Motoyuki Matsunaga(Senior Fellow, Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies)

April 2017 to March 2018

   Big data is a phenomenon that arose dur to advances in IoT, and has resulted in the evolution of information technology that can handle large amounts of diverse information. This diverse information includes not only regular information from databases with a fixed structure, but also unstructured data that has hitherto been difficult to handle. Modern smartphones generate huge amounts of information reflecting the interests and perceptions of their owners, and large quantities of data are also generated by various kinds of sensors. The Internet is now filled with unstructured information of this sort. By combining this with recent advances in the evolution of AI-based intelligent technology, we can expect dramatic changes in a wide variety of social services. AI technologies that can think and make decisions like humans are being used to deal with this diverse and sometimes overlapping IoT information space, and a revolution in the quality of the information space is about to begin . These innovations in IoT and AI provide us with a mechanism for creating connections like neurons passing through every corner of society. This will lead to the creation of a new information space where new digital intelligence is constructed while generating knowledge and context on the fly. Taking these changes into consideration, we focused on social services arising emerging from the improved quality of information space due to innovations in IoT and AI, and we researched the trends in innovation clusters such as Boston. While studying these trends, we also assessed the impact of next-generation information technology on industries and cities, and we studied the continuing evolution of IoT/AI platforms and urban mechanisms over a ten-year timeframe.

   Since the Industrial Revolution, modern cities have expanded based on the successive automation of energy systems, logistics systems, and community systems. With regard to communication systems, the arrival of the Internet in the late 20th century transformed society by facilitating end-to-end information chains. On top of that, the shape of society is being changed by the emergence of new logistics mechanisms that streamline the movement of goods (e.g., Amazon), and services that lead to a new social concept of sharing (e.g., Uber). With regard to energy, trials are now being performed with systems such as virtual power plants whereby renewable energy sources such as sunlight, solar heat, hydroelectric power, wind power, biomass power and geothermal power can be accessed via networks. In this way, communications, logistics, and energy systems are being both transformed and expanded, and with the addition of AI, the entire social system is being modified. A major feature of AI systems is their ability to learn, allowing them to perform local optimization by adapting to their situation. This allows them to perform polymorphic evolution to suit their surroundings. In this study, we analyzed five European cities that are attempting smart city demonstrations (Reykjavik, Milan, Stockholm, Cologne, and Barcelona) by using a matrix of elements corresponding to urbanization and computerization, and we analyzed the factors that lead to the development of smart cities and cases where these factors where present.

   The results of this research were published at the third public symposium on “Realizing a New Society with AI/IoT: The Emergence of Polymorphic Networking in Urban Organizations” (February 14).