How could AI transform real estate? It’s already starting in smart neighbourhoods

Imagine it is 2030, and you’ve just left your office for lunch in your smart neighbourhood. You check out of the building using a purpose-built, neighbourhood-wide app, which grants you access to your office and your on-site apartment without the need for key cards or complex sign in procedures.

The busy street is attended by the perfect combination of cleaners and security personnel, as the neighbourhood managers have been using data to model the busy periods and put necessary staff on site.

You connect seamlessly from your in-office internet to street-level mobile data and can pre-check the number of people in your restaurant of choice. Your walk is made more enjoyable by the high standard of air quality provided by on-site monitoring tools that can control polluters throughout the day.

These are just some of the ways technology could shape our city’s neighbourhoods in years to come. Transformed by powerful AI-driven tools that can collate, analyse and take actions on user data, the places we spend time in will quickly become far more advanced than we can comprehend today.

What do we mean by AI? 

AI, or more specifically machine learning, consumes huge amounts of data, learns user behaviours and adapts over time by drawing inferences from patterns it identifies. It will shape the future of buildings and neighbourhoods by unlocking new insights for landlords and asset managers and implementing improvements in real time that will vastly improve user experience.

How do we maximise this potential? 

The key for those in real estate looking to take advantage of this advancing technology to improve their user experience is not to try to perfectly predict how AI will be used in five, 10 or 15 years. Rather, it is about creating buildings and neighbourhoods that are prepared, no matter how AI is used.

We are already seeing this foresightedness in smart neighbourhoods across the world, where owners are developing the technological foundations that will unlock improvements in the lives of their residents and occupiers.

This is particularly true in South Flats, Vancouver, where Low Tide and PCI is designing a technology infrastructure with the express purpose of adapting to future needs, rather than predicting them. It is doing this by building systems with Open APIs to allow for a much more dynamic environment, where audio and visual elements of the space respond to metrics of space use intensity and time-of-day needs.

British Land’s 53-acre redevelopment of Canada Water, London’s first new town centre for a generation, has placed exemplary mobile connectivity at its heart. British Land has benchmarked mobile connectivity performance across the site via AI prediction to understand how mobile performance will change as the neighbourhood develops. This in turn will ensure that as AI use cases evolve in the coming years, Canada Water will be ready to serve the increased reliance users will have on mobile connectivity to deliver them.

In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) is a 17.2m sq ft smart city that is prioritising users’ physical and cyber safety by using smart systems, footfall analysis, and heat mapping to assist crowd management. KAFD’s dedicated cyber security team runs bi-monthly penetration testing to ensure compliance and assess potential risks, enabling them to identify and manage potential threats and give residents and visitors peace of mind.

In the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park (HSITP), a one-of-a-kind information and technology park in Hong Kong, sustainability is at the neighbourhood’s core. It uses trackable, real-time air-quality data, intuitive park-wide service information and smart mobile apps, which connect its occupiers, residents and visitors to their environment.

Are you ready to embrace the future?
There is no doubt that AI will have a seismic impact across real estate. I am inspired by the innovative applications of AI that I am seeing from our clients around the world already. Their acknowledgement of the important role they as developers and asset managers will play in shaping the next generation of the built world is exciting to see. Smart neighbourhoods are making their presence known; are you ready?

AI and the future of real estate will be among the topics discussed at WiredScore’s virtual Global Smart Neighbourhood Summit on 17 October, which is free to attend, and are discussed in more depth in WiredScore’s free to download White Paper on smart neighbourhoods.