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innovation

innovation

Intelligent moves

As the world’s population grows – from 7.3 billion to an estimated 9 billion

people by 2050 – cities are building up instead of out. For urbanites to move

smartly in these changing urban environments, specialised people flow

planning and innovative technologies are required.

TEXT

EVELIINA LINDERBORG

PHOTO

KONE

E

very day, more than 200, 000 people migrate

to cities. Urban centers from Europe to Asia,

the Middle East and North America are going

vertical. “We’re seeing unprecedented levels

of urbanization; this combined with an aging

population and digitalization is challenging cities with the

task of making urban environments smarter in order to

be easier to live in,” says

Ari Virtanen

who head KONE’s

Access Control and Integrated Solutions Business. “Smart

cities require intelligent design and technologies from city

structures and systems. But at the heart of smart cities are

intelligent buildings,” he says.

For KONE, a key aspect of providing intelligent people

flow solutions is to integrate advanced technology into

different building systems. The driving principles of

elevator and escalator design nowadays are that they

can communicate with KONE’s People Flow Intelligence

portfolio solutions, including destination guidance, access

control and equipment monitoring solutions.

PLANNING SUPPORT

Smart equipment is required for a building to be intelligent

but having excellent elevators, escalators and related

solutions is not enough. Dr. Marja-Liisa Siikonen, an

acclaimed expert on planning for the smooth flow of

people, leads an international network of traffic planning

specialists at KONE, who help customers plan and

implement the best possible People Flow® well before a

building’s blueprints exist.

“More and more people are coming into cities, and

that’s squeezing people into smaller spaces. Residents

are expecting to be able to move smoothly through their

day, and the more people we have in buildings the more

intelligent transportation solutions are needed,” says Dr.

Marja-Liisa Siikonen

, Director, People Flow Planning.

“We help clients select the right type of transportation

devices for their specific needs in the planning stage to

ensure excellent vertical and horizontal People Flow®,” says

Siikonen.

In huge complexes the planning stage can last several

years. In the world’s third-tallest building, the Makkah

Clock Royal Tower Hotel in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the

building planning stage continued for more than seven

years, and Siikonen’s team provided hundreds of traffic

HOW SMART

ELEVATORS

WORK

night,” Siikonen explains. “Often the people flow solution

is a compromise between building floor layout, project

budget and the traffic flow requirements depending on

building usage while respecting ethnographic differences.”

“For multipurpose buildings KONE’s intelligent control

systems such as the KONE Polaris Destination Control

System (DCS) allow elevators to prioritize service to serve

certain parts of the building at peak times,” says Siikonen.

The DCS allocation algorithm searches for the optimum

routes for the elevators to serve a destination call. The

algorithm is able to identify the best routes for the elevators

within milliseconds. Optimal call allocation decisions

guarantee short passenger waiting and journey times by

using measured stopping times and elevator flight times.

“The benefit of KONE’s advanced DCS is that in addition

to utilizing destination information to boost elevator

handling capacity, it can also learn to recognize traffic

patterns in a building, and, for example, forecast individual

passenger journeys,” says Siikonen.

“When comparing a conventional elevator system to a

DCS, it could be said that the conventional system is like a

bus and DCS is like a dial-a-ride taxi that takes you to your

destination floor in the fastest way without unnecessary

stops at other floors,” says Siikonen. /

“The conventional system

is like a bus and DCS is

like a dial-a-ride taxi that

takes you directly to your

destination floor.”

Learn

daily traffic

Allocate calls to

elevators

Measure people

flow and elevator

parameters

Forecast

traffic patterns

Minimize

passenger

waiting time

analysis revisions for the client. The busy multipurpose

Makkah venue is next door to Masjid al-Haram, the world’s

largest mosque, which can accommodate up to two million

people.

“Visitors normally practice formal prayers five times

a day,” says Siikonen. “The goal of the customer was to

ensure that up to 75,000 people can exit all seven buildings

through the podium in an organized and timely manner

every prayer time.”

This required a thorough study of optimum people

flow solutions, resulting in an extraordinary amount

of equipment: more than 320 units of escalators and

elevators in the podium and the towers. In addition, KONE

implemented special group control software with artificial

intelligence capabilities to learn and track passenger traffic

patterns in order to optimize people flow. The elevators

include large shuttles that can hold 54 passengers each and

take visitors up to the 15th level’s sky lobby.

In these types of projects, innovativeness is needed

to enable smooth traffic flows. According to Siikonen,

sometimes a new solution is developed together with the

client, which is what happened in Frankfurt’s Gallileo Tower,

where the first KONE Destination Control System (DCS) was

installed.

SMART SOLUTIONS

One of the building types that growing urban centres are

increasingly embracing are tall multipurpose buildings that

house a mix of residential and retail with hotel and office

space. A combination of KONE’s people flow planning

solutions and technological innovations have been used

in many recent multipurpose projects around the world

including the Leadenhall Building, the latest iconic addition

to the London skyline.

“In a mixed-use building the majority of hotel guests will

likely be away during the daytime whereas the majority of

office workers will be present during the day and away at

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