Struggling infrastructure is draining economies and hindering human potential around the world. According to the INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard, congestion cost drivers in the United States more than $87bn in 2018 whilst emerging economies such as Russia, Turkey, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil are even worse effected, ranking as the top five most-gridlocked nations. For instance, in Moscow, INRIX estimates that every driver loses 210 hours to congestion every year.

Urban flight is not a new idea. Helicopters and personal jets have been used by the wealthy for decades, but due to their high cost and large carbon footprint, they are impractical for the mass market. However, a new form of Urban Aerial Mobility systems could overcome these barriers, supplementing existing transportation networks and providing accessible service by air. In doing so, they could become a core component of future urban transport systems. Urban Aerial Mobility (UAM) is ‘the movement of goods and people through the skies’ in urban environments. Given its potential to unlock the elusive ‘third dimension’ of transportation, aerial transport could ease this pressure and positively transform lives by reducing congestion and removing people and goods off roads. For instance, UAM could enable the rapid delivery of packages and enable a form of ‘Air Metro’ where public transport in the sky helps take the strain from buses, metros and subway systems. It could even see the rise of ‘Air Taxis’, a door-to-door ridesharing operation that allows consumers to call vertical take-off and landing to specific drop off locations throughout a city. Indeed, electric vertical take-off and landing (EVTOL) and autonomous flight systems provide safer and cleaner mobility options, both key components to the successful growth of cities.

For instance, recent aerial mobility models comparing distances, passenger load and energy consumption, found that an EVTOL aircraft outperformed even an electric car for distances further than 100km. Several companies are already far down the road of developing the technology capable of redefining urban transport. For example, Volocopter, a German-based UAM company, recently unveiled the world’s first air taxi vertiport in Singapore for completely autonomous flight testing. Founded in 2011 by Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel, Volocopter has 150 employees in offices in Germany and Singapore. Their Volocopter has the highest level of safety certification – the EASA international certificate that requires air taxis to be as safe as airliners. And through its 18 electrically powered rotors, the machine is not only very quiet, but is emission free. Having completed its first flight in 2011, the company also has the world’s first permit to fly a manned multicopter. Also in Germany, Airbus is developing CityAirbus, an all-electric multicopter EVTOL vehicle that has four seats and is autonomously piloted. The full-scale CityAirbus demonstrator had its maiden take-off in May 2019 and currently has a cruising speed of roughly 120 km/h with up to 15 minutes of flight time. Over the next 12 months, Airbus will conclude its evaluation of CityAirbus, incorporating the findings of all of its tests into a next iteration aerial taxi that it will likely aim to scale ready for the mass market. However, affordability is key to the success of an urban aerial mobility model of the future.

Uber Elevate set a goal to reduce the cost of aerial taxi ridesharing to $0.44 per passenger mile (compared to $0.464 per mile to drive your own car) but this is ambitious, particularly due to work that needs to be done in understanding how to govern the complexity of operating more vehicles in the sky. Although these innovative companies are exploring the concept of personal autonomous flight, if this new form of transport is truly going to take off, clear governance and a solid policy environment is required to support its implementation. The future of aerial mobility is far bigger than the capability of technology, it is directly linked to whether these new systems are able to meet a certifiable safety threshold. However, this threshold has yet to be set. There are many outstanding questions around pricing, workforce and operational licensing, digital management of guidance – including the ‘3D right-of-way’ – fleet management, cybersecurity and privacy, vehicle design and propulsion, land use and zoning, infrastructure and standardisation, regulation of operations, permitting and tax revenues, and, of course, environmental considerations, that all have to be considered in detail for this new form of transport to take flight. As Jonathan Hartman, Disruptive Technologies Lead for Lockheed Martin’s Sikorsky Innovations’ group explains: “We fundamentally believe that the environment that these vehicles will operate in will be just as important as the vehicle itself.”

As such, for Urban Aerial Mobility to become a reality, it is vital that policymakers at all levels come together to talk about decision points that haven’t ever been considered, and to assess the impact on a scale and timeframe unique to the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Therefore, to ensure that the potential of technology is not impeded, policymakers and companies must collaborate to ensure both the technology and the passengers are adequately protected. The City of Los Angeles has emerged as a pioneer of aerospace and in transportation technology. Led by the Mayor’s Office, the City has created an aerial mobility network integrated with its other transportation systems and investments to ‘illuminate early barriers, opportunities and lessons learned, which can be shared across communities.’ Julia Thayne, Associate Director of Mobility Innovation for L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Office explains that: “We believe that Urban Aerial Mobility can be a meaningful part of our transportation network, but only if we work hand-in-hand with communities, companies, and cities across the world to ensure that outcomes are safe, secure, sustainable, and equitable.” Urban Aerial Mobility can only become a meaningful component of next generation urban transportation through collaborative efforts to engage and plan for a future in which the air is fully, yet safely, utilised.

In June 2021, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) published a report warning that at today’s rate of progress, the world is not on track to achieve any of the targets cited within Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 7.

SDG 7 is one of the 17 goals that make up the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by the United Nations Member States in 2015. With the objective “ensuring affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”, SDG 7 serves as a guide to facilitate international partnerships to achieve universal energy access by 2030. According to the IRENA report, however, the world is far from achieving these goals by the end of the decade, and advances in energy access are in fact being reversed in many parts of the world due to the social and economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Highlights from the Report

Over the past decade, a larger share of people gained access to power than ever before, but this progress has been hampered by the economic impacts of the pandemic. As such, basic power services will become unaffordable to an additional 30 million people in 2021 alone. According to the World Bank, an estimated 660 million people globally will not have access to electricity by 2030.

The IRENA report also found major inequalities between urban and rural regions. In 2019, rural areas accounted for 84% of the global population living without electricity (640 million unserved people), while only 3% of those living in urban areas had no electricity, an access rate of 97%. In fact, even in urban areas, communities living in more remote settings are more likely to be left without access to power – hindering their social and economic progress. As such, roughly 60% of the unserved urban population currently lives in low-income, fragile or conflict-affected settings.

For the world to get back on track and achieve the targets under SDG 7, it is vital that the pace of progress is accelerated across all regions, particularly in the most vulnerable countries. However, doing so requires stronger political commitment, long-term energy planning, increased public and private financing, and adequate policy and fiscal incentives to spur the deployment of new technologies for the production and distribution of energy.

In addition, the report underscores the need to strengthen cross border energy infrastructure. Energy production often spans borders and requires sharing of infrastructure and expertise, therefore the world’s developed countries must commit to ensuring greater coordination and collaboration to improve access to power supply across regions.

In an effort to address the global energy gap and develop new renewable energy value chains, the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit announced the launch of The Green Chain Initiative last year. Launched in partnership with leading German organisations, the initiative focuses on decarbonising the industrial sector and promoting the global green agenda through collaboration between developed and developing countries. Specifically, The Green Chain will encourage crowdsourcing of commercially viable solutions aimed at generating power from renewable energy resources in underdeveloped countries that are renewable energy rich, with the ultimate objective of developing projects that will enable the developing countries to generate their power needs and developed countries to decarbonise manufacturing facilities and promote clean energy adoption.

Humanity has reached a very exciting and interesting time, a time when we are all beginning to realise that the way we live and work is likely to undergo sweeping changes. The COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, has taught us that increased digitalisation, driven by the adoption of disruptive technologies, will reshape the future of work and our ways of collaborating with one another.

Written by Tiffany Kelly

‘The future of work after COVID-19’ report by McKinsey states that remote work and virtual interactions will likely be the norm in the coming years and there may be faster adoption of Artificial Intelligence, especially in jobs with high physical proximity. Managing this change in how we do business will require a new kind of leadership.

For many of us, the last 16 months have been an eye-opening experience in terms of accepting that we are all susceptible to the conditions that we are co-creating in this fragile global ecosystem. It is now more important than ever that we leverage technology to create collaborative communities that can innovate and develop skills of the future. The changes we make today will ensure that we can successfully transform our society to a state of symbiosis along with the rest of the planet.

For this, we need to empower and inspire more women to step up into positions of leadership so that we can create organisational cultures that are more feminine, inclusive, flexible, collaborative and nurturing. Strong female representation will also create cultures that develop passion and purpose in talent while delivering triple-bottom-line reporting – people, planet and profit. By bringing more women into leadership, these cultures will naturally evolve.

Women Lead the Way

The United Arab Emirates has long been a trailblazer in promoting equal representation of women across all levels of government, particularly in senior leadership positions. In 2020, the UAE ranked first in the female parliamentary representation index of the IMD World Competitiveness Yearbook. In addition, the country topped the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region rankings in the World Bank’s latest ‘Women, Business and the Law’ report. Currently, there are nine female ministers in the UAE cabinet, from Her Excellency Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashimi, Minister of State for International Cooperation, to Her Excellency Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, Minister of Culture and Youth.

The UAE government’s vision on pushing gender equality has inspired home-grown businesses to prioritise women’s economic empowerment. At Abu Dhabi-based Strata, which produces aircraft structures and components for Boeing and Airbus, roughly 90% the national workforce are women.

Indeed, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that female leadership will promote significant economic growth and reduce income inequality in the coming years. According to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), if both male and female entrepreneurs participated equally in economic activities, global GDP would rise by 3% to 6 %, boosting the world economy by USD 2.5 trillion to USD 5 trillion.

The research also found that the highest rates of women’s entrepreneurial intentions were reported in the MENA region, underscoring the trend of younger women founding companies in countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. If gender inequality is disbarred for entrepreneurs, the region could realise USD 600 billion annually or USD 2.7 trillion by 2025, according to BCG.

As a serial entrepreneur and the founder of predominantly female-led businesses that are focused on delivering educational and environmental impact, I recognise the important role female leaders play in creating organisational cultures that are nurturing and compassionate to the needs of their people. And this is why at Beyond Bamboo we are committed to not only creating an online, replicable marketplace but also a community that is quickly building loyalty among sellers and customers passionate about environmental rejuvenation.

An important opportunity to lead the dialogue on women’s empowerment and the future of gender equality will take place at the fourth edition of the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (#GMIS2021). Set to take place in Dubai between November 22-27, this unique international platform will gather leaders from governments and the world’s largest organisations to shape the future of industrial growth, sustainable development, gender equity and other critical issues. I look forward to contributing to the ‘Women in Leadership’ panel at #GMIS2021, which will bring together experts from diverse disciplines to discuss the role of women as decision-makers and active members of information-driven societies.  

In the coming years, as businesses become even more globalised and as flexible working conditions become the norm, we need more women in positions of power to ensure that our talent is effectively adding value across all industries and areas of work. In particular, as we emerge from COVID-19 lockdowns and work together to agree what the future of work and economic prosperity looks like, this culture change towards achieving a balance in masculine and feminine leadership will be crucial to future-proof the way we live.

As for me, I am excited about the future where female leaders with high emotional intelligence and digital skills will lead the way across all walks of life through greater collaboration, communication and supportive competition, raising the bar for everyone.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a key technology of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It promises to reduce inefficiencies, boost economic productivity, and is widely used in various industries and sectors. AI has contributed a lot to Global manufacturing innovations. From helping doctors make accurate diagnoses, product designs to providing targeted marketing insights for retailers, AI is a unique technology tool that allows us to utilize the reams of data in order to make smarter decisions. AI is the core element of 4IR as well.

However, despite AI’s potential to transform production, work, and society, research has emerged about disparities and biases in the way this technology is utilized. Specifically, some believe this is because the people building AI systems are not representative of the communities those systems are meant to serve.

To begin with, AI developers are predominantly male. A review published by the AI Now Institute found that less than 20% of the researchers applying to prestigious AI conferences are women and that only a quarter of undergraduates studying AI at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley are female.

Although AI has strengthened the Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation revolutions that raise the global income levels and improve quality of life. Recent research by Stanford University has found that the lack of diversity in AI development – based on race and ethnicity – risks creating an uneven distribution of power in the workforce and reinforces existing inequalities generated by AI systems, contributing to unjust outcomes. For example, in medical diagnosis where AI is trained and developed using biased data sets, misdiagnosis is increasingly likely, putting lives at risk. Caroline Criado Perez, the author of ‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’, explains that medical research is already systematically skewed towards men, whereby female heart attacks are routinely misdiagnosed because the “typical” heart attack symptoms are only typical to men.

Tackling Diversity Challenges

There is no easy fix to eradicate bias in AI research, but system-wide changes aimed at creating safe and inclusive spaces that support and promote researchers from underrepresented groups could play an important part. For example, both business and educational institutions need to understand and counter the pervasive stereotypes around gender and build a teaching environment that improves the confidence of girls.

In some parts of the world, government-level policy interventions are helping to drive this change. In the United Arab Emirates, the government recently organized the third edition of the Artificial Intelligence program or summit to provide both male and female participants with practical experience and skills in AI. In the United Kingdom, the government provided a £13.5m investment to boost diversity in AI roles through new conversion degree courses.

Still, on a global scale, there is very little government guidance on how AI developers should approach the issue of diversity in AI. The Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) 2021, will highlight the way of leveraging AI’s ability to unlock meaningful data. This means that ensuring a balanced mixture of nationalities, ethnicities, and genders when implementing AI will fall on the business implementing AI systems. Recognizing this, tech companies need to re-examine their teams to ensure a multicultural and gender-balanced workforce and consider the impact of diversity issues on consumers.

The importance of having a vibrant corporate culture driven by clearly defined core values, such as inclusion, to ensure a motivated and capable workforce was brought into focus in the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic. To return again into the market Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) 2021 will convene industry experts to discuss the best ways to prepare for the post-Covid-19 recovery. As markets faltered, traditional organizational models were challenged, and only the nimble, able, and innovative companies succeeded during the crisis. Consequently, diversity and inclusion are at the heart of organizational success, the pace of innovation, social mobility, and equality.

As the world around us continues to evolve rapidly, manufacturing enterprises are investing in manufacturing innovations, the latest digital tools, and solutions to remain relevant and meet shifting consumer demands. Unfortunately, the increased adoption of technology at the workplace is making manufacturers more vulnerable to cyberattacks.

In 2020 alone, there was a 124% increase in cybercrimes targeting manufacturers, according to the US-based cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, while a report by the UK-based manufacturers’ organization Make UK said roughly half of all manufacturers in the country have been victims of cyberattacks. Manufacturing is the third most targeted sector in the UK.

So, what makes manufacturers a key target for cyberattacks?

There are numerous reasons why cybercriminals are increasingly targeting manufacturing organizations. Among the most widely cited reasons are the large amounts of sensitive and valuable data on consumers and suppliers, as well as the absence of up-to-date cybersecurity systems, particularly at Small and Medium Businesses (SMB). The US National Center for Manufacturing Services associates the surge in cyberattacks to rising competition in the industrial sector “where intellectual property is at a premium”. Other factors could include the presence of unsecured devices, as well as inadequate employee training to detect and monitor cyberattacks.

The increase in cyberattacks is also attributed to cyber criminals gaining access to more advanced technologies, thus making it more cumbersome for investigators to track data breaches and phishing attacks. According to KPMG, emerging technologies are regularly used to create new types of malware, identify vulnerabilities in large defense systems and develop sophisticated password cracking systems. With the help of emerging technologies, cybercrimes are becoming more “accurate, targeted, and innovative,” as per KMPG.

Certainly, the consequence of falling victim to cybercrime is significant. For example, in 2018, the financial loss from cybercrimes exceeded US$ 600 billion worldwide, dwarfing the GDP of many countries, while the average cost of a data breach in North America is reported to be US$ 1.3 million, according to cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab.

 Yet, the financial aftermath is not the only factor that is encouraging manufacturers to put cybersecurity safeguards in place – it has also become an important stakeholder requirement. 59% of the manufacturers surveyed by the Make UK said their customers have asked them to demonstrate the robustness of their cybersecurity processes, while 58% said they have asked the same from a business within their supply chain.

Ways to Mitigating Cyber Risks

To unlock the potential of the Fourth Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation revolution and reduce the risk of cyberattacks on manufacturers, manufacturing industries speakers and industry stakeholders must better understand how to manage and improve the safety of their technology systems. To bridge the gap between awareness and action, the Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) and the Lloyd’s Register Foundation (LRF) commissioned the University of Cambridge (Policy Links – Institute for Manufacturing) to compile an international review of the safety and security implications of the 4IR technologies. The report identified four main strategies currently used in cyber risk management: avoidance, transference, mitigation, and acceptance of risk.

To minimize the risk of cyberattacks, the report suggests tactics such as replacement of legacy systems, reduction of third-party access to networks, use of strong passwords, continuous verification of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, adoption of relevant cybersecurity standards, and testing out cyber stress scenarios to assess potential losses. Furthermore, the report recommends that manufacturers create new regulatory frameworks and standards, conduct manufacturing innovations webinars, develop industry-specific cybersecurity policies, clarify security liability and responsibility issues to reduce current vulnerabilities.

Additionally, the GMIS-Llyod report identifies cyber insurance as a key area of action for the safe adoption of 4IR technologies in manufacturing. Although the current cyber insurance market is small and only a handful of insurance providers offer protection for industrial systems, manufacturers can take advantage of traditional insurance policies that do not explicitly exclude cyberattacks. Alternatively, they could choose cyber affirmative insurance policies that cover data breaches, software losses, and business interruptions.

Whilst there is a global consensus on the need to improve the regulation of advanced technologies, the 4IR landscape is evolving so fast that as soon as the regulation is introduced, a new threat emerges. To counter this, many governments are taking steps to improve their national cybersecurity resilience through a number of policy initiatives, by organizing industrial exhibitions & webinars, and programs. However, these are often top-line strategies that do not consider the specific nuances experienced by sectors such as manufacturing.

Therefore, if the manufacturing sector is to realize the full potential of the 4IR, a one-size-fits-all approach is insufficient. Importantly, comprehensive security cannot be the exclusive domain of large businesses that can financially afford bespoke end-to-end protection.