The versatility of benefits in spatial intelligence starting from saving costs to saving lives.

1. ROBERT SUGAR
CEO, Urban Hawk Ltd

2. • For most people the first thought comes to mind whenever we
hear the phrase ‘AI’ is:
Prejudice?

3. But…
• That’s fine. Media and the creative industries love scary stuff.
• It’s also part of human nature. For some reason we tend to pay
more attention to negative news than to positive news.
• Conclusion: the awareness about the added benefits AI can
provide at present and in future, is lower.

4. However
• We are more and more becoming dependent on AI
• Especially in industries and scenarios where the situation is too
complex for the human mind

5. For example in cities
• Improving cities is a pressing global need
• The world’s population grows and our species becomes rapidly
more urbanised
• By 2008 half the world’s population lived in urban areas
• The rate continues to grow

6. Cities need to keep up
• They need to constantly improve infrastructure from limited
resources.
• They need to optimise the use of resources.
• They need to improve on public safety.
• And so on…
• Officials have to learn more about how people use cities.

7. Smart Cities
• In other words cities need to get ‘smarter’.
• Smart Cities.

8. Smart Cities
• The first step in a city becoming a ‘Smart City’ is collecting more
and better data.
• BUT, there’s the say: if you put garbage in, you get garbage out.
• Collected data has to be good data, otherwise predictions based
on that, will be deeply flawed! For example to predict how
government policies will work in the city context.
• Helping cities gather and understand data is one place AI is
already used.

9. AI Learns How People Use Cities
• There is more, a lot more.
• AI can learn how people use cities.
• Ticket sales on mass transit, local tax information, police reports,
sensors on roads and local weather stations, and so on.
• One huge source of raw data that AI recognition technology is
making more manageable is videos and photos.
• NVIDIA predicts that by 2020 there will be 1 billion cameras
deployed on government property, infrastructure, and on
commercial buildings.

10. AI Learns How People Use Cities
• That is far more raw data than could ever be viewed, processed, or
analysed by humans.
• The only viable solution is to deploy AI.
• Ai is capable to count vehicles and pedestrians. It can read license
plates and recognise faces. It can track the speed and movements
of millions of vehicles to establish patterns.
• Example: license plates. Instead of using traditional meters, the
technology will verify who is parked legally. On the scale of a whole
city. More accurate way. Faster/easier to purchase a digital ticket.

11. Optimising infrastructure for cities
• Existing public infrastructure is underutilised, or overused, or used
inefficiently due to the lack of real time information among users.
• Back to the parking example: drivers don’t know where parking is
available.
• Another example: intelligent traffic signals. Traffic lights change
their timing based on real time data. Travel times can be reduced
by more than 25% on average and wait times by 40% on average.
Traffic congestion costs a country billions in wasted fuel and
productivity.

12. AI Improving Public Safety
• A Smart City isn’t just about reducing commute times and saving
on fuel. The same networks of sensors combined with AI are being
used to save lives and fight crime.
• Law enforcement to find stolen cars and track criminals.
• Intelligent traffic lights to help ambulances and fire trucks to get to
the scene of an emergency quicker and safer.
• The gathered data is being mined to find out which intersections
experience accidents, and how these accidents take place, to
prevent them in the future.

13. Concluding thoughts
• The long term vision of Smart Cities is full interconnectivity.
• Self driving cars, trucks, and buses all talking with each other as
well as with smart highways, traffic lights, and parking garages. The
whole system will working together to move people around with
an incredible degree of efficiency and safety.
• Better predictive maintenance plans for infrastructure to reduce
cost and replace more assets at the optimal point, before they fail.
• More resilient cities and more productive economies.

14. Concluding thoughts
• Heavily dependent on AI.
• Wouldn’t be possible without it.
• Thank you.

15. Contact
Robert Sugar / Urban Hawk Ltd
robert.sugar@urbanhawk.space
www.urbanhawk.space

16. QUESTIONS?