Big data and smart cities: Key data issues

Prof. Rob Kitchin

NIRSA , Maynooth University

Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie @robkitchin

Big data and smart citiesKey data issues

Government Data Forum, 14 July 2015

Urban big data

• Directedo Surveillance: CCTV,

drones/satelliteo Scaled public admin records

• Automatedo Automated surveillanceo Digital deviceso Sensed and scanned data o Interaction and transactional datao IoT (Internet of things) and M2M

(machine to machine)

• Volunteered o Social mediao Sousveillance/wearableso Crowdsourcingo Citizen science

Data-driven urbanism

Single systems

Integrated, city & sector wide

Smart ...

• Economy • entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity, competiveness

• Government• e-gov, open data, transparency, accountability, evidence-

informed decision making, better service delivery• Mobility • intelligent transport systems, multi-modal inter-op, efficiency

• Environment• green energy, sustainability, resilience

• Living• quality of life, safety, security, manage risk

• People• more informed, creativity, inclusivity, empowerment,

participation

Seven critiques of smart cities

• Ahistorical, aspatial and homogenizing• The politics of urban data• Technocratic governance and solutionism• Corporatisation of governance• Buggy, brittle, hackable urban systems• Serve certain interests and reinforce

inequalities• Social, political, ethical effects

The politics of urban data

Material Platform(infrastructure – hardware)

Code Platform(operating system)

Code/algorithms (software)

Data(base)

Interface

Reception/Operation (user/usage

Systems of thought

Forms of knowledge

Finance

Political economies

Governmentalities & legalities

Organisations and institutions

Subjectivities and communities

Marketplace

System/process performs a task

Contextframes the system/task

Data assemblage

Data concerns

• Corporatisation of governance• Data ownership• Data control

• Buggy, brittle, hackable urban systems• Data security, data integrity

• Social, political, ethical effects• Data protection and privacy• Dataveillance/surveillance (anonymous vs

personalised data – ANPR, CCTV, facial recognition, travel card & bluetooth tracking, smart metering, etc)

• Data uses: Social sorting, control creep, dynamic pricing, anticipatory governance, official statistics

Technical data concerns

• Data coverage and access (openness)

• Data integration and interoperability (data standards)

• Data quality and provenance: veracity (accuracy, fidelity), uncertainty, error, bias, reliability, calibration, lineage

• Quality, veracity and transparency of data analytics

• Ecological fallacy and interpretation issues

• Skills and organisational capabilities and capacities

Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie@robkitchin

http://www.nuim.ie/progcity@progcity

Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. and McArdle, G. (2015) Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards. Regional Studies, Regional Science 2: 1-28

Kitchin, R. (2014) The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79(1): 1-14.