Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

(September 13,2011)

Pegasus will create and eerie deserted city.

You can’t use a real city and its inhabitants as lab rats. Solution? Build your own city to experiment on.

A US company has announced plans to build a massive, realistic, but totally uninhabited city to use for high tech tests.

A perpetually empty city costing $US200 million ($189 million) sounds like part of a sci-fi script - especially when so many real people are in need of shelter.

The giant "laboratory" will look at the best ways for modern cities to adopt the latest green and high-tech solutions to resolve today's urban problems.

Beautiful New Mexico: A natural stone arch called La Ventana. Photo: Reuters.

It will be used for "real-world" testing on everything from domestic solar panels and wi-fi connections to mass transit management and ways to deal with acts of terrorism.

The scheme will make most of its money with "access charges and user fees" for access to test environments allowing various groups to run simulations and gauge the impact their technology might have in a full-scale environment.

This brand new ghost town, in New Mexico, will be built to accommodate a non-existent population of 35,000 with all the accoutrements of a real city.

"The Centre" by Pegasus.

Extensive security will surely be required to ensure none of those ghost citizens are ever replaced by the real thing.

Testing of new technology needs to be on a realistic scale and include the chaotic contexts of old and new infrastructure in such situations as "urban canyons, suburban neighbourhoods, rural communities and distant localities," according to Pegasus Global, the company behind the scheme.

However, some might say the best way to test any new technology - to be used by people - is to unleash people on it.

The public always has a way of coming up with clever and unexpected ways to confound the most well-tested systems.

What is it exactly?

The facility will be modelled on a medium-sized American city, complete with standard roads and highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new, as well as power, water, telecommunications and operating systems.

The Center for Innovation, Test & Evaluation could cover a massive 52 square kilometres of open, state-owned land if Pegasus gets the go-ahead from New Mexico's governor.

It will be the "world's largest tech testing and evaluation centre" according to the company's website. They say it's a first in terms of its "scale and scope fully integrated testing and evaluation facility for new and emerging technologies".

This substantial facility won't be alone, New Mexico is home to number of significant scientific, nuclear and military bases.

Public reaction

One cynic commenting on the Daily Mail website suggested it would be far cheaper and easier to use Detroit as a test city as it was "basically deserted anyway".

Other commenters raised the issue of squatters, gangs and thieves wreaking havoc with the plan, suggesting the scale of security measures required would be prohibitively expensive.

Another commenter suggested that the whole set up was a government plot to test new and insidious "weapons of mass suppression" as a way of controlling its increasingly rebellious population.

A comment on The Gazette website went as far as suggestion that "considering the absurd corruption that is New Mexican politics, we can bet the 35,000 "citizens" of this High Tech Ghost Town will be duly registered and active voting Democrats."

A great idea for another money-making angle for the centre comes from a post on the Engadget site noting that "Movie studio's should love it".

Another asked "Aren't towns like these available on eBay?".

A Huffington Post commenter best summed up the general reaction when they said "leave it to big business and our governor to destroy 20 square miles of open space to build a city and not let anyone live in it and promote it as a good idea".

What will it do specifically?

The centre will serve as an "open operating test, evaluation, demonstration and commercialisation facility for next-generation innovations and technologies," according to a Pegasus press release.

Simply put, Pegasus is providing a large-scale environment for organisations to assess unproven technology, without risk to the infrastructure and people of a real city.

The aim is to see how new technology integrates into "legacy infrastructure". They also hope to reveal the real impacts of new technology on the economy, "including energy, transportation, telecommunications, security, and agriculture," according to Pegasus.

For example, the facility will provide a testing ground to gauge the impacts of introducing solar, wind, and Smart Grid technologies into existing electricity infrastructure.

There will also be opportunities to test "unmanned vehicle technologies, traffic management systems, and vehicle-based applications without endangering other drivers," says Pegasus.

Government involvement

The company has the support of New Mexico's Governor, Susana Martinez, according to a press release on its website. However, that support so far only extends a memorandum of understanding with the State of New Mexico to "facilitate the quantification of the feasibility, scope and scale of the center".

Pegasus is yet to conduct a feasibility study or even select a location. The State of New Mexico is apparently "providing non-financial resources and assistance to Pegasus Global in order to facilitate a feasibility study".

How will Pegasus make money?

The venture will make money for Pegasus Global through "access charges and user fees as well as from the sale of excess utility output, such as power generation, water treatment, and wireless infrastructure".

They see their clients including the world's public laboratories, universities, not-for-profit technology centres, federal departments and agencies, and the private sector.

Source from Theage.com.au