Estate Living Magazine Invest SA - Issue 45 September 2019 | Page 60

L I V E
S M A R T
FUTURE
PROOF
As AI, big data and smart homes become a lived
reality, what are residential estates doing now
to make that future happen?
UNICITI — Mauritius ‘Smart City’
A 543,000-square-metre development in Shanghai’s Xuhui
District is about to redraw the blueprint for residential
living. While future-facing organisations have long been
considering the possibilities of smart cities, this high-tech
neighbourhood in China’s biggest city is shaping itself as
the world’s first AI town. Big data and artificial intelligence
will drive everything in this residential community, from
automated driving to drone-powered parcel delivery
and AI-powered medicine, finance, transport, media and
business solutions.
Is this what the future of residential living will look like?
More and more developers believe so – and the evidence
suggests that that future is not too far away.
In South Africa, the future technologies of community
living are dominated by security. Companies like Drone
Guards are already using unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs, or – as you probably know them – drones) to track
intruders. ‘The world is moving to the use of drones in
combination with widely dispersed intelligent sensors for
improving on most aspects of work, delivery, monitoring
and controlling the wider work and living environment,’
Drone Guards Director Kim James wrote in a recent blog
post. ‘More and more estates (residential, industrial, office
and mining) are looking at intelligent sensors and aerial
surveillance to draw attention to where unwanted activity
is taking place, and what the intruders are doing, followed
up by a reaction force intervention.’
Meanwhile, ICT infrastructure providers have expanded
their cloud-based visitor management solution to cater
specifically for the needs of multi-dwelling-unit estates and
large residential estates. This guardless solution, which
includes an enterprise estate management application
that lets bodies corporate and residents’ associations