The facts on the usage and growth of social media continues to amaze me. The latest I heard was that almost 900 million people have registered accounts on Facebook (launched in 2004) and that more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on the social network site each month. Twitter (2006) sees its membership grow by more than 1 million every day, and there are already half a billion people using the site generating nearly 200 million tweets daily, producing more than 8 Terabyte data every day (and consider that each tweet is only up to 140 characters). One hour of video is uploaded to Youtube (2005) each second. And when I write this, I am sure these facts already are obsolete. That’s Big Data, right there.

These are just a few great examples of how the consumer is driving tremendous transformation of the Internet and the networked world we live in (the consumerization of the Internet). Add in the third Internet evolution: it’s industrialization and the birth of “the Internet of Things”. It’s not just people anymore that instigate the tremendous traffic and transactions on the Internet. The IP enablement of systems and devices have extended the nodes in our networked world. More “Things” use the infrastructure to communicate—in addition to phones, tablets and computers, we see sensors, meters, power stations, street lights, busses and cars, home automation, media, gaming, signage, health systems, and many more devices in manufacturing, retail, security (and so forth) all become part of the fabric that makes the foundation of our smart and connected world.

In the next years, more than 15 billion devices will communicate over networks and the Internet—and some ICT executives predict the number will exceed 50 billion by 2020. The subsequent data volume, according to McKinsey Global Institute, is expected to grow 40% annually and will increase 44 times between now and 2020; surpassing 1 Zettabyte in U.S. Internet traffic annually by 2015 (50 times that of 2007, and roughly equivalent to 50 million Libraries of Congress).

Like cars on roads and water through pipes, all this data has to flow uninterruptedly and securely through a resilient infrastructure. The need for IP networks (and broadband) is exponentially growing and our latest generations expect full (and affordable) access to it. The enabled communication between people and people, people and machines, and between machines and machines already is providing unprecedented ways for increased productivity and value creation. Now, let’s take it further: add to all this data and constant flow of transactions the notion of intelligence and analytics. Let’s leverage the power of smarts to even further drive value back into the community, to its users, and every device and process that is reliant on it. Big Data will become rapidly Bigger as intelligence is added to it through advanced analytics and computing.

Companies in the telecom industry work frantically around the world to keep up with the rapidly growing demand. Faster hardware needs to replace the still young yet already outdated infrastructure in our existing communities. It’ll be a refresh cycle that may never finish nor slow down. Here is where new communities can substantially benefit.

New communities (like Rampart Avenir Communities) have the opportunity to lay the foundation for 1 Gb or even 10 Gb to the edge of the Internet fabric (in our homes, to our modes of transportation, and simply to every connected device). Sure, today this seems excessive, but the capital cost to do it right upfront will dwarf to the cost to upgrade later (as in a few years from now). With everything connected from inception; speaking native IP languages; where oversight and management is provided by integrated operation centers; where compute power is everywhere (cloud and fog computing); and where open access is available to everyone that wants to and can benefit from it—we truly can set the new standard as to how we can further enhance and transform environmental, economic, and social sustainability in an increasingly competitive and flatter world.

The opportunities are endless. Interesting stuff. Let’s talk more about this at the “Analytics, Big Data, and the Cloud” conference in Edmonton this week. It’s not too late to register.

According to unpublished estimates from the International Energy Agency [IEA], greenhouse gas emissions have increased by a record amount last year to the highest carbon output in history. Last year, a record 30.6 Giga-tones of carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere, mainly from burning fossil fuel, a rise of 1.6 Gt on 2009 [IEA estimates]. Emissions from energy fell slightly between 2008 and 2009, from 29.3 Gt to 29Gt due to the worst global economic recession in 80 years. The IEA has calculated that if the world is to escape from most damaging effects, annual energy-related emissions should be no more than 32 Gt by 2020. If this year’s emissions rise by as much as 2010’s, that limit will be exceeded nine years ahead of schedule [the Guardian, June 9].

Take into the consideration the status of the supply (generation) side of energy: 80% of power stations like to be in use in 2020 are either already built or under construction. These account for 11.2 Gt emissions (out of 13.7 Gt in the electricity sector) that are “locked in”; and thus savings will have to be found elsewhere. Also, the world is changing its mind on nuclear power after the Tsunami damage at the Fukushima power plant in Japan. As a result, Germany already halted its reactor program, and other countries are reconsidering nuclear power. Nuclear is one of the major technologies for generating electricity without carbon dioxide.

These are glooming facts; especially if you take into consideration the mass urbanization of the rapidly growing world population. More than 70% of all energy today is consumed in cities; and it is expected that in the years to come more than 500 M will migrate to cities to seek economic and social prosperity. The American Institute of Architects [AIA] has predicted that of all the functional real estate that we require in 2030 to accommodate such dramatic shifts , more than 70% does not exist today. The anticipated build-out that we require to support the growing and urbanized global population will even further jeopardize chances to salvage our environmental predicament.

Now, I happen to work for a company that has a strong vision and available capabilities to address or impact many of the problems in front of us: from generation to distribution with smart grids, to consumption and supply with smart buildings. And we’re certainly not alone: our partners show no less impressive innovation and capability to contribute towards the solution. What’s truly missing is the coming together of industry, institutions, and government, and the alignment of investment and focus to get stuff done—leadership, ownership, policy, direction. It’s time for the “Urban Electronic Nervous System” as Martijn Moerbeek calls it, to assist in monitoring, managing, controlling, optimizing, and minimizing the flow of everything: people, electrons, water, traffic, etc. The will and innovation is there. Technology is the foundation. Let’s put it to work.

In a stunning event last month (at least, to me), Ontario had to pay Quebec and the US more than $1.5M to have them take excess energy that was produced. The extreme “warm” weather was blamed for the over-production and reduced demand of energy in Ontario. Really, what are we doing? This $1.5M of our tax payer’s money could have been put to better use in education, healthcare, or even energy reform.

Clearly, once again, this demonstrates that the system is broken; both the supply and the demand side. Why was the system not able to anticipate the change in consumption? Consequently, why was the production of energy not adjusted to take this reduction into consideration and thus only produce what we actually need?

You would think that all the information one needs to make such decisions is readily available. There is weather information (we knew it would warm up); there is consumption and demand information (we have trending data of the buildings and others that use energy—at least, so you’d think); aren’t there analytics out there smart enough to see the correlation and trigger a signal to the producers of energy? Of course there are.

Surely, this is a topic that warrants many conversations—so let’s just focus on the demand side. The buildings that we build and occupy consume their fair share of energy, more than 40% of all consumption to be precise. They’re also known to be not effective in optimizing its energy performance. It won’t be the first time that we seen baseboard heaters trying to heat up a space while at the same time air-conditioning systems are trying to balance it out in order to make for a comfortable environment. This (among much other inefficiency) is proving to waste 20% to 30% of our energy in buildings. Now, if we would like to control this, we need to monitor it 24/7, thus measure it in real-time, and consequently we will need to have ubiquitous access to energy and usage information in our buildings.

Convergence and integration allows us to tap into the wealth of information that is currently being stored in disparate systems that make our buildings work. Once we have consistent access to all this information (regardless of its source and regardless of its protocols) we can add analytics to the opportunity in front of us. It is this intelligence that makes our buildings smarter and more dynamic part of its environment. Building information can correlate with data from the weather channel as well as real-time utilization data. Combined, we can add policy to our built environment that will automatically optimize the energy performance and productivity of the building and the people and systems in it.

Turn lights off if nobody is using the space and adjust the thermostat accordingly. Lower blinds if the sun glares into a floor and results air-conditioning to work overtime. Optimize lighting levels based on day-light harvesting and the appropriate temperature levels based on occupant preferences. Inform the users of the space of their individual contribution to the buildings’ energy consumption and consequently trigger behavioral change that will even further reduce the energy demand. All this and more can be reactive as well as pro-active. Predictive modeling can actually recommend environmental settings that will even further drive optimization in the built environment.

All this, and much more is possible if people, systems, and devices become connected over one open and common infrastructure: the building information network, or the ‘fourth utility’. Let’s have them all speak the same language and give them the ability to interact with one another as they collectively contribute to the optimization and productivity of our spaces.

Now, how does this resolve the problem that Ontario faced last month: having to “beg” our neighboring provinces and country to buy our excess energy?  Well…simple: you make the demand side of the equation smart enough that it can intelligently inform the supply side as to when and how much energy needs to be delivered to meet its performance requirements. The capabilities and technologies that enable this two-way communication are largely available today. Then, what is it that prevents this from happening?