Welcome to the Future is a podcast
where we meet the people shaping what's next
in business and life. I'm your host,
Laura Kelleher Honeywell's Chief Marketing
Officer.
And in today's episode, we'll be diving
into the topic of smart cities, including
what they are, how they work and
why they're needed for an energy resilient
future.
I'm joined today by Matthew Britt,
General Manager of smart cities and communities
at Honeywell.
Welcome Matthew. Thank you. Thanks for having
me. Appreciate it. We're really glad to have you here today.
So to start us off, why
don't you just tell us a little bit about what
is a smart city? And um
what does it mean to the average person? A smart
city is one that uses technduology and
data driven solutions to help improve
quality of life of its residents and help
improve operational efficiency within
the municipal government.
One thing it is not though, is really something
that is just sprinkled on top
that just makes something everything better,
right? It's a really comprehensive
approach at really transforming
the way cities work and think. So,
what are some of the misconceptions about smart
cities? And
what do you think people should know about them.
I think one of the biggest things is that people
often associate smart cities with
surveillance and in reality,
while public safety has
often been a key part of
smart cities, it's really just one
real, one factor that that
is part of the smart city ecosystem.
But it's really about how, you
know everything from how
people move around the city more effectively,
how a city can become more resilient
in its infrastructure and be able to weather
natural disasters and climate events
more effectively, really all
in all. How does a city serve its
people better? Where can people find
an example of a smart city today?
You know, it's, it's funny because the the term
smart city implies that there
are dumb cities, right?
And that is couldn't be farther from the truth.
The reality is is that
every city is doing certain
things that fall into
that smart city category. But
you know, there's certain cities that get a lot of press,
you know, cities like Singapore where,
you know, they have digitized really
their entire government and made
it extremely easy for
its citizens to interact with the government,
everything from, you know, health care,
uh you know, digital health care to,
you know, complete, you know, traffic management
and and efficiency in that regard.
Um you know, one of the, one of the cities that
we're most proud of at Honeywell is, is
the new administrative capital of Egypt.
Um you know, this is a brand new
city capital that's being developed
to replace Cairo as the capital
of Egypt that's been built from the ground
up with people in mind, right?
So everything from, you know, public
safety to emergency
response, traffic management, parking
management, energy management
all accounted for uh you
know, within that ecosystem of smart
city managed by a common
platform such as ours Honeywell City
Suite. So then how do you see
smart city development supporting
community sustainability efforts?
This is something that has become increasingly
important over the last few years and
has gotten a lot more attention than when
smart cities first became a thing.
Um you know, lots of different areas
frankly, you know, everything from
smart metering, right, which enables
cities to ensure that
uh we're not losing
water through leaks and and just
helping generally conserve water
more effectively leveraging
advanced leak detection systems,
um electric vehicles
as a perfect example, right? You know,
the the adoption of ev
is increasing exponentially
right now, the grid that exists
today, you know, isn't really well
suited to be a to support all of that
additional load. And so cities are
are are leveraging renewables
and battery energy storage
to be able to support those massive
loads that are coming onto the grid
and be able to help weather natural disasters,
climate events. You know, we
we we saw in Texas a couple of years
ago where you know the ice storm
came through and took power, took out power
for a full week, right? That meant
no running water for, for citizens.
Um You know, so cities are adopting
new energy technology and infrastructure
to be able to help continue deliver
city services when people need it
most. So can you tell us a little bit
about how Honeywell is helping to
promote and support the growth of smart
cities.
Honeywell is has been in the smart
city for almost a decade.
We started in India in support
of of the 100 smart
cities mission that was sponsored by Prime Minister
Modi that was primarily focused
around public safety type solutions.
But really since then, we've developed a wide
range of solutions that are all
aimed at helping improve quality of
life and really help transform
municipal governments in the way they
do business with people that
reside there.
Um You know, some really good examples
of that I spoke about the Egyptian capital
of which our platform is really
the system of systems that's going to manage
that business. Uh You know, everything
you know from, from safety to energy.
You know, additionally, in the United
States, we've been working with Accelerator
for America. Uh You know, we
announced that partnership last year where
we have partnered with five US cities,
the city of San Diego,
Louisville, Cleveland Waterloo
in Kansas City,
really to help them define their strategic
priorities for, for, for smart
cities and help them then
determine what those high impact projects
are, that would be eligible for grant
money under the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act passed by
us Congress in 21. Because
you know, there's really this unprecedented
amount of funding available in
the market today as a result of, you
know, several legislations
that will help us modernize our
infrastructure, that really hasn't seen
that much improvement over the
last several decades. And so,
you know, really working with cities across
various departments, you know, everything
from, you know, the police departments to fire
and rescue to,
you know, public works,
really understanding what their
real challenges are. And then,
you know, drawing those lines to where
there is money available from the federal
government to help pay for it to really
help advance these cities into the future.
So taking a consultative approach as
well with these
communities to help them get there. Another
one though is, is with the Atlanta Belt
Line and you know, this was a project that we
announced uh you know, about a month
ago where, you know, we
are working with them on a digital
inclusion and equity project that, you
know, they are really transforming 22
miles of, of
uh the beltline around the city that,
you know, was once an abandoned railroad track.
Um you know, to really help lift
up the citizens that live along the belt
line, which many of are, you know,
fall into that low to moderate income,
demographic of, of, of Atlanta
and simply just don't have the options
that are available, you know, to, to many
other people. And so, you know, we
are deploying our our city suite platform
and integrating in, you know, several different
technologies. One is around um
you know, smart waste management to help
to provide, you know, more efficient trash
collection along the belt line, you
know, which will allow them to, you know, produce
less emissions, you know, from sending trucks
unnecessarily while also making
sure that, you know, the trash cans are empty
when they need to be.
Um you know, also we, you
know, we're deploying our, our people counting technology
to be able to give them the idea of
where is the beltline being utilized
the most and where do they need to, you
know, improve investments. Um
You know, where the belt line is the most popular,
uh you know, lots of great things going
on in smart cities now, especially,
you know, now that there's kind of a more clear cut
way to really make progress. Yeah,
a lot of ways that we're helping
these communities uh to progress,
right? And make, make better energy decisions
um and better productivity decisions for their
constituents. So how does a project
like this come to fruition? I mean, someone
gets an idea, they say our city needs
to be smarter who do they call,
how does it get started?
You know, I describe the smart city market
is as kind of a tale of two markets. You
know, you have the developing world
where
typically you've got
a central government, you know, leader
that just decides that this is
what we're going to do, right? India
being a perfect example of that or,
you know, in Egypt where they have decided
to build the new capital,
but there's central government planning
and, and then those those the
outcomes that they look to drive are
really, you know, sent out to market and,
and solution providers like Honeywell
respond
and, and you know, try to bring that
outcome, you know, to the people.
But then in the developed world like the
United States or Europe, it's, it's often
been a lot of pilots and,
and what I describe as point to point
solutions that are really just solving
one problem at a time, you have
a department head in,
you know, the traffic department
that wants, you know, new street lights
and so they will go do that right.
And there's, there hasn't ever been a
real broad
mission
to really monitor, denies anything or,
or, or solve some of the challenges that cities
face. And the good news is is that,
that's really starting to change the work
that we've been doing with us. Cities has really
been, you know, instead of working in departments
and, and having to then go
one by one, it it's
being led by the mayors and,
you know, the Chief sustainability Officers
and city managers where they're
in a, they're able to enact policy
for their teams to go do.
So, does it always work seamlessly?
Uh you know, what are some of the common misconceptions
or issues that you run into with these types of projects?
There's no Pixie dust that you can
just Sprinkle on, on a city
and make everything better, right? And
part of the reason I think that in smart cities,
there's kind of
it means so many things to so many
people, right? And, and unfortunately
a lot of the things that people have that cities
have done over time really
haven't been designed
with the citizen in mind, right?
You know, the the resident hasn't really been
part of that process to really
understand what the benefit is
that they're going to receive. And
so where we've seen a lot of success
is where, you know, that stakeholder
alignment between both the city,
the private sector and the residents
that live there, you know, really
come together to try and solve problems,
you know, so that, you know, when, when a project
is done, you know, the citizen really
understands what the benefit
it is to them rather than the than
the government just going and spending a bunch of
money, you know, for benefits, they don't
see so better outcomes with
really all the stakeholders aligned and
leaning into the project and uh
the benefits that absolutely,
so as you probably know,
uh our podcast is focused
on the future, but we always like to ask
our guests to just take a look back. What
did you want to be when you grew up?
So I actually, I wanted to be
a lot of different things when I, when I was
growing up. But I think the thing that I always kind
of came back to was I wanted to be an airline
pilot.
Uh my dad was a fighter pilot in the US
Air Force for 20 years and then a, a pilot
for TW A and then American for another
20 years. And it was just something
that, you know, I, I grew up traveling all over
the place and I really love doing it. And,
you know, so that was kind of the, the thing that
I was gonna do. But then, you
know, I graduated college right after 9
11 and, you know, the airline
industry just, you know, was really in
a bad shape at that point. And, you
know, I found my way into, into
global business and, you know, it's been off
and running ever since. Found your way to smart
cities. Great. Well, thank
you so much for spending time with us today. I really
enjoyed the conversation and um
excited about everything that Honeywell is doing. Me
too. Thank you. Thank you.