- Digi-Key electronics presents City Digital,
a three-part series brought to you by Supplyframe,
Microchip Technology and TE Connectivity.
In this final episode, we look at how technology
is transforming the landscape
of modern offices and workspaces.
As the workforce returns to shared spaces,
what solutions are available
to keep employees safe and productive?
- What it means to make a city be smart,
and an important question that we should be asking, like
what is a smart city?
Why does it matter?
Who cares?
Who does it help?
- A smart city, I think that the community
and the fabric in that community.
- From high efficiency building management,
to unique hygiene and monitoring solutions,
the next normal is poised to provide
a safer, smarter approach for workers living
in City Digital.
According to the CDC,
regular hand-washing reduces respiratory illness
in the general population by 16 to 21%.
- [Sean] One of the greatest inventions of all the humankind
is just hand-washing.
It has saved more lives than any drugs that we've produced.
It has done more in terms of keeping our communities
hygienic and safe.
It has done more
for hospitals and surgery and everything else.
It has done more for us
than any other technology we've ever invented.
- Sean Podvent, CEO of Hand iQ, explains technology's role
within greater hygiene efforts,
as a means of providing both relevant data,
and accountability across offices and hospitals.
- [Sean] We've been using the same soap dispensers
for a very long time.
Sure, we've added a little bit of technology to them.
We've added a sensor, so you don't have to touch it.
And so that's where I realized there was a big opportunity
outside of healthcare.
And that's the only space that people have really
been focused on hand hygiene technology.
So we're looking at restaurants,
we're looking at office spaces, right?
And that's where a technology like Hand iQ comes in
because now Hand iQ is all about hygiene, safety,
and making sure that people who are in close contact
with one another and touching surfaces, touching hands,
touching the same products, making sure
that their hands are as clean as possible
in order to prevent the spread of germs.
And, and we know that, you know
in an office space and things like that
that we can reduce unplanned PTO by up to 30% in office just
by simply implementing a basic hand hygiene program.
So what we wanted to do was how do we build a simple
smart sensor?
And that's what this is right here.
This is, this is the Hand iQ smart sensor,
and you simply just attach this directly
to the soap dispenser.
And what it does is it's making sure
that you're activating soap, putting soap on your hands.
It's also making sure that you're washing your hands
for the correct amount of time.
You're washing your hands.
You're protecting yourself,
you're protecting those around you.
You know, you need to have some positivity built
into it for people to really engage with it.
And for it to take off as a technology in the future.
- Robbie Paul of Digi-Key electronics
explains what's in store for populations in future cities
and how the technologies of today
will greatly impact future safety
in a sustainable way.
- [Robbie] Yeah. When I think about a big city, I'm thinking
of using technology to manage traffic, waste management,
monitor the air quality,
just making life for citizens,
better in an everyday setting,
and to be less intrusive as well.
To be seamless and just built into the city.
And, part of all of that, you know
you talk about the new normal, right?
And we don't necessarily know what that's going to be like.
I think that's where AI and big data are going to play
a huge role.
Gone are the days of, Hey, there's a nine o'clock rush hour
and there's a 5:00 PM rush hour, right?
We don't know when the rush hour is
with flexible work hours, etc.,
but you don't need to figure that out.
That's where AI can come and play a role and say, okay
we're seeing these trends Monday through Friday,
These are the trends seasonally,
55% of the world's population,
I think, live in cities now, and that's expected to grow.
Plus the population growth itself.
I think cities are going to be better
in the future because of these technologies
- [Patrick] What type of things contribute
to a smarter work environment?
What types of technologies?
So I would say that the internet of things
is a large contributor.
Let's take our product distribution center as an example,
so we can track where parts are moving through the system.
And so we can analyze that data
using artificial intelligence, machine learning,
to sort of learn the patterns
and make decisions based on those patterns.
So information-based decisions as opposed to gut instinct.
- HVAC systems provide more than just climate control
and modern buildings.
With improper ventilation contributing to
increased employee sick days and reduced work efficiency,
providing clean air circulation is more important
than ever.
Kipp Bradford, founder of Treau, shares
the company's unique approach to
sustainable and efficient heating
and cooling solutions for modern buildings.
- The relationship of Treau to smart cities
is a longer term relationship,
where fundamentally we're looking at the question of,
how do we make people more comfortable with less energy?
And how do we do that
with a smaller environmental footprint?
We have a residential air conditioner product,
we're moving to lower global warming potential refrigerants.
Fundamentally, what we're trying to do in buildings
in the big picture is make sure
that every occupant of the building is comfortable
and do that with the minimum energy.
We really have to be thinking about building systems
and how these building systems function in terms of comfort.
Like what's, what are real airflow requirements
for keeping occupants comfortable?
What are real engineer requirements that can
set a better temperature range, where the humidity ranges,
how do you give people control over their environment?
The local environment around them
and give them individual controls so that, you know,
the person in the cubicle next to me
sets the temperature and then makes me miserable.
And then I go and set the temperature back,
and make them miserable, like that's a
lose-lose situation for people and for the environment.
Those are the sorts of things that we're looking at
in the big picture at Treau, you know, what role can we play
in making these systems overall work more effectively?
And in some ways, yeah
make them smarter so that we do get better efficiency,
better comfort, and less energy.
And I think if we bring
good data to
allow people to make better decisions
about how a city best serves its inhabitants,
then that's a smarter city
than the cities that we have today.
- New and innovative technologies can transform every aspect
of daily life in the smart cities
of the present and the future.
- For City Living, the timing is now.
- How can we actually help hotter cities?
- Your home is in a city.
Your business is in a city.
- Does the operation of city bring well-being
to the inhabitants of that city?
- And it's all for me around the human.
At the end of the day.
To make our life more easy and more safe.
- From the way we commute, to the way we gather
and harness energy,
to the very offices we work in every day,
the future is bright for the citizens of City Digital.