At first glance, Aqkol looks like most other villages in Kazakhstan today: shoddy construction, rusting metal gates and drab apartment blocks recall its Soviet past and lay bare the country’s uncertain economic future. But on the village’s outskirts, on a hill surrounded by pine trees, sits a large gray and white cube: a central nervous system connecting thousands of miles of fiber optic cables, sensors and data terminals that keeps tabs on the daily comings and goings of the village’s 13,000 inhabitants. 

This is the command center of Smart Aqkol, a pilot study in digitized urban infrastructure for Kazakhstan. When I visited, Andrey Kirpichnikov, the deputy director of Smart Aqkol, welcomed me inside. Donning a black Fila tracksuit and sneakers, the middle-aged Aqkol native scanned his face at a console that bore the logo for Hikvision, the Chinese surveillance camera manufacturer. A turnstyle gave a green glow of approval and opened, allowing us to walk through. 

“All of our staff can access the building using their unique face IDs,” Kirpichnikov told me.

He led me into a room with a large monitor displaying a schematic of the village. The data inputs and connected elements that make up Smart Aqkol draw on everything from solar panels and gas meters to GPS trackers on public service vehicles and surveillance cameras, he explained. Analysts at the command center report their findings to the mayor’s office, highlighting data on energy use, school attendance rates and evidence for police investigations.