Richard Ng, Senior Vice President, Smart Sustainable Utilities & Smart Connectivity, Urban Solutions at ST Engineering, explains how integrated smart city platforms can support cities in becoming more sustainable and efficient at the scale that is right for them.
As urban populations swell and sustainability challenges intensify, cities worldwide are seeking innovative solutions to enhance efficiency and quality of life.
Increasingly central to this transformation are smart city platforms that integrate artificial intelligence (AI), digital twins, and internet of things (IoT) technologies. These technologies are enabling cities to optimise utilities consumption, reduce carbon footprint, and improve workflows and enhance city stakeholder experiences.
The role of smart city platforms in urban sustainability
Smart city platforms serve as an enabler to extract the most out of infrastructure digitalisation. They integrate diverse systems – such as energy management, transportation, and public services – into a unified framework. This integration facilitates condition monitoring, data analysis and real-time decision-making, allowing cities to respond dynamically to changing conditions, and even potentially pre-empt issues.
The AGIL® Smart City Operating System (OS) is one such smart city platform. Developed by the Urban Solutions business of ST Engineering, AGIL Smart City OS is designed to manage complex urban ecosystems, leveraging AI and machine learning to analyse datasets, automate workflows and provide actionable insights. In turn, this enables cities to enhance their operational efficiency, reduce resource consumption, and improve citizen services – ultimately supporting the ability of city administrators to improve on the city’s sustainability metrics.
AGIL Smart City OS is an aggregator of the pulse of the city, collecting real-time data from sensors and systems deployed across estates and cities – from utility consumption, facilities usage and security incidents, to parking and traffic patterns. By aggregating data, cities gain comprehensive situational awareness across their assets. This opens the door to applying AI for optimisation – using predictive analytics and machine learning to finetune operations, reduce energy use, and manage resources more efficiently.
AGIL Smart City OS also supports visualisation tools, like digital twins and real-time dashboards that highlight trends and monitor Key Result Areas that impact the services rendered to the city stakeholders.
Scaling solutions from buildings to cities
The scalability of smart city platforms is crucial for widespread impact. Starting from individual buildings, systems like AGIL Smart City OS can expand to manage clusters of buildings, entire estates, and eventually whole cities. However beyond the technology stack of the smart city platform, smart city solution providers should demonstrate how the solutions contribute to the city’s service objectives, enhance decision making or elevate service offerings.
We’ve seen success in places like Singapore and Qatar, where governments have begun implementing these solutions at scale, confident that platforms like AGIL Smart City OS can help them operate more efficiently and sustainably, and improve overall quality of life for their residents.
At ST Engineering Urban Solutions, we go the extra mile by facilitating design thinking and concept of operation workshops with city stakeholders to collaboratively discover and define how the different technologies will apply in their unique environment, and the outcomes they can expect.
| Deployment at scale in Lusail city |
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A notable example is Lusail City in Qatar, where ST Engineering Urban Solutions is implementing the AGIL Smart City OS to manage the city’s infrastructure. This comprehensive platform will integrate various systems – including lighting, traffic management, and building operations – providing a unified view of city functions.
By enabling AI-driven insights and automation, Lusail aims to enhance efficiency, reduce resource consumption, and improve the quality of life for its 450,000 residents and visitors. Key features of the Lusail implementation include:
This large-scale deployment demonstrates the potential of smart city platforms to drive sustainable urban development. |
Overcoming challenges and ensuring success
While the benefits of smart city platforms are substantial, successful implementation requires careful planning and collaboration.
At ST Engineering Urban Solutions, our role is not limited to helping cities implement technology, but also to look at measurable impact. We work closely with city partners as a true collaborator to develop their concept of operations, business objectives and Key Result Areas, as well as quantify their business case.
We also understand that data governance is essential – it is a key component in how we build our systems. Protecting privacy and ensuring data security are critical, especially when integrating multiple systems and collecting vast amounts of information.
Smart city platforms equipped with AI and digital twin technologies offer transformative potential for urban sustainability and efficiency. By enabling intelligent management of energy, transportation, and infrastructure, these systems help cities reduce carbon emissions, enhance quality of life, and build resilience against future challenges.
As cities like Lusail demonstrate, the integration of advanced technologies into urban planning is not just a vision for the future – it is an actionable strategy for creating smarter, more sustainable communities today.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Richard Ng
Dieser Artikel ist neu veröffentlicht von / This article is republished from: Smart Cities World, 28.08.2025
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