Data Cities

On 5 April 2010, Rio de Janeiro was hit by extreme weather: a storm swept through the streets and as much rain fell in twelve hours as normally falls in an entire month. The death toll was 212. Around 3,000 firefighters and 4,000 employees of the city’s cleansing department did their best to get the catastrophe under control. They succeeded, but it took them several days to do so. The whole of Rio de Janeiro was left in a state of shock. The city swore that it would never again allow a storm to take it by surprise. From that moment on, the city would need to be better prepared and better able to react faster.

Mayor Eduardo Paes approached the technology giant IBM and asked them to develop a system that could improve the city’s ability to resist extreme weather conditions. This led to the establishment of the Centro de Operações Rio de Janeiro (COR). This control centre collects and visualises data from all urban infrastructures and analyses it in real time. A so-called mapping system records a wide variety of geodata – such as the course of traffic flows or the exact positioning of the Municipal Civil Guards. In this way, the COR enables the coordination of the operating procedures of the municipal companies. In the event of a disaster, the COR can alert citizens and coordinate civil defence measures.

A role model for other cities

In the meantime, the COR has become an indispensable part of the city’s everyday life. It operates seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Around 400 employees from 32 municipal authorities and companies exchange information about their capacities and the latter’s distribution. More than 800 cameras throughout the city enable COR staff quickly to locate incidents such as power outages. The COR also interacts with Rio’s inhabitants: by means of four-minute live broadcasts embedded in the popular morning TV show “Bom Dia Brazil”, it provides them with up-to-date information about the latest developments. Social media channels are also used to address citizens and get them involved – the Instagram account alone has received almost 5,000 posts and has nearly 94,000 followers, while the Facebook account has just under 430,000 subscribers.

In short: the COR has turned Rio de Janeiro into a digital city – and it is by no means the only one in the world. Let’s take Dublin: the Irish capital collects vast amounts of data within its municipal area – with the help of cameras and sensors, but also by using constantly updated statistics from authorities such as Eurostat and Dublin City Council. The entirety of the collected data is then bundled and evaluated on the so-called “Dublin Dashboard”.

Dublin Dashboard and New Songdo City

The Dublin Dashboard is an important tool for the city authorities and administration. Dubliners too can access the platform directly online at any time. Among other information, the dashboard provides graphics on Dublin’s unemployment figures, what the city’s inhabitants are spending their money on, and which shopping centres are open at any given time. It also shows the current availability of spaces in public car parks, as well as how much driving time you need to plan in for certain routes – and those interested can even view everything directly and in real time via live cam.

South Korea’s New Songdo City has taken things even further: located near the capital Seoul, the business district has been built from scratch since 2003 – and is expected to be completed and fully networked no later than 2020. Each of the envisaged 70,000 inhabitants is to receive a personalised chip card that they can use for various purposes: as a means of payment, as well as for health care services and for access to their own homes.

The inhabitants of New Songdo City can either shop at video kiosks or directly via the Internet; they can also communicate a lot with each other online, for example in special neighbourhood forums. But that’s by no means everything that New Songdo City has to offer in terms of digitalisation: cameras, chips and sensors have been installed throughout the city. They collect data and send it to a municipal control centre for analysis.

This data provides the administrators of New Songdo City with answers to important questions such as: in which room of a house are the residents to be found at any given moment so that the heating can be turned up to meet their needs? Which neighbourhoods are deserted so that the street lighting can be switched off there? And where are burglars currently breaking into houses so that a police patrol can be sent to catch them? All these features have been implemented to save resources and energy. Compared to non-digital cities, New Songdo City consumes up to 30 percent fewer resources.

Vienna, Barcelona, Boston: everyone wants to participate

Many other big cities want to make use of the new technological possibilities – and, to varying degrees, they’re doing so already.

Barcelona: data from all of the city’s so-called smart services are collected in a network. In addition, in close cooperation with its citizens, the city promotes innovative projects.

Vienna: in Aspern near Vienna, a completely new and especially energy-efficient quarter has been developed on the drawing board and is currently being turned into reality.

Boston: the CityScore dashboard is updated daily and shows the extent to which the city is achieving its goals. The score is based on data from 24 different categories – from the crime rate to WiFi availability.

These cities, and many others, are hoping to make urban processes better manageable, to use resources more efficiently and in a more targeted manner, and to improve basic services. In short, they want to use digitalisation to enable more sustainable and safer lives for their inhabitants.

What happens with the data?

And is it all really that simple? While policy-makers in particular in many cities are highly enthusiastic, only 57 percent of all German citizens can imagine themselves living in a city with more digital features. And there are also some misgivings: data provided by the smart city could lead to surveillance or could even be hacked. And what about people who use only a few of the available technologies? Would they be left behind? And there are other concerns too.

For instance: by allowing such a high degree of digitalisation, wouldn’t we be entrusting too much to big technology companies who are probably more concerned about their own profits than about the well-being of the affected citizens? And wouldn’t this also entail an outsourcing of municipal tasks to private companies? Adam Greenfield, for example, a renowned critic of the smart city concept, believes that smart cities are a goal that is being pursued solely by large corporations, rather than an idea that has emerged from individual parties or people who are “recognised for their contribution to urban planning”. In fact, none of these concerns can be simply dismissed out of hand.

With transparency into the future

In China, too, data is collected – and it is precisely this collected data that cities then use for an almost complete surveillance of their inhabitants – by means of the so-called “social points system”. This system registers in detail what each individual does – and when and how he or she does it. What do people buy, when and where do they buy it, and for how much? How do people live? Do they pay their bills regularly? What do they post in online forums? And do they perhaps express negative thoughts about the government?

For everything they do, people are then awarded points; those with a high score are rewarded – and those with a low score punished. For example, they could be prevented from purchasing plane tickets or their children might only be allowed to attend certain schools. Undoubtedly, restrictions such as these are causing concern and ensuring that the smart cities that have emerged entirely from the drawing board – such as Korea’s New Songdo City – are only hesitantly accepted by the citizens.

Proponents and planners of smart cities must face up to all of these concerns: they need to keep putting themselves under the microscope. In addition, they need to explain exactly how they’re working and what they’re doing or not doing. If the entire process is made transparent, the increased digitalisation of cities could be a way to make urban life more sustainable and safer.