Crowdfunding platform Cityzenith has pledged to donate its platform of various technologies to the world’s most polluted cities, in order to help them move towards carbon neutrality.
The ‘Clean Cities – Clean Future’ campaign aims to help urban areas to reduce their carbon emissions, by deploying Cityzenith’s Digital Twin platform SmartWorldPro2 in the world’s most polluted cities.
At present, the company has set a goal of supporting 100 cities with its pledge, the first of which will be announced in November 2020. Once that goal has been achieved, the company says it will provide its software to more than one hundred cities in perpetuity.
Cityzenith added that cities produce more than 70% of the earth’s greenhouse gases, but company CEO, Michael Jansen, believes that by using data and AI, this will change dramatically. He added that:
“Since our inception we have been using these tools to deliver custom climate resilience applications to greenfield cities, real estate developments, and infrastructure projects.”
“We know the issues and now have the right data aggregation, analysis, and visualization capabilities to help solve them for cities, and those who design, build, and manage them.2
“Launching this ‘Clean Cities – Clean Future’ initiative marks a milestone for us and shareable, networked, city-scale Digital Twin deployments. Digital Twins were first developed to aggregate, analyze, and visualize vastly complex information in manufacturing plants and building construction sites but have evolved into a powerful aid to urban climate resilience and lowering carbon emissions.2
“Our focus has expanded to include large-scale commercial projects in cities as in the Orlando Sports + Entertainment District and greenfield ‘smart cities’ like Amaravati in India.”
“In Amaravati, by consolidating myriads of climate related data points, the goal was to show how architects could use advanced AI integrations in our Digital Twin platform SmartWorldPro2 to simulate and design housing schemes to lower carbon emissions and cut average street temperatures dramatically in high summer.”
“Today we are helping partners all over the world leverage Digital Twin power across their district, infrastructure, campus and real estate projects to transition from fossil fuel dependency to carbon neutrality.”
“But no one seems to be helping cities to implement this technology, and that’s why we decided to step in and make our pledge.”
Cityzenith states that people can register interest in the campaign on behalf of the city they live in. The company said they are also in talks with the Global Compact of Mayors, the District 2030 program, and dedicated to providing clean energy transition services to cities.
When applied, the company’s Digital Twin model will be provided to all or most of a city, and will integrate with data sources, such as public data portals, Internet of Things sensors, and Geographical Information System layers, among others. This will enable cities to track and analyse all data relevant to aiding in carbon neutrality within the built environment.
City leaders have stated that they aim to develop on top of the Digital Twin platform, using a combination of internal resources and university institutions.
The company also added that cities will not pay for any necessary application development “related to strengthening climate resilience, reducing carbon consumption, or other sustainability functions”. It continued, saying that it will start by donating to one city, before donating to ten cities as part of the initial push.