How cognitive cities support next-generation businesses

At the heart of this revolutionary redesign is the concept of the self-adjusting, responsive, and predictive “cognitive city.”

While the smart city movement has been touted for decades, the team at TONOMUS – the digital and technology subsidiary of NEOM – argues that the cognitive city surpasses the capability and core concept of it. Smart cities are equipped with reactive technologies that prioritise efficiency via one-time transactions, whereas a cognitive city looks to create a learning loop that continually interacts, gathers data and improves.

“In a smart city, we use about six to nine per cent of the data,” says Fabio Fontana, TONOMUS’ Chief Growth Officer and CEO of its hyperscale data center ZeroPoint DC. “We don’t use the full power, which is about 90%. This is happening because we live in an environment where it’s all about legacy. Hotels don’t talk to airlines, airlines don’t talk to transportation and so on.”

If a smart city is about connecting devices, a cognitive city is about the connection and interworking of all the different parts of a city. In a smart city, these different parts might commingle but there is no central access to all of that information in order to make it potentially more cohesive and efficient. As an example, cognitive capability, backed by AI, could provide insight which identifies and consolidates multiple different companies’ shipping pallets along the same route to optimize resources.

But now, in a vast stretch of desert in northwest Saudi Arabia, a more ambitious “cognitive city” model is emerging that will allow data-driven decision making to operate at a previously unimagined scale. By 2045, THE LINE – a 100-mile long, 200-meter wide skyscraper city – will host around nine million residents in the Kingdom’s newly created NEOM region.

Indeed, the opportunity goes beyond data insights; this new city paradigm will need a digital infrastructure of unique products and services. Startups and businesses will need to build the software, AI, and technology to deliver on NEOM’s mission. That’s where TONOMUS’ innovative business units come in.

“First we start with infrastructure,” says Fontana, “and within that we have two important business units: TONOMUS Connect and TONOMUS Compute. TONOMUS Connect will provide the end-to-end communications and network infrastructure for NEOM’s cognitive community – delivering the connectivity required to operate NEOM’s cognitive technologies.TONOMUS Compute manages all of the data infrastructure to make sure we can share the data up to 90%.”

In order for businesses to maximize on the capabilities of a cognitive city, connectivity is crucial. However, Fontana points out that will only get them so far.

“If you don't have a solution that can provide the services to the customer, you don't go anywhere,” he says. “So, we have a consultation arm called TONOMUS Professional Services Unit (PSU) which is focused on solving tech and digital problems facing customers and end-users at NEOM and beyond.”