and put it in that BIM model that you described? 4:56 Or are they still saying, "We've got it over here, but we haven't quite figured out how to really leverage it as, as often as we can," or you still have a few of those top leaders that get it, but still not enough of them that are understanding data is dollars? 5:13 Well, that was a complex question. And [laughs] let me, let me try to, try to answer it. 5:18 I think, I think to your point that, you know, the IoT is at various levels of adoption by various stakeholders right now and di-different industries. 5:27 I think for the architecture and engineering industry, it's relatively new. 5:30 Uh, the idea of being able to base great urban plans based upon pedestrian footfall from a sensor that you-- that had a, a reading from this morning is fundamentally different from their having to use, say, census data that might be ten years old for the same purpose. 5:46 So they're beginning to get, I think, familiar with it in the profession, and 5:51 I think it will be something that you see architects and engineers cont- start to specify more and more as they become more familiar with it, um, and they continue to design smart campuses and smart cities. 6:03 On the owner's side, I think they've been more exposed toIoT via, you know, smart building management systems for a while. 6:11 I think for them it's more about, you know, how do we merge, you know, these different systems that we have into a platform where we could begin to leverage the intelligence that we're deriving from the different s- data points that we have, whether it's energy management data or facilities management data or security data. 6:29 And so probably they're a bit further along. Um, but, you know, overall, I think IoT is still, you know, really... 6:35 It's a really in kind of in its fairly early stages of evolution, you know, generally in buildings and cities still. So what are the hurdles that we're facing? 6:44 Is it still because we're still somewhat in its infancy, or we still have, you know, to figure out public-private partnerships with cities and things like that? 6:56 What, what are the hurdles we're, we're, we have to deal with? I think it's all of that. 7:01 I mean, we're, for example, involved with GE and AT&T on a project in San Diego right now where they are about to deploy three thousand sensors across the city of San Diego. That's a project worth watching, by the way. 7:13 Um, and so they have some sensors already up. We've begun to pull some of their, uh, the data that they are generating, and we- we include it in our presentations. 7:23 Uh, I think, though, right now the, the, the situation... 7:26 That, that is probably the most sensorized project of which I'm aware today in, in the United States, and I think that there is still a search for use cases, to be honest. 7:35 And so what GE and AT&T have been doing is, is inviting the city and inviting partners like us to come in and consume the data and figure out how it can best be, uh, consumed by, by a market. So that process is underway. 7:49 I think, um, I, I think be- for lack of enough sort of proofs of concept, that's your challenge. The moment you have one success, Peggy... 7:59 Uh, for example, I just saw the CEO of Sidewalk Labs, Google's, uh, smart city unit, speak, and he talked a lot about, um, the High Line project in New York, which everyone thought was crazy. 8:11 And they did it, and suddenly there were 30 other cities that had High Line projects, including our 606 in Chicago. 8:16 So, um, I think the moment we have a, a, a successful use case where we can really drive value, I don't know if San Diego will be the example or not, I think, uh, you'll see a whole bunch of cities then follow the law. 8:28 And when we look at that, do you think that's gonna really... We're gonna see some big evolution in twenty eighteen? Do you think that's gonna be the big push, or we still gotta wait a few more years? 8:40 Well, I think there are some really critical projects right now that are pushing the envelope. 8:44 Um, and things in Chicago, uh, things in New York, things in Toronto, things in Tampa, things in San Diego that are going to prove out the concept for the first time. So I think that once we... 8:55 We're, we're, we're kind of at that, that pivot up the hockey stick, as it were. 8:59 We're beyond out of the pain of the, the hype and the failures, and we're kind of getting into a place now where we understand what, what needs to be done. 9:07 And some of these pivotal projects happening, I think they will drive the industry going forward. I mean, but I, I... We're at the beginning of a renaissance for American cities. 9:15 We're almost at that point where we've got new models that will start to tell us how to change things. 9:20 And give it two or three or four years, these, these Tampa and th- and, uh, Toronto projects will be executed, and we'll have great examples, and we'll be able to scale them elsewhere around the country. 9:31 [upbeat music] Well, Michael, thank you so much for being with us today. We appreciate your time. You too, Peggy. Thanks as always. All right, listeners, remember we are broadcast live every Tuesday at twelve PM Central. 9:43 You can check out our website at connectedworld.com or thepeggysmedleyshow.com. We hope you have a wonderful week as always. 9:50 This is The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT, and remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. [upbeat music] With great technology comes great responsibility. 10:05 Follow Internet of Things tech expert and futurist Peggy Smedley, repeatedly ranked as a top IoT and M2M influencer. 10:12 Go to peggy_smedley on Twitter for her take on the latest tech news and lively interviews with other industry insiders on her weekly radio show. Visit twitter.com and search for peggy_smedley to follow her today. 10:27 [upbeat music] Video consumption is on the rise, so to reach this audience, Constructek magazine created Constructek TV. 10:39 Constructek TV helps construction professionals leverage emerging solutions to better their business. Tune in to constructek.tv to catch the latest show on the first and third Tuesday of each month. 10:50 Like, view, and subscribe to constructek.tv. Bringing dynamic video to construction. 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