The Smart City and data sovereignty

By inserting sensors across city infrastructures and creating new data sources - including citizens via their mobile devices

The Smart City is an alluring prospect for many city leaders. Even if you haven’t heard of it, you may have already joined in by looking up bus movements on your phone, accessing Council services online or learning about air contamination levels. By inserting sensors across city infrastructures and creating new data sources - including citizens via their mobile devices. Smart City managers can apply Big Data analysis to monitor and anticipate urban phenomena in new ways.The EU cities are opening their digital platforms to greater citizen participation and oversight. Worried that the city’s knowledge was being ceded to tech vendors, the different councils now promotes technological sovereignty.   

Residents were learning that data is rarely neutral. The kinds of data gathered, the methods used, how it gets interpreted, what gets overlooked, the context in which it is generated, and by whom, and what to do as a result, are all choices that shape the facts of a matter. For experts building Big Data city platforms, one sensor in one square is simply a data point. On the other side of that point, however, are residents connecting that data to life in all its richness in their cities.

Source: The Guardian