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The essential building block of future cities
(Intro)
Cognitive cities can only reach their full potential when built on a strong foundationoftrust.
TONOMUS has made this a toppriority.
Harnessing the power of data is something all businesses and governments know they must do to deliver the best for end users. And it’s clear that data-sharing, and the individual context it offers, is the key to unlocking the ultimate prize of providing intricately tailored services for every person. But in a rapidly expanding digital world, people are increasingly aware of the different ways their data can be used and are understandably demanding more control.
Balancing the equation between maximizing data-sharing on one hand, and giving users the transparency and power they deserve over their own data on the other, has been the challenge many organizations have set their most capable minds to. If the equation can be solved, the benefits to the individual could be substantial – a life without friction.
“For residents of the cognitive city, real-time is too late. Residents’ data allows the city to make informed proactive and predictive decisions.”
Rajesh Chitharanjan //VP of Technology at TONOMUS
“Residents who live in a city do a lot of routine activities quite frequently,” explains Rajesh Chitharanjan, TONOMUS’ VP of Technology. “These recurring activities take up a lot of time and effort on their part. By sharing first party information with the city to improve livability, while respecting the individual's privacy, we can take a human-centric approach, reduce the friction in these everyday tasks. For residents of the cognitive city, real-time is too late, residents’ data allows the city to make informed proactive and predictive decisions.”
TONOMUS, the company responsible for creating the technology underpinning the world’s first cognitive city at NEOM in Saudi Arabia, hopes to show that a new approach to personal data management can underpin previously unimagined levels of frictionless service provision and enhanced quality of life.
When it comes to addressing the challenges surrounding data and trust, Chitharanjan considers two fundamental parts: a robust consent management mechanism and digital trust enablement.
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The roadmap to building trust
Since the emergence of the smartphone, companies have harnessed knowledge about a customer’s location, identity and transaction history to inform service provision. Ride-sharing companies send cars to your exact location, for example, while retailers ping you with deals when you pass a specific outlet.
Get off a plane and you must go through immigration, order a car, reach your hotel. The experience for the user is a series of siloed interactions. Users also need to consent to data-sharing and restate their preferences each time they sign up to a new service. In the eyes of TONOMUS, this creates additional friction and makes it difficult for users to keep track of which companies have access to their data – something the future-facing company intends to change.
“The vision we have is that an individual will have a single control panel to see what data of theirs is used, by whom and for what purpose”.
Rajesh Chitharanjan //VP of Technology at TONOMUS
“The vision we have is that an individual will have a single control panel, if you will, to see what data of theirs is used, by whom and for what purpose,” says Chitharanjan. “A single application to control consent across all the services that you're using and to make you aware of what the benefit is that you get out of that information being shared.”
The intention is that this advanced level of user control and transparency incentivizes the sharing of more data, allowing for greater individual context that can in turn help shape services custom-made for every individual. As time goes on, the cognitive cities will learn the preferences of each individual and be able to further adapt, respond, and offer services – not as needs arise, but before they arise.
Engineers at TONOMUS have been designing a consent management platform that is part of the core infrastructure of the city at NEOM. A first level of control allows residents to stipulate what data they want to keep private. For data that is shared with NEOM, users can delegate sharing to individual companies or categories of service providers.
The current iteration of this platform’s interface is geared towards screen-based applications, but Chitharanjan says residents will eventually be able to ask TONOMUS’ digital assistant to make changes to their data settings instead. Individuals will also be able to delegate management to a data fiduciary or an individual they trust to make decisions on their behalf.
(ABOUT)
Rajesh Chitharanjan
VP of Technology at TONOMUS
Rajesh Chitharanjan’s responsibilities include working on developing TONOMUS’ cognitive city blueprint, building technology across various horizons, and overseeing emerging technology practices and labs. Some of Rajesh’s key focus areas include trust enablement layer with decentralized identity, domain AI backbone utilizing homegrown and open source LFMs, robotics, autonomous agents, among others.
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Enabling trust for all
Through this platform, residents within NEOM can consent to which data of theirs is shared, and how.
“If I have a disability, for example, I may need certain adjustments,” says Chitharanjan. “If I can share my requirements with the different companies that I'm going to use in my visit to NEOM, that's amazing. Consent and trust go hand-in-hand as people can opt-in for the city to use their data in the right way, at the right time. By ensuring that people who use our technology trust us, it will make going about their daily lives so much easier.”
Measures like these form part of the second key component of the data strategy — trust enablement. “This is with respect to exchanging, verifying and, most importantly, reusing digital identity,” Chitharanjan explains. “It’s about providing frictionless experiences to users when they move between different systems, locations and context. It aims to achieve portability, reusability and programmability of identity and credentials.”
“Consent in itself isn’t the whole story,” he adds, “it’s also about how you distribute consent so that you don't get the same question asked again and again.”
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A future built on trust
When shared securely and with consent, increased user data-sharing can allow for service provision to be personalized in a manner that was once unthinkable for most people. But the possibilities have even wider implications. As a result of what TONOMUS is attempting to build, Chitharanjan envisages a future where there are also new types of businesses, business models and services "that we never imagined possible, because of the fact that we have a very strong trust foundation."
He concludes:
“That is why it's very important to look at trustasacore element for a cognitivecity.”
MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS //
MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS // MORE FROM TONOMUS //
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Learn more about TONOMUS and the future of cognitive cities.
