SIEMENS

Hi! Let me introduce myself. Almuntasir Ben Zeyyad, chief visionary and architect of something completely novel, yet thousands of years old: Pompeii Novum — an innovative city based on its ancient eponym; a city designed to invisibly meld everything we know about energy efficiency with the best of what the ancients knew about living in harmony with the environment and with each other. And we’ve almost made it!

Just a few years ago there was nothing here but an abandoned naval base, a magnificent view of the sea, and an idea. But in a few months, people will be shopping for genuine “hand-made-equivalent” copies of ancient Roman products, and sipping freshly-pressed pomegranate juice at sidewalk tabernae in the shaded, frescoed nooks of arcaded forum buildings — exact copies of the originals. Tourists and locals will be exploring the city’s ochre-colored streets, relaxing in our baths and deliriously cheering their favorite contestants at our fully-functional coliseum. Students and scholars will be studying mosaic and fresco designs, Roman engineering techniques and history in meticulously duplicated versions of the original city’s majestic homes. Entrepreneurs will be opening restaurants, many of them selling foods very similar to those sold in ancient Pompeii. And, yes, thousands of people will actually live here in updated, zero-net-energy versions of ancient Pompeian villas and apartments. Our order books are full!

Sure, living here may take some getting used to. If you’re looking for 24-hour car washes, gas stations buzzing with aggressive motorists, or blindingly-lit, heat-trapping parking lots, you’ll have to look elsewhere! If you miss streets that can’t be cleaned because of wall-to-wall vehicles, mopeds that run grandmothers off of sidewalks, trucks that barrel down residential streets in the small hours of the night, “walk” signs that are timed for sprinters, and a thousand other vehicle-related indignities and eyesores, please, do yourself a favor, and don’t come to Pompeii Novum!

Here, unlike most other cities, we have an inspired vision of efficiency. First of all, Pompeii Novum will be energy self sufficient. If you look over my shoulder, past the forum, out to the sea, you’ll notice a forest of giant windmills, their blades rotating in perfect synchronization with one another to minimize drag-producing cross currents. Each one produces a huge amount of electricity.

With a view to powering a range of automated construction equipment, the wind park and parts of the related energy distribution and storage infrastructure were one of the first things we installed. The energy generated by our windmills is used to desalinate sea water, fill reservoirs with potable water, and run dozens of underground electrolyzers. You can see one of them over here, next to the multistory underground tunnel system with one level for passenger transit via automated electric vehicles and another level for delivery traffic. The electrolyzers generate hydrogen gas using surplus electricity from the wind farm and a gigantic solar system in the desert. The gas is then converted back into electricity in fuel cells, or is reacted with atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce methane. The methane can then be used as vehicle fuel or as gas for heating, just like natural gas.

So much for energy generation and storage. How do we plan to manage energy demand? First of all, let me tell you about Pompeii Novum’s Planning and Simulation Center, which you can see right behind me. There, we started out with a digital model of the ancient city, adapted the model to the present site, and then optimized its buildings and neighborhoods in terms of their individual and collective energy and infrastructural dynamics and needs. A program then combed the entire city model to find the best locations to install motion, temperature, and carbon dioxide sensors — proxies for occupancy detection, and thus the basis for ensuring that heating, cooling, and lighting would not be wasted. The sensors are equipped with microchips that can receive software upgrades via radio. They were installed by robotic “craftsmen” that provide continuous feedback as to their own progress.

Once the city is inhabited, these systems will automatically adjust temperature, humidity and lighting levels in public and commercial buildings based on how many people are present in any given room or common area, and will do the same in private homes, giving precedence to the specific demands and habits of regular users. During warm weather, for instance, these sensing systems will ensure that the right amount of cool air is drawn from cisterns fed by impluvia to provide refreshing, natural ventilation wherever needed.

To give Pompeii Novum’s future inhabitants an incentive to use as little power as possible, a standardized protocol will allow all homes and businesses to receive, interpret, and adjust for price signals from the city’s power utility as the price of electricity varies from hour to hour.

People will be able to set their thermostats at whatever temperature they wish. But individuals competing within family units, households competing within neighborhoods, and even departments within larger organizations will receive rewards such as bonus hours in the city’s spectacular baths or free tickets to coliseum events — details provided via smartphone messages with classic Roman lute or kithara sound signatures — depending on the extent to which they manage to keep their energy use below given targets.

In production shops, city maintenance facilities, food preparation centers, and other energy-intensive operations, many of which will be underground and entirely automated, groups of smart tools will organize their processes according to the spot price of electricity, thus helping to keep their products competitively priced. And of course, a city ordinance will require all privately and publically purchased energy-consuming devices in Pompeii Novum to meet the latest requirements for energy self diagnostics and associated maintenance.

Oh my, it’s getting late! Let me just add that the investors and institutes backing our project are so excited by the response we’ve had that they are already thinking ahead to new settlements based on other ancient cities, such as Alexandria, Leptis Magna, and Herculaneum. Major hotel chains, retirement community operators, healthcare and fitness associations, and sports clubs are clamoring to invest with us. They are saying: “Let the games begin!