A Florida aerotropolis bets on intelligent infrastructure
By Andrew Nusca | October 23, 2012
Ever heard of Lake Nona? If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a 7,000-acre, 25,000-person planned community in Orlando, Florida with urban ambitions the size of Tokyo.
In just 15 years, the community wants to become ”a global model and standard for sustainable urban development” — quite the opposite from what’s typically found in sprawling central Florida. To do so, it wants to tightly and deliberately link educational facilities, recreational facilities, a “medical city,” workplaces, retail centers, entertainment and residential development using digital infrastructure.
The community announced this morning that it plans to partner with Cisco, the American networking technology company, to design and deploy networking infrastructure to connect its healthcare, real estate, retail, education and community services.
What’s that mean, exactly? Things like “smart work centers,” “intelligent buildings” and unified healthcare and education services. Also, digital signage, unified communications (data, voice, wireless), fiber to the home, energy management, smarter transportation and IP-based video surveillance. (If it can be digitized, it appears that Cisco is willing do it.)
Because of the deep level of integration between the two entities, Cisco has declared Lake Nona an “Iconic Smart+Connected city” — the first in the U.S., and one of eight in the world.
Phi Beta Iota: It merits reflection that CISCO and IBM and other great companies are not coming together on this, their lack of commitment to Open Source Everything being one reason. It also merits reflection that in 100 years Lake Nona will be under sea water. No one in the USA outside of Earth Intelligence Network seems to be thinking 100 years out, which is going to make the cost to future generations much greater.
See Also:
Graphic: Maps of the Post Flood Future Geography
