On Tuesday Feb. 6 and Wednesday Feb. 7, 2007 the city of Riyadh hosted the first conference on intelligent cities under the title “Intelligent Cities 2007” by initiatives from the Communications & Information Technology Commission (CITI) and the High Commission for the Development of the City of Riyadh. The general objective of this conference, as reported in the local media, was to explain the concept of intelligent cities and its positive effects and to explore the ways and means for attracting foreign investment in this sector of evolving technology.

However, the specific objective of the conference was to declare the city of Riyadh as the first Saudi intelligent city to be followed later by other major cities in the Kingdom. It was by pure coincidence that the city of Riyadh will host the first BuilConn(r) Conference “BuilConn ME 2007 Riyadh” on March 3, 2007. This conference comes in the heels of the first BuilConn(r) ME 2007 Conference and Exhibit that will be held in Dubai from April 26-28, 2007. BuilConn is about the convergence of building technology and IT to shape the concept of intelligent buildings. The conference comes as an initiative by the private sector, both local and international.

Between the 2 dates of the 2 conferences mentioned above the city of Jeddah will be hosting toward the end of February two events: The Jeddah Economic Forum and a real estate exhibition that include a series of lectures on various aspects of real estate development.

For an instance one would look at those four events as totally disjointed, which they are from an organization and timing aspects. However, I see the subjects of all four events very much intertwined as will be shown below.

The conference on intelligent cities in Riyadh has dealt mainly with the intention of providing the city with a metropolitan network. Users can access this network from anywhere within the area of coverage. However it is not sensible to expect to have an Intelligent City unless the buildings within such a city are also Intelligent Buildings.

A metropolitan network remains a mere shell unless it serves to connect “intelligent buildings” together and to various public buildings and services.

In this case the Internet becomes the fourth utility. This brings us to the subject of intelligent or smart or connected buildings.

The concept of “intelligent buildings” has evolved as a result of convergence of IT and building technology. As Anto Budiardjo, a leading expert in this field, points out in his article in Arab News of March 11, 2007 that, “Three major forces are converging; firstly Information Technology has got over the dizzying days of the nineties and is settling down to pragmatic application of technology that is significantly contributing to the efficiencies of today’s Western organizations. Secondly, the Internet is changing almost everything we are doing in our lives from entertainment, work, shopping and information distribution, our very social infrastructure in being changed by the Internet! Lastly, and arguable a more profound force is the availability of cheap broadband communications reaching out to all corners of the known world via wired and wireless technologies”

The measure of a building’s “intelligence” is the degree of its connectivity and how its occupants are applying it. The European Intelligent Buildings Group defines a building to be an intelligent building if it creates an environment that allows the organization residing in it to achieve its business objectives while maximizing the effectiveness of its occupants and achieving minimum life cycle costs. I may mention here that Europeans, out of economical and environmental considerations, have gone very far in implementing stringent energy conservation measures in their buildings, being it offices or residential. This is not the case in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.

Therefore I would add the degree of energy conservation measures employed in a building as one more factor when assessing building intelligence. Overall the main object of intelligent cities and buildings is to improve productivity by eliminating factors that inhibit it.

In an article on the subject of intelligent buildings published in the February 2007 issue of facilities management Middle East magazine one of the experts in the field states that there are four key words to think about when designing an intelligent building — flexibility, adaptability, usability and sustainability. I would not elaborate on those factors here as it is not within the scope of this article.

As explained above, and considering that no economy can stand alone on its own without affecting, and being affected by, other world economies, the move to implement the technologies underlining connectivity is a necessity and not a matter of choice.

This is of course if we want to maintain, and improve, our competitiveness and attract foreign investment. So let us look at the buildings that will make up intelligent cities and how such buildings are made. (Dr. Talal A. Bakr ([email protected]) is president, Noor Technologies Company, a buildings systems integrator.)