Title: URBANISTA 10. طراحی شهری داده محور. چگونه داده ها را برای برنامه ریزی شهری جمع آوری کنیم؟

هی! به Urbanista خوش آمدید. پادکست برای طراحان شهری و برنامه ریزان شهری که در آن درباره مدیریت آب شهری و توسعه پایدار شهری بحث می کنیم. در این قسمت با Natalia Rincón – یکی از بنیانگذاران و مدیر عامل در CHAOS، یک استارت آپ هوش مصنوعی با تمرکز بر پیش بینی اطلاعات مکان برای بهبود زندگی شهرها صحبت می کنیم. او یک معمار و مهندس علوم کامپیوتر است و در حال حاضر دارای مدرک دکترا در شهرهای هوشمند است. ناتالیا که در بین ۱۰ کارآفرین زن اتحادیه اروپا که این صنعت را تقویت می کنند، رتبه بندی شده است، یک رهبر فکری است که از پایداری، زندگی و برابری در شهرهای ما حمایت می کند. او نماینده زنان انجام دهنده در جامعه فناوری است و نوآوری و کارآفرینی را تشویق می کند. در طول این گفتگوی روشنگر، موضوعاتی مانند توسعه شهری پایدار و برنامه ریزی شهری مبتنی بر داده را مورد بحث قرار دادیم. – هوش مکانی چیست؟ – چگونه می توان اطلاعات مربوط به منطقه شهری خاص را جمع آوری کرد؟ – آیا بر اساس داده ها می توان آب و هوای مناطق را پیش بینی کرد؟ – آیا زیرساخت های ما برای پذیرش تغییرات آب و هوایی آماده است؟ ارتباط با ناتالیا:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataliarincon/

https://chaosarchitects.com/
CHAOS – استارت‌آپ هوش مصنوعی بر پیش‌بینی‌های اطلاعاتی مکان برای بهبود زندگی در شهرها متمرکز شد. از Urbanistas که گوش دادید متشکرم! Urbanista محصول Uponor Infra Oy است که توسط ماریا آندریوشنکووا در هلسینکی آفتابی تهیه و تدوین شده است.

قسمتي از متن فيلم: You need a lot of things to actually plan and to understand where the need really is so you need to allocate budget and you need to have like the use of the land like very well structured and then start building according to that and forecast also that’s very important

Forecast your demographics as well how is this gonna grow are we going to get more taxpayers how do we retain them there’s some a big topic uh right now in Finland like how do we or overall in the world like how do we keep people also in

This small cities and how we provide these small cities with the right infrastructure and avoid them moving to the big cities for for jobs mostly And challenges in the historic cities from Safe Drinking Water distribution and storm water collection to building sustainable Urban living environments here is your host Delfino vasalo hey welcome back urbanistas it’s so nice to be back in your ears smart Cities A lot has been said about the small cities

Building livable cities Based on data hmm can we say data-driven urban planning quote-unquote yeah but the most important factor is well us the people the city’s inhabitants so how do we make data driven but people focused decisions for urban planning my guest today is actually an expert in both data and urban planning

So who are you and what you do so hi and thank you for having me as well here um it’s an honor also to be discussing this with you especially when you are Specialists also in this topic um I I am Natalia Rincon I I have a background in well actually computer

Science and architecture and then turn entrepreneur um I have my whole like architecture life has been very focused in the urban planning um maybe the reason there is that uh perhaps every time that we had to build something like a space a building we were required to understand the user

Like who is going to use the space who is going to walk by is it nice to walk by uh you know all the activities like is this something actually that the community wants in there so all of these things like uh have been pondering in my mind a lot and

Just marinating there and hence me being here so thank you again yeah because what the what we have seen is that’s what I mean what what you are doing or your company is doing house Architects uh would you give us a bit of uh what exactly cows is doing yeah uh

Chaos is a location intelligence company uh which collects uh any deal located data that you can think of uh clean set puts it together applies data science uh in this I mean machine learning Ai and then gets new insights out of this and we do this uh to anyone that needs

Basically location intelligence um being that like a municipality that is planning zoning um property developer that is building new apartments or shopping malls or whatever uh Real Estate Investors banks that are giving insurances and Loans um retail that needs to find sports and why not at the end of the day also

The end consumer which needs to find a home so this is what we’re doing and our vision here is to make more livable cities what one of the reasons that we have or we feel strongly about that the whole team right now uh it’s because not every country has uh the ability

To provide good environments for the citizens and maybe I would include everyone there I mean there’s always a lack of something somewhere so so this is what chaos history in a nutshell location intelligence a bit more what what exactly do you mean by by location intelligence yeah so usually like um

When you think of doing something um I mean a lot of activities for example a hobby it has a location or when you think of marketing you know not only a hobby but going further like a company that is marketing you tend to think like where are my consumers and they have a

Location um if you travel world you travel to a location so location is actually so embedded in our like everyday life that we don’t notice uh this really unless we go to a very remote place and then there’s nothing and then you find yourself that you’re a bit lost because

You can’t relate to the environment um so location intelligence is anything it’s the science you know of understanding a location like the Insight of a location um very easily a location can just come to your mind like a street that’s a location or a bar if you’re invited by

One of your friends you you tend to look the location in Google Maps and go uh but if you think more of it when it’s affecting a community when you think of um a neighborhood in your city the neighborhood has a characteristic and that is like unintendible thing maybe we think that

It’s uh qualitative uh thing but actually it can be quantitative it’s like how many people think like this in this neighborhood and when we look at neighborhoods around the world uh some are very hipster neighborhoods feel with young people uh some are maybe more for elderly some are for families as well

And then you have playgrounds so neighborhoods have also characteristics and uh an adjective you know like can be also quantitative so anything that we’re speaking really like the essence the Insight of a space of an area that’s location intelligent because typically when any program planner wants to develop a new space

Where there is commercial residential or just for the community of course you need to go to the place how does it look like now at the moment and as you said how does it feel how what is the people living there or passing by there what are they doing this kind of qualitative

Things but what you are actually pointing out more is quantitative so how do I mean the actual data is it is it that when when you enter when chaos enter into place data about any specific place which which type of data are you collecting or

And how is that the leverage or help how can that be leveraged by the like Urban Planet who is planning to do to do something in that place yeah so you’re writing that it’s like anything that a big one can be Quantified from a location

Um maybe for a very long time we have been used to uh think that sentiments cannot be Quantified and now we are realizing uh with social media that they actually can so um for example if you think that uh um an example of Twitter um or like when people start commenting and

And there’s like either positive tone or negative tone uh you can always find a location from that tweet through an IP address and if you sum of the tweets from that Community it’s very interesting to get to know like what is the sentiment of the community uh might

Be since Streeter is more commenting in um uh News of the World it might be that it just changes based on what’s happening in the world um but if we take another example Google the searches of Google um might be that in a very youngster like a neighborhood free of youngsters

Very Progressive or you know liberal you might find a lot of Googling in like uh where is this vegetarian restaurant or where is uh uh where can I you know do certain Hobbies like that appeal to them so when you quantify like sentiments also and and when you have big data

That’s uh the beauty of big data that you can actually quantify feelings as you said all these is well publicly available data it’s just there outside and we have all that data is generated by Wi-Fi network service perhaps through different channels everything goes online so basically you are collecting all those

Trillions gazillions of data points which is I guess a huge task technically speaking and then making sense of them because data by it for the sake of having data I guess that’s not upon how do you make sense of those things the example of a sentiment actually it’s quite um

Quite illustrative it at any given point in any specific point in time in a location people is complaining angry or I mean for whatever it is hey what is the social situation happening at that moment there is it related to the actual place where they are living okay there may be other factors

But or the weather or so for example uh nowadays in Finland we are getting a bit more uh hours of Sun and you can see that the spirit of people are it’s like a beach you know yes yes it’s not all over the place but at least

There’s like whoa what is this that big bright thing in the sky that we have not seen in many months but yeah that changes the mood definitely and if you check like how we are interacting in Internet also either in social media or um let’s say Instagram how many posts with

Positive words like are coming uh or like overall in Google searches when the weather is good so two data points that might seem very unrelated are related to to each other um another example is that uh in rainy days for example uh you know that you

Have this happy or not buttons in in some stores yes might be that in rainy days people feel a bit more grumpy and then you get more uh red bottles yeah so the weather affects also how how we perceive our environment and just understanding and monitoring

That because of course it’s not a shot that uh people are angry no it’s uh it varies uh along the way and um that’s actually where our name comes from chaos it’s a complexity it’s a system that is very complex that is difficult to predict because there’s

A lot of multiple parameters that affect the outcome so all these data points that uh you mentioned the sentiment from the people become what is the commentary going around there even the weather the the seasons on on the year yeah there’s a lot of data that you can collect from

One specific Place City neighborhood I believe you can you get narrow down to very concrete places so why an urban planner wants to know all those all those things that seems to be like way too many variables all over the place so why they may why they need them

Yeah so an urban planner can be like working either in the public side or private side if I take a look at the public site uh the public would usually uh need um or the whole point of a municipality for example in a public site is to attract

Taxpayers and to raise the quality of life uh for them so when you’re planning uh or zoning either making a dinner or plan or a more detail plan you need to understand a lot of factors that will influence that so you want to provide schools you want to

Um see how many households can you attract and what type of households do you attract demographics as well overall age gender um um yeah income level of course then you need to make sure that um once you attract them you have to provide also hospitals services like grocery stores Transportation uh so you

Need a lot of things to actually plan and to understand where the need really is so you need to allocate budget and you need to have like the use of the land like very well structured and then you know uh start building according to that and forecast also that’s very important

Forecast your uh demographics as well how is this gonna grow are we going to get more taxpayers how do we retain them there’s some a big topic right now in Finland like how do we or overall in the world like how do we keep uh people also

In this small cities and how we provide these small cities with the right infrastructure and avoid them moving to the big cities for for jobs mostly exactly so that it’s giving the people everything that they need to have a livable city or a livable place where where they are yeah directly so all

These data uh so we were saying it’s a huge amount of data points that the movement planner may need the insights from there so they need to learn what processing all those millions and trillions of data points so that is that is quite fantastic that

Needs a lot of Technology on how are you managing that because the urban planner may not understand all the very detailed bits and bytes of where the data comes but I assume that what they need is the inside so tell me if all these data points combined means that the people in

This community given the age given the let’s say all these what they will need what they need now it’s a daycare a playground but in 10 years they will need I mean more than my school it’s not just the elementary school that we need the secondary school of the because of

Course the kids will grow but all this data how do you make sense of all these data so that’s a very good question I think that uh we do have a lot of data in the world a contrary of what we think uh sometimes at least in the real estate industry sometimes we

Think that oh we don’t have enough data to make a decision or or we just have our Excel files like with um profit and loss you know so but um we do have a lot of data uh we do have a lot of possibilities as you said we’re just discussing multiple possibilities

Of how to make sense of data and we do have the tech uh to support these as well we have machine learning uh recently like the most recent chat GPT like uh that has been like a sensation I mean you’re not taking the storm everybody’s talking about Ai and AI is

Taking over our jobs and our lives entire but but that’s amazing because in order to train that kind of algorithm you need to look into a vast amount of data um and I think the most difficult part here for us uh in in this mission of livable cities is to decide where to

Start that’s basically it’s like where do we start and what kind of data do we collect first to create the biggest impact and that has been discussed a lot with our customers like we need to understand as a private company first like what is uh the need really that that is

Out there in the market that hasn’t been fulfilled yet and for us was people uh it was like to understand people uh our customers which are in the real estate industry tend to be very Savvy about uh does the location have a view you know

Uh where is it uh located exactly in the city or is it out in the city out of the city I mean uh then they are very good at uh evaluations because they know how their assets are performing uh they can go to

A bank and ask for a loan and so on so they’re very Savvy in that but one thing that is uh everybody should be looking at is the demand I mean is there a demand for that kind of asset uh and looking at people and measuring people

Was not done in the industry before so we decided to start with what is missing in the industry and people um and from there understanding where people are how easy of work is going to go and uh are they going to move or migrate and how does that relate to the

Other conditions of the location uh what’s the first task for us so so we started by uh understanding the demographic data of a location all these data collection and aggregation and getting those insights I just said well it’s super valuable for the urban planners themselves for for the investors for the real estate

Inverse stores or the municipality in this case if the municipalities um Wonder on trying to invest in specific public services or developing new new areas all this data I understand you started collecting all these and making sense of all these chaos there you go what is that the chaos from

Cities in Finland and then I believe you are also now collecting things or working in Copenhagen specifically in Denmark are you or you are you somewhere across the northeast or what is the the current situation of the data that you have yeah we have uh in Finland in

Denmark uh I would say like most a good coverage of the countries uh we have some information already our data from Sweden uh Sweden is also very similar to Finland um and we are expanding more uh through Europe so um Germany Netherlands Spain but uh everybody has the information

We’re looking for so it’s just a matter of uh you know connecting to our Cloud platform and getting insights from there same practice as you said a lot of data has been generated whether it’s by the people themselves as social media or any way everything that they put online but

Also other politically available data I mean like public uh databases that come from in government entities or is that type of data that you also collect or combine yeah we collect from different sources so some of these are private data for example Twitter now is going to be charging for the apis

For business now they are not in a good situation okay that’s a long thing and um governments have also demographic data which they sell um some is public available data like uh Denmark has been very good in in having this information open and they see a benefit for that and I agree totally

With that like uh there’s other countries uh also should look more into how Denmark has been opening data that is very relevant for the industry you know we’re all in this ESD race and I think the more transparent data we have that the better and the sooner we’re gonna get there

Um so yeah like we collect from different sources and then we put it together to create an email but for us it’s not enough to give you a point in a map saying that here you find um you know grocery store we want to take you to the next level so

We want to tell you that this place is very convenient for you to live in because of all these reasons so it’s getting you to the right inside rather than just showing you data are you also collecting any type of data about the uh the soil the ground for any

Any new potential development that the city wants to expand at the moment is not well it’s not a bill and because one of the things that we have seen in several Nordic countries in Denmark actually is that historically the the soil and the ground has been used for many purposes and endops been

Polluted so maybe in this place there was a gas station in the 50s and then of course there were gasoline spills and then it went it’s no longer there it has not been there already for 20 years and then the municipality decides to build a new residential

Place there but hey under there there’s that there’s something I mean in the development of the of that residential Place how do we get the water there so through contaminated soil is that something that you can collect I mean the state of the soil or is there

Anything data out there yeah there is for sure this has been done also by geographers and and when you build also like construction companies need to know more about the soil uh definitely so you have to comply also with regulations and healthy regulations also when building there

Um we see a lot of examples in the world uh when buildings are not building the right soil for example either that you start floating for example if you don’t if the soil also is not like uh taking the rain water uh so yeah like this is

Something that it is done in practice we are in an r d phase to collect uh climate data as a whole uh for example wind air quality energy sources soil Etc so yeah I can tell you that that is one part of the 360 view that we also have

That is actually that’s super interesting because climate change Well everybody’s talking about that at least a topic it’s uh whether some people don’t want to believe it that’s another kind of a thing but we have seen that in some parts of the world there’s no water has not raining years

Now causing of course problems in other parts of the world conversely it rains a lot way much more which also puts some strain some some pressure on the actual cities that certainly are getting a lot of rain water where before they they didn’t and then that’s that’s the

Situation how do they deal with that do we expand this uh these networks the collection of rain water and when we build new new places for whatever purposes presidential Industrial how do we how can we know if in that place will rain even more in the next 10 20 years so that is

Is there a way to forecast I mean because you have mentions we have artificial intelligence is there a way to get the historic data into some projections so this place will have this amount of I don’t know predict the climate the weather that they will

Be in that in that place in 20 years but you are very right like on that that uh we are experiencing now like different uh conditions in the climate in in different countries that before we didn’t um and we see that happening a lot like uh extra rain water or maybe also droth

Like uh in California and then you have these uh forests that are on fire um so there’s a lot of changes also we see it in Finland how Winters vary I mean all in all it’s we are all part of an ecosystem so of course you can experience that

Um on the other hand um I come from a city like uh that it’s a desert we didn’t have rain water of course very little but when it rained it rained like uh drastically you know and then we had this like floats and why was

That uh like that it was not that we wouldn’t have the right infrastructure to observe the rain water but the decision was made that since in average the millimeters that you get from rain water are so small then the um uh pipe the diameter of the pipe uh however

Because that rain water it was not on average through the year it was like done in a specific time frame then of course the diameter was not enough so there was uh and if you would extend that it would be filled with sand and more cleaning should occur so there was

Like a discussion you know like how should you invest in in this kind of situations and now that cities should take that into consideration climate change overall we should think about the infrastructure is our infrastructure ready to support that uh first uh and yes like going back to your question is

It possible to have historical data and see how it has been performed I think that in the whole topic of climate change this is what scientists have been doing for a while you know looking at historical data and then uh um how do you say like uh advising uh

That okay something is happening here so definitely you can do that uh we are very careful like at least in chaos like to say that we can forecast uh exceptions let’s say uh people or customers ask us can you forecast pandemia like kovid and like exceptions and anomalies you cannot

Forecast we have to understand that a forecast is like the best understanding with the elements that we have today how is the future gonna look like and in that of course you can add like how climate change is performing and assume that if we’re getting worse and worse

The forecast is looking like this but could be that something happens an event um uh an asteroid hates Earth and completely changes the climate you know so of course the forecast would not be the same because you had it like it was an anomaly and the same happens

Um very concrete I tell you maybe not not so catastrophe I go into catastrophes but um Services uh we know the services of an area uh how many schools grocery stores Etc are in an area and we have been asked like can you forecast a service no I cannot

Forecast a service like the demand for the service you mean yeah that exactly I can forecast the demand for the service but I cannot forecast how many restaurants are gonna open because that’s an animal anomaly uh you know it’s a decision that someone will take so I cannot forecast decisions

But I can tell you the trend for example I can tell you that during the past year five restaurants have been here and the five of them have closed so I can forecast that if there’s a restaurant coming it won’t pay off and then I can look at the demographics

And say why are restaurants not working in this area and then maybe because you don’t you have families maybe and as a household and you only open restaurants during the working days let’s say so you know then you understand that of course families will not go to the restaurants restaurants are not that

Good uh it’s not a good location for restaurants so I can understand the trend and I can assume something but I cannot tell you that uh a shopping mall or three new restaurants will appear tomorrow that’s that’s part of I guess when the real human creature the real human being

Thinking comes into place you have all these data you have all these historical patterns and then you say well this is the situation based on this pattern we can preview that this may be likely to happen uh this thing that are anomalies as you call them but

That’s when the real person the real I mean whether it’s I don’t know if it’s part of your team or the real urban planner is like think I mean the example I just wanted the restaurant well they they close the restaurant well it happens there was

Only a restaurant for the type of uh I don’t know night fine dining well while there’s a lot of families well happens that families will be small kids may not likely go to fine dining every night right so then you have to you have to invest in restaurant that is more

Suitable for families given that is the insight for the 14 investor I am looking for the investor of that potential potential restaurant that that is I mean you can arrive even to that level of detail but always with the human evaluation on top yeah always a demand and um

Maybe going further into more of the demand or and people uh if you have a lot of families in an area and um you understand that um maybe there’s like a in in social media or the tweets or anything else like discussion you know that uh rents are high

And that is giving you an indication that uh the families in that area are not satisfied with the rent level or their income is a bit too small for that rent level so if an investor or property developer or asset manager knows that information they need to prepare for that because

They beam that more likely these families will go and search for cheaper or more affordable apartments than that area so you you need to prepare also for what um tenants think overall and and that’s actually something very interesting that I have been seeing like uh now that we have been involved a lot

In ESD is that uh now the private companies need to look more and more and they’re going to be pressured to look at the tenants expectations so what is everybody expecting and not only as a consumer but also if you’re a company do you like the office space is

It affordable uh is it compliant with ESD and and look more at that and then we would be more critical as consumers or companies towards also these big developers or Real Estate Investors as well exactly now that you are talking the yeah the sustainable development goals that have been said for by the

United Nations already some time ago and how we as people we are wealth consumers or users of of the Cities if I can put it away so we are super aware of those and there’s more conscious and demand for that type of any type of sustainable build or sustainable uh thought spaces

And that’s yeah we have seen the same that that’s that’s the trend now the people is actually more conscious more at demanding that type of things what have you seen from the investor perspective whether it’s private investor or municipality investing in something have you seen more less interest what’s

Their their appetite for really having or building sustainable cities or sustainable places yeah I see that uh this topic has been already like discussed uh so much it’s it’s a sustainability in general it’s a very old topic uh as an architect we also you know uh taught to be um

Conscious about the environment and so they started very well and then build passive houses you know that where is the sun coming and design based on that um then we had like our own in the 90s we had this um lead in bream uh Supreme in Europe and leading in North America uh

And we have all these practices uh that we’re like nice to have you know like something that would provide you like a little bit like Edge uh uh from your competitor uh but now with uh these Paris agreement and all this uh carbon emissions that we have to be conscious

On from last year uh 2022 or I would say 2021 until now I have seen a whole complete shift uh in developers Real Estate Investors uh investors uh overall like Equity investors um so it’s not anymore nice to have having a sustainability aspect is not a nice to

Have yeah it’s not nice to have any more it’s like a must and every conference and and every event that I’m attending is like ESG is like the discussion uh everywhere and and I think now everybody’s pressured whomever doesn’t is not quick to adopt this uh new

Standards uh he’s gonna be left out of the competition quite quickly so I think there’s an urgency also in in everyone like to do that so how about have you seen whether it’s private or the public how much because when they are talking about investing well how much money are we putting in

How much money in the long term we will get as a return of course that talking about the private private investor talking about the public sector well they have public open tenderings that they may your name not put any criteria sustainability criteria so they are aware both private and public that

We need to address this so have you seen actual in any Nordic City or any northern region that they are putting for example Environmental requirements in the public tendering or or even the the private request for the matter I’m using that it’s actually there in the electronic to really

Quantify we need this amount of carbon footprint reduction of whatever is the material at the construction there are you seeing those things in the from the from the nordics yeah yeah definitely like it’s everywhere um and for example this like a EU taxonomy like all this ESG

Um measurements that you have to have like and if you want to report or make an investment now you have to present that data so definitely everybody now is pressured uh also from the equity side also from investors they’re asking all companies to have this quantifiable uh

You know CO2 reductions and how are you helping with the environment and if your solution is also as a company uh helping the environment you need to know how to quantify that and you need to present that it’s not enough anymore that let’s say that we comply with this U1 sdg you

Know you have to have calculations on how much you’re helping and to get to that level it’s actually quite hard it’s uh all the time I think the currency right now it’s this CO2 emissions like how much you create how much you save you know and can you transfer them

Because we have also in the European Union now this uh transfer of CO2 emissions that I’m producing less you’re producing more we can transfer you know yeah CO2 missions are becoming the new currency yeah one of the things that yeah we have seen definitely much more attention in

The criterias from a life cycle assessment uh or than in any given project as a search whatever is the real estate development that they’re going to do uh taking into account yes all the materials the raw materials are going to the construction the carbon footprint in the actual making of

In the installation of whatever systems or building so that is that is another one you are right the carbon footprint has been like the currency the absolute number one and how do you prove that are you going to use this type of material this type of uh um steel plastic cement whatever

Show me the epd show me the environmental product Declaration of that product so that proves that actually what you are saying is it’s actually yeah correct and we have seen that they are actually now more and more in demand but yeah from the last 18 months it’s yeah exactly it

Was a complete shift yeah and in terms of um what I was asking you about the public sector because in Finland we have seen yeah kind of we are aware there are very uh specific cases cities like lahti who was actually the environmental capital of Europe last year not a couple

Of years ago that’s it uh Sweden yeah they are already a few municipalities that they have the regardless of the political view behind the the political part in power they say we want to be the most sustainable city in Europe I at least couple of cities after all of that oh

Well that’s uh but we have not seen only one case that I can remember uh uh water utility in Denmark actually seems to be like they are a bit or a lot ahead of the rest in the public tendering you know they are these weightings which is product availability price delivery

Etc and they put different percentages they assign 40 percent for zero forty percent to the environmental aspect tell me how are you sustainable and prove it of course that that was kind of surprised that was last year oh we left a more municipality will be doing that

But how do you see it I mean either public or private agree are they really understanding what are the what they need to ask interesting terms I don’t think uh yeah I I still have my reservations for that I mean we’re going the right way um I put this diplomatically but I I think that uh we were not pressured uh in general like to comply with these standards you know as I mentioned that this is an old concept uh no one wanted to do like this um I think companies don’t think like that

That let’s make a good impact in the world because it costs more it means a lot also like what kind of materials are you using you might not go for the cheaper one you know and then your profitability is going to suffer so of course I understand the nature of that

Uh but I don’t think that as humans we are just led by Good Intentions uh I think companies at least needed uh an incentive and the incentive in this case is that if you don’t do it like you’re gonna be the last one so of course then there’s these Fierce competition in

Getting there first um the way that it’s doing done because it’s so complex to get data and information and now we’re doing it right is that companies start to look at Consultants that are generating these ESC reports and uh everybody starts doing that for me an Asda report is not

Good it’s a it’s like measuring if you want to lose weight and you go and measure yourself like your fat index and how much do I weigh that’s the equivalence to an ESG report in losing weight so if you want to lose weight you will go and measure yourself you would

Make a plan you know every day you need to eat this I every day you will waste yourself you would measure you would make exercise also and then at the end of two months you can say that I’ve lost 10 kilos or whatever that is how ESG needs to happen you need

To monitor so a report that a building is performing well in a given time it’s not enough or whatever operations uh you need to monitor Through Time how that is affecting also the environment and how that affected and and like other buildings in the area or the demographics in the area because you

Created a change let’s face it so you your building is not alone you’re now part of an ecosystem and you need to monitor that and you have usually our customers have a portfolio so like a set of buildings or Investments and you can’t just go and

Say like how is my EST right now it’s like you need to make a plan to convert your portfolio and it doesn’t happen uh when you get the easy report answers that you are sustainable it’s it happens through time for example if you have a uh a building

Just a very random example that is using passive energy and you have uh solar cells and then you experience that during a year actually eighty percent of the timing was cloudy and then you needed to buy energy from somewhere else so you know you might be sustainable

Because you are trying to use that but in the end you actually end up buying energy exactly because that building was built was built sustainably at the at the beginning all the materials Etc but as you say measuring over time yeah what happens if after after a certain period of time uh

The solar panels ended up not being provided enough energy then you have to buy energy from where from where this nature is coming from is it green energy or green electricity produced and then well the Green Building ends up not not grain anymore in in the long run I guess all

This comes back to the measuring how are you and the data actually that was the start of the conversation how are we measuring data a long time and how evolving because that’s what I’m getting things keep moving even whatever we build or investors for Real Real Estate Investors put their

Money in something now and how it how that will perform if we can say what is the building performance if we’re going to call it like that now in five years in 10 years and and that’s what actually that’s what you mentioned we can show a forecast show a trend is not

Accurate to show a train or how that that could happen yeah and forecasts change because when something else happens then you’re gonna change if you affected already the future this is like the movie Back to the Future if you change one single thing you would affect it yeah all the things that happen

Subsequently change it or the other the exactly what the consequence of the time in the timeline yeah the the one of the core things is it what are we measuring in terms of the official uh the official certificates or the official way of measuring if it is epd

If it is uh I mean the official way of measuring and in the past we have interviewing uh Professor Gregory Norris from the from MIT uh who is actually about the authority in LCA I he was saying hey start to forget about epds or start to forget about powerful print in

The European Union there’s this path that is coming that is way more more challenging um yeah so is that the where we are going the way we are measuring I I also like comparing against um one big challenge that we have I think it’s uh the standardizing of how

We interpret data so if you take a look at different reports and um well all of these ones which one could you say that is actually uh the best and can we compare between them so uh if are they comparable maybe they measure two different things exactly and

It tends to be that they’re not uh some of these also reporting it’s done uh like different reports now are done by private companies so if you get a report from a private company and then you go to another one that one is gonna say yeah we cannot measure like

That your report is not good enough from that company you have to measure again because they’re not comparable and because of course they want to sell Services I think your standardization of how we interpret things it’s a big challenge and that’s why again for me just seeing

Two reports doesn’t tell me anything it doesn’t tell me the big picture you know and this is basic you know leadership like in any organization you work better if you see data constantly rather than just like one report every quarter so I think that’s a we should just learn to think a bit

Differently and I was discussing this example um with another colleague uh you know that in the world I’ll give you this analogy that in the world we started to have a problem with them plastic straws so uh 88 of the beaches in the world were polluted by plastic 50

Percent of that was single use so this kind so these were uh estimated to be 8.3 billion uh plastic straws and then in order the humanity in order to control the problem uh we said you know we have to switch to this metal uh or glass straws

And then instead of using one time and then generating trash we just have to buy one and use it more times but what happened is that the industry of this new reusable straws is growing five five point three percent every year it’s 19.2 billion worth industry only in U.S and

By 2020 2033 is expected to surpass 32 billion so what is telling me is that this is a very good industry and now I’m generating uh straws that are reusable I if I think how many straws are being generated it’s already more than the persons in the world

And if these are reusable why are we generating more than two exactly one person one is true and yes they use it 10 20 100 times in order to really compensate actually the carbon footprint of that one straw being produced you know to compensate that you have to use it

Exactly like forever your whole life and uh at the end if we would drink from the glass with no straw we would already save 8.3 billion we don’t use straws yes so uh and I mean this is like a very subjective discussion because one can say yeah but

I want luxury you know I cannot think of everything I I have so many things going in my life and I want to spend in a Mercedes and by straws and by tupperwares and you know not recycle because we are tired of operations that’s why we started to have these

Luxuries in life but imagine that 9 billion persons in the world wanting to have luxuries uh you know it’s exploding the world and um what we got from this conversation is not that let’s say that the straw industry is not bad you know but we need to kill our Darlings we need

To kill what we are thinking that is that was the problem so what was the problem here was it the plastic produced or was it the amount of trash that unnecessary trash yes so first first of all rephrase the problem that you want to like fix you see the

Plastic straw or is it the trash in general and then secondly be ready to Kill Your Darlings don’t go to a metal straw or glass row like change the way of thinking and when we are approaching the ESG we need to think like that whatever we think that is the

Right way it’s not solving the problem it’s like constant monitoring it’s not just like now I have a certification here that I’m ESG compliant it’s much more than that change in thinking and I forget that’s yeah that’s one of the key things that we need all to to put in our

In our mice on our priorities and if we want to really get or develop sustainable Urban environments and one of the things actually that I that I saw in in your website and actually our producer Maria can put a link to that you have a Manifesto for sustainable Urban Urban Development

That has three point that was super interesting can you elaborate more how are you seeing that what is this from where this Manifesto came from so our vision is livable cities and uh we were speaking more of that internally than outside first of all that we were not

Really showing how we are doing the things how how we are getting insights so we were discussing about this like why is important for us to get an Insight of affordability uh which is one of the goals in un sdgs is that the income of a demographic group matches

The rent levels so for us it was important to measure areas that are like that and our customers want to know the affordability of these apartments uh why because uh it’s a right that everybody should have housing and that shouldn’t be more than 30 of your income

Imagine that some families pay more than 50 of their income for their own housing I think that is unbelievable it’s what happens to the rest of your income if you have a family for example is a well encouraging this or enforcing this in certain way uh and and we want to

Tell and be really stand where where we believe it’s the right way so we cannot control the decisions of our customers but we can advise in what is the best practice and a Manifesto for us is a way of saying that we will stand with this

You know it’s we are measuring we are telling and and we are doing our job in here in a way because and we want the world also to understand the benefits of that uh because it just doesn’t come with with this uh well we should be affordable and stuff is there’s a

Benefit also and it’s a long-term benefit as well for Humanity in general so we are all here trying to push towards building affordable environments to to live in and also that are sustainable in in the long run and I guess it’s not just for me for you

For our children I guess around children because we may not be the the ones seeing behind the result yeah this has been super insightful is there something that you want to say to wrap up after this sustainability topic is one of the core things do you want how would you

Like to wrap up this conversation uh if there would be two takeaways over here is that I would say that uh um reporting is not enough and monitoring is the key so maybe those are the two takeaways in moving forward reporting is not enough and monitoring monitoring is the key

Because data changes things changes over time there you go thank you so much Natalia for your time and we continue doing this type of interviews in um getting that insights for people from like you that are the ones that are well shaking and trying to move forward this this industry the construction English

And in general the development of of cities thank you very much for vanistas for listening today and we will be coming back with more this in-depth conversation with experts like Natalie thank you so much thank you yes thank you for listening to the urbanista podcast a production of uponor infra the

Leader in sustainable infrastructure Solutions if you found it interesting why don’t you share it with your colleagues we all together can move our industry forward

ID: kGS1NSjJw2U
Time: 1678439344
Date: 2023-03-10 12:39:04
Duration: 00:57:16

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