The Future of Building Sustainable Cities

Can location-enabled technology change the way we function in the future?

Hear from industry leaders and visionaries on what it means to build and live in a sustainable city.

Every few decades, we as a society are faced with redefining what a city is and how we interact within it. With urban population growth, a pandemic, and a housing crisis to boot, it’s evident that our buildings, infrastructure and resource management need to become more adaptable – more renewable.

Can the rise in location-enabled technologies like digital twins, augmented reality and GeoAI change the way we live in the future? How can location-enabled technology play its part in building adaptable and sustainable cities? How do we mitigate the impact urban population growth has on climate change?

Join LocationTech in the first event in our sustainability series and hear from industry leaders and visionaries on what it means to build and live in a sustainable city.

Speakers

Kane O'Donnel - Director of Innovation - Aware Group

Kane is the Director of Innovation at Aware Group; a Hamilton-based consultancy specialising in AI and emerging technologies. Kane can speak to how his team incubated a location tech solution (measuring multimodal transport for local government) and took it to market - including some of the technical and societal findings along the way. Kane can also talk to some of the more "out there" problems that have come across his desk, and how recent technical advances may impact location tech - and personal freedoms.

Ryan Macveigh - Location Intelligence Lead - WSP

Ryan MacVeigh has been championing the adoption of location intelligence for over 12 years’ with diverse clients nationally.  He currently leads the GIS team within WSP Digital.  His expertise is in strategic GIS planning, leading implementation of GIS infrastructure and advising on the right tools to deliver innovative, engaging, and informative ways to tell meaningful stories through the use Location Intelligence. With the growing demand for Location Intelligence expertise from our clients across New Zealand, Australia and Globally, Ryan’s role within WSP Digital is to help identify, grow, and coach future spatial talent.  He is responsible for guiding clients through their digital journeys and developing innovative solutions based on location intelligence.  He is currently working with several clients in amalgamating GIS with other data sources such as 3D models, BIM, dashboards, visuals and sensor data to support in the development of digital twins.

Dr Kat Salm - Digital Solutions Manager - HG

Kat is HG’s Digital Solutions Manager with over 15 years in spatial consulting, management, and strategy development across local and central government agencies, the private sector, and tertiary organisations. Kat has been championing the value of spatial and digital technology in the engineering sector for the last seven years, enhancing how we build the futures that matter to all of us. She has specific skills in geospatial information and technology, innovation, digital twin and smart cities advisory, capability development, and digital strategy. Kat is also currently the President of Survey and Spatial NZ.

Greer O'Donell - Director and Co Founder - The Urban Advisory

Greer is a Director, and Co Founder of The Urban Advisory. The Urban Advisory is an interdisciplinary consultancy firm that works with community groups, iwi, and Māori organisations, government, council's, and a range of stakeholders to deliver more sustainable and equitable neighbourhoods, towns and cities. With a background in law and social science, Greer is interested in how technology can enhance the role that citizens play in shaping our cities, and we can gather the relevant qualitative data to support the quantitative data sets we use to plan for future population growth.