Smart Cities

How urbanization shapes the planet. Each week, cities are growing by 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2050, more than two thirds of the global population will be city dwellers, up from just one third in 1950. As cities grow, the way we build and manage urban infrastructure has never been more critical to global economic and social development.

Download free white paper: Distributed Energy Systems

Keep up to date @SiemensCities

Follow all the latest developments and trends - and learn how Siemens' innovative solutions are helping cities all over the world to meet the challenges of urbanization, climate change, and globalization.

Join the conversation

Making cities fit for the future With growing urbanization, often critical financial conditions and the challenges of climate change, cities carry a crucial part of development as a whole. What then does intelligent infrastructure mean for buildings, mobility solutions and energy management?

Creating a functioning infrastructure is much more than spending enormous amounts of money. What are the most efficient infrastructure investments to create the best possible output?

How can we build cities that remain liveable even under the circumstances of ever more frequent weather-related catastrophes in combination with population growth and urbanization in general?

Key trend: urbanization

Infrastrucutre has a profound effect on quality of life, but one that we only really appreciate when things do not work as well as they should. Anybody who has experienced power blackouts or stuck in traffic jams knows that things could, and should, be better.

Urbanization complicates matters further. Each week, cities are growing by 1.5mn inhabitants, and by 2050 more than two-thirds of the global population will be city dwellers, up from just one-third in 1950. As cities grow, the way we build and manage urban infrastructure has never been more critical to global economic and social development.

Digitalization is changing our world. Today the number of connected devices has surpassed the number of humans on the planet. These intelligent devices generate massive amounts of data transforming life and business across all sectors. However, much infrastructure has yet to be transformed by the information age. Instead, in most places, trains, power systems, buildings, buses, and roads have hardly changed in nature. Some digital systems have been incorporated but we have only just begun to unlock the potential of fully digitized, electrified, information-enabled, intelligent infrastructure. Doing so will be key to meeting the world’s present and future sustainable development challenges. Siemens is a trusted partner offering solutions across all infrastructure domains making cities more efficient, sustainable and resilient. We help you meet the challenges that cities of the future face: maintaining, modernizing and upgrading an ageing urban infrastructure.

With more than half of the global population living in cities, there is no doubt that we live in an urbanized world and the global challenges of the 21st century are in urban areas.

Joan Clos, Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (source: Interview with Joan Clos by the UN Non-Governmental Liaison Service on the "Rio+20" conference, June 2012)

Infographic What are the key areas in which our urban infrastructure can benefit most from advanced digital technologies?

Smart mobility Transportation of people and goods is a top priority for metropolitan areas. Siemens sets the benchmark in connecting information technology with transportation expertise to create the best mobility offering for customers and passengers.

Innovative traffic management systems optimizes road and rail capacity, while information systems help passengers find efficient travel routes. Fully automated metros can be flexibly adapted to passenger volume – and dynamic traffic control systems guarantee an optimized traffic flow. The result: Optimally networked conurbations that flexibly adapt to changing requirements.

Our specialist knowledge includes comprehensive domain and turnkey expertise that enables us to service the entire mobility spectrum. Integrated mobility platforms from Siemens integrate diverse transport providers, offering an end-to-end travel experience across metro, bus, car, bike-sharing, parking and even taxi services. As a single source provider, we offer high quality rail products and solutions for urban and interurban transportation and logistics. We help optimize the overall performance of transportation networks

Learn more

Smart mobility

Intelligent buildings 41% of worldwide energy consumption, responsible for one third of greenhouse gas emissions: Buildings are one major part of the worldwide environmental footprint. If we’d like to succeed against climate change, sustainable, and energy-efficient buildings need to be part of a global answer.

Beside buildings’ environmental impact, there are also economical aspects: Real Estate often is the 2nd largest expense on most organizations’ income statement. So buildings can be a critical factor for a company’s success and in the end for the employees’ job security.

But buildings are far more than that. People spend about 90 % of their lives indoors – starting with our birth in hospitals, learning at schools, developing at universities, succeeding in jobs in office buildings. Buildings are not just a place for working and living. It’s the place where we spend our lives.

Ingenuity for life creates perfect places

We all begin our lives in a perfect place: In our mother’s tummy. A place where it is never too cold, never too warm, never too loud; a place where we can always feel safe and secure. Why shouldn’t all our lives be lived in perfect places?

So improving buildings, working on perfect places, means working towards better lives. Our goal is: Creating perfect places for every stage of life.

Energy management

A constant reliable energy supply is central for economic growth and stability, as well as social wellbeing in cities all over the world. Yet existing power grids are facing challenges: growing power requirements, increasing proportion of fluctuating power generated from renewable sources, power outages caused by storms, excessive demand, ageing infrastructure.

All of this has a significant impact on businesses and households – if the power supply fails, there are repercussions across all infrastructure domains. Smart grid technologies from Siemens make it possible to modernize and adapt existing power grids to future demands. They can enable power operators to manage energy more efficiently, react more flexibly to changing demands, and boost efficiency in the network as well as incorporate electricity from distributed and renewable sources.

Agility in energy

“Agility in energy” – the ability to manage business processes and resources flexibly and efficiently – is increasingly important to network operators and energy providers as well as large consumers. Based on comprehensive automation and digitalization, Siemens' integrated products, solutions, and services make it possible to react to new technical and market demands in a timely manner and to take advantage of the opportunities resulting from changes in the energy system.

Read more: Agility in energy

Totally Integrated Power

Totally Integrated Power (TIP) stands for integrated power supply solutions for industries, buildings, and infrastructures. Software and hardware products, systems, and solutions for all voltage levels meet even the toughest requirements for supply-critical equipment. Smart interfaces to industrial and building automation systems are the key to tapping the full potential offered by an integrated power supply solution.

Read more: Totally Integrated Power

Smart City Reports What is the return on investment for digitalized infrastructure? Siemens worked with five cities to understand their own vision and ambitions for their city, and considering their top three infrastructure priorities, uncovered the overall long term value to each city from digitally enabled intelligent infrastructure investments. The study sets out the benefits of six infrastructure sectors: Energy, Transport, Buildings, Harbours, Security and Connectivity. Using over 350 data inputs, it calculates their multiple benefits to the city and their return on investment.

Modeling transport, buildings and energy solutions, the London study considers the upcoming development at London’s Arc of Opportunity in the east of the city – a new model for city growth.
Click here for the study

Brussels chose energy, buildings and security as the priority investments for the city in the coming years with enhanced security systems delivering some of the best benefits across the entire research.

Click here for the study

A city seeking to diversify its economy around the future of energy demonstrates how harbours play such an important role in that economic diversity and how this economic generator can play its part in the energy economy and transport systems development.

Click here for the study

A bustling hub in the vast and growing Istanbul, Kartal is undergoing huge redevelopment and new construction. This study looked at the benefits to the city from digitally enabled buildings, transport solutions and energy management.

Click here for the study

A small city in Romania demonstrates how connectivity can support transport and energy investments as well as support a thriving and growing tourist industry. Physical and digital connections to the wider region shows the importance of region wide collaboration.

Click here for the study

Executive Summary

News and events

How can decisions by San Francisco to invest in energy efficient buildings, clean energy, and a multi-modal transport network accelerate the City’s strong record of reducing GHG emissions, while creating jobs and improving air quality?

References

Sitraffic STREAM

Intelligent traffic prioritization system
Buses on time, smoothly flowing traffic
Lower CO₂ emissions

Sitraffic STREAM

A stable power grid

The Siemens Pooling Solution is an efficient, highly-automated tool
Software captures and aggregates partnered resources
These are packaged and placed in an online trading platform

VSE

Shanghai Tower

Siemens automation and control systems achieve high efficiency
Upgrades extend the life of vital components
LEED Platinum certificate for green building design

Shanghai

Berlin's CityCube

Intelligent networking of power distribution, building automation and fire safety technology
Entire power connection system designed virtually
More than 40,000 sensors and data points gather information