For much of the last century, our working lives have been dominated by the 9-to-5 grind. Recent research has broken this down in numbers – highlighting how much time we spend in the office, commuting or waiting for the kettle to boil.

While the research data is more than a little depressing in terms of what it means for our work-life balance, the advent of new technology is evolving the way we approach work, so those numbers look set to be transformed.

Allowing for holidays, the average office worker will spend 82,068 hours at work over their lifetime
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Time in the Office

A huge amount of your life is likely to be spent in the workplace. Allowing for holidays, the average office worker will spend 82,068 hours at work over their lifetime, which amounts to 3,420 days or 9.4 years based on a working week of 35 hours. Yet new tech developments will see the time you actually spend in the workplace drop over the next few years, with remote working and working from home becoming more commonplace.

New tech developments will see the time you actually spend in the workplace drop over the next few years, with remote working and working from home becoming more commonplace
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The major barrier to remote working has historically been the struggle to maintain communication between staff if they are working at separate locations. New communications technology has largely overcome this challenge, with email, conference calling, video conferencing and instant messaging all allowing employees to stay connected even when they are miles apart.

Even after the rise of e-communications, there were still problems with regularly working from home. Sharing and accessing any files needed to finish work was difficult to accomplish securely from a remote location. Portable equipment, such as tablets and laptops, combined with file sharing applications like Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox have enabled even small businesses to empower their employees to work remotely.

The major barrier to remote working has been the struggle to maintain communication between staff working at separate locations
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For large or more established businesses, a virtual private network (VPN) further improves the ability of employees to work from home. A VPN allows authorised users to access a company’s network from an approved machine. It means that workers are able to work on up-to-date documents and immediately share them with colleagues.

The result of these developments will see a severe reduction in the number of hours spent in the office for a lot of workers. Some studies predict as much as 75% of work across the US will be carried out remotely by 2020. Figures are similar for the UK, with research showing that if flexi- and remote working options continue to grow at their current rate, over 50% of the country’s work force will be working remotely by 2020. You can find more information about ways to defend your sleep as a freelancer in this handy remote working guide from sleepadvisor.org.

Portable equipment, such as tablets and laptops, combined with file sharing applications like Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox have enabled even small businesses to empower their employees to work remotely
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The Future of Commuting

No longer having to journey daily to and from the office will significantly reduce the hours spent commuting. Currently, the average UK worker will travel 216,932 miles commuting over the course of their life – a distance which would get you 91% of the way to the moon.

As much as 75% of work in the US will be carried out remotely by 2020
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In addition to this mileage being sliced, with working from home doing away with much commuting time, new developments in transport will also transform our journeys to and from work.

With the advent of driverless cars, the commute can be transformed from time spent frustrated at the wheel to additional opportunity for working remotely. Being able to work on the commute, using a laptop, a 4G dongle and your company’s VPN, will lessen the time spent away from home every day, as you can get started on the day’s work whilst travelling.

Currently, the average UK worker will travel 216,932 miles commuting over the course of their life
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Although driverless cars are still a long way from being the norm, they are now in the advanced stages of testing, and have been out on the roads in both the UK and USA. They may become commonplace in time to make an impact on your working life.

The Cost of Commuting

Not only will the time and length of commuting be cut by new technology, it is also likely to have an impact on the cost of your journey to work. Currently driving a car to and from work throughout your working life costs £19,444 in fuel. With sales of diesel and petrol vehicles set to banned by 2040, this cost is going to change.

Driving to and from work throughout your working life costs £19,444 in fuel
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Electric alternatives to petrol and diesel cars will see expenses for powering your car drop significantly. To charge an electric car to travel 115 miles will cost you £3.64. Over the course of your working life, where you will journey an average of 216,932 miles, this amounts to just £6,677 – a two thirds (66%) saving compared to petrol and diesel cars.

From this data we see that technology will bring more change to our working life, but these changes look like they will be for the better – giving people greater freedom to choose their working environment and cutting down on commuting time and costs.

If flexi and remote working options continue to grow at their current rate, over 50% of the UK's work force will be working remotely by 2020
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Alice Bonasio is a VR and Digital Transformation Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio on Twitter.

The post Infographic: A Lifetime of Work in Numbers appeared first on Tech Trends.

How the Netherlands is futureproofing its transport technology strategy and infrastructure by looking at the bigger picture.

The problem of moving people around efficiently is a bit of a ticking time bomb. The global population continues to grow and concentrate in already overcrowded urban centres. Add to this the fact that we’re all getting older and living longer, and the urgent need to cut down carbon emissions, and we’ve got a serious challenge on our hands. Technology will no doubt play a huge role in addressing that problem, but many of the people working on that at the moment are not doing so from Silicon Valley, but in Holland.

The problem of sustainable and efficient mobility is a big global challenge
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It will probably surprise nobody to learn that the Netherlands has the highest bicycle usage rates in the world. Much less known, however, is the fact that they also have a long and proud history of pioneering automated driving technology going back to 1995, or that its electric bus manufacturers are thriving due to the government’s directive that by 2025 every public transport vehicle sold in the country will have to be zero-emission.

I learned all this while touring Holland last month as a guest of the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, who were keen to show off their innovation in the area of automotive technology and mobility.

As is always the case with such trips, you take everything you’re told with a healthy grain of salt, but at the end of a rather gruelling 3-day trip (the Dutch don’t believe in over-pampering journalists and even my jet-lagged American colleagues were held to strict 7:30am starts) I was still left rather impressed.

It wasn’t any one particular company or technology that stood out, however, but the way that everyone I met seemed to be so focused on how it all fit together into long-term and sustainable strategies. Much of the focus where it comes to smart mobility tends to be on the “sexier” tech of self-driving cars – it is, after all, as one of our hosts put it, “the first large-scale deployment of robotics in a society at large in human history” but that’s only part of the picture.

As vehicles become smarter, they will communicate with other vehicles and road devices
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Because as vehicles become smarter and more automated, there will also be advances in data communication between cars on the road and between cars and roadside installations. In other words, there is a need to teach those “autonomous” cars to take into account real-time data about their surroundings and other vehicles.

Automated driving in real life should take into account the role of data, object detection and social driving. These are all incredibly complex things to try and teach a machine, says Robbert Lohman from a start-up called 2getthere, which works on automated transit applications ranging from Automated People Movers to Shared Autonomous Vehicles.

The Netherlands believes that by introducing cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) and focusing on infrastructure rather than just vehicles, they will be able to significantly improve traffic flows in terms of safety, efficiency and environmental impact, as well as boosting their competitiveness in terms of job opportunities and economic growth.

Economies of scale quickly add up when looking at broader infrastructure
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And when you start looking at whole infrastructure solutions, the economies of scale quickly start adding up in seemingly unlikely places. Take Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) Platooning, for example. This is the practice whereby automated/self-driving technology can be applied so that several trucks can follow one another along a road. By keeping a steady speed and very short distance from one another, they reduce factors such as wind resistance, and manage to significantly reduce fuel consumption as well as dramatically improve safety.

“I expect that our children will live in a world where humans are not allowed to drive. 1.2 million deaths are caused by traffic accidents every year. 95% of those are due to human error,” said Professor Maarten Steinbuch at TU Eindhoven University during a demonstration at the Automotive Engineering Science (AES) Laboratory.

At the Research Automated Driving Delft RADD – a facility enabled by cooperation between governments, knowledge institutions, and small and mid-size business entrepreneurs – I saw what that might look like in practice. The WEpod has been operational since early 2016 is one of the first real-life projects on automated driving in the Netherlands, the first of its kind to be allowed to operate on public roads among normal traffic. The next phase of the project will now cross the border towards Germany, explains Project Leader Jan Willem van der Wiel.

The Netherlands employs an approach of learning by doing
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One key strategic advantage the Netherlands has is that it is small enough so that looking at holistically implementing innovations over the entire country’s infrastructure is a much more practical proposition than in countries like the US, where you’re dealing with much broader territories and regulatory variations.

This, together with the fact that Dutch infrastructure is among the best in Europe (the entire country has 4G coverage) makes it an ideal test bed for piloting ambitious mobility tech. A sort of controlled “living lab” microcosm that allows for reliable real-world data capture.

According to Edwin Nas from the Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and The Environment, the belief is that the Dutch “learning by doing” approach gives the country an edge by allowing them to iterate and adjust systems, adapting both domestic and international legislation to the landscape as it evolves.

There is also, he adds, a culture of collaboration both within Holland and at a European and Global level. A coordinated approach at a European level and closer cooperation between governments and stakeholders is needed for these innovative systems to reach market, he concludes.

The Research pipeline is closely integrated into the broader strategic vision too, with many independent and industry-backed R&D hubs such as the Holst Centre developing wireless sensor technologies, and an impressive crop of students achieving remarkable success in international competitions that push experimental and bleeding-edge technologies.

The Research pipeline is closely integrated into the broader strategic vision
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Zuyd University’s Project Fuze, for example, are engineering a 3D-printed race car for Formula Student races in order to demonstrate how it is possible to build lighter and sustainable vehicles without compromising safety, while the Delft Hyperloop team won Elon Musk’s global competition to develop a prototype for an ultra high-speed train system that will in theory allow travellers to go from London to Edinburgh in under 30 minutes. Now the Hardt Hyperloop is working with some of Holland’s largest corporations to develop what they hope will be the world’s first commercial Hyperloop route.

Sustainability is also a big part of the Dutch mobility equation
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Sustainability is also a big part of that overall equation, and various companies are working on the problem of lowering emissions from different angles. Solliance is developing next-generation solar cells, for example, and Eurocarbon produces composite materials from fibres such as glass, aramid carbon and thermoplastics which are up to 50% lighter than steel, and provide up to 40% saving in energy consumption, again without compromising on strength and safety.

This agenda of connecting expertise to improve mobility in a sustainable and socially responsible way is supported by several organisations at a national and local level. Connekt is an independent network which brings together members from across the private sector, academia, public interest groups and government to promote smart, sustainable and social mobility, while the last stop on our tour – Amsterdam Smart City connects communities to share expertise and kick-start projects that futureproof the country’s capital.

And it’s in Amsterdam that some of the most interesting experiments in integrating different solutions into a holistic framework are being rolled out. The idea of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) essentially involves the use of a unified software platform to manage resources so that both individual and collective transport needs are met seamlessly, and with little or no waste of resources.

Mobility as a Service could become a widespread model for city mobility
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Companies like Next Urban Mobility want to create hubs which integrate use of cars, bikes, public transport and delivery services in intelligent and data-driven ways. Their ambition is to be a sort of “Netflix for transportation” providing on-demand services as and when users want it. The reasoning behind this is that – just as most of us would now rather stream content rather than having hundreds of DVD and Blu-rays gathering dust on our shelves – the next generation will probably wonder how anybody could ever justify having a car that’s only used every two weeks or so, as is the case with the average Amsterdam car owner.

As I flew back to the UK – once again thinking glumly of Brexit as I glanced at the “EU passport holders” sign at the airport – my head was spinning from information overload, and I couldn’t quite decide whether this all made perfect sense or if the vision Holland is aiming for was a crazily ambitious pipe dream.

Wasn’t this a case of – to again borrow a popular Brexit analogy – “having your cake and eating it?” Pulling off such a nationwide smart mobility plan would, according to most people I spoke to, eventually deliver an infrastructure where all their citizen’s transportation needs would be met much more quickly, cheaply and safely – all the while advancing science and technology, protecting the environment and contributing to boosting the domestic, regional and global economy.

But I suppose for a country that has more than its fair share of tall good-looking people that speak four or five languages fluently, that might not seem like such a strange thing after all. The Dutch personality combines the practical bend of the Germans with a dose of daredevil craziness, which means they’re often game for experimenting with new things. And since leaps of innovation rarely happen without some degree of risk, they might be onto something.

This article was originally published on The Next Web

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Alice Bonasio is a VR Consultant and Tech Trends’ Editor in Chief. She also regularly writes for Fast Company, Ars Technica, Quartz, Wired and others. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow @alicebonasio and @techtrends_tech on Twitter.

The post Intelligent Mobility Goes Beyond Driverless Cars appeared first on Tech Trends.