Imagine a demand-driven world where every service you can think of is at your beck-and-call. A future where you can fly to your next business meeting at the time you choose or shop for goods at home and have them delivered when you want and where you want – by a drone. Or a future where car ownership becomes inefficient and a driverless car is ready to pick you up and take you wherever you need to go. Imagine a world where hospital waiting rooms are obsolete because the ER has optimized its staff and resources and patients are also able to receive at home care with a touch of a button.
You may say we already live in that world today, powered by app-based companies where the tap of an app will get you a car on-demand in the next five minutes. But for every time you choose to use a ride-sharing service, you may not realize that in order to get that one ride, there are multiple other cars driving around aimlessly burning fuel, creating emissions, congesting traffic waiting for the next passenger. You can shop from home and choose to have something delivered next-day and in some cases same-day, but only if the supplier has the resources readily available to fulfill your request in that timeframe. Though convenient, these services are flooded with inefficiency and waste because most of these companies provide their services based on supply, not on demand. They are constrained by resources that are stretched to their limits.
But what if these constraints were eliminated?
Leveraging advanced technology to unlock data collected via autonomous vehicles, sensors and apps, and using this data to make decisions in real-time will allow our world to move from being on-demand to truly demand-driven. A world where everything happens when and where we want, but in the most efficient and convenient manner, improving sustainability and reducing waste, pollution and eliminating congestion.
Tomorrow’s demand-driven city is very much possible today.
