Information Systems for Solving Wicked Urban Problems

Information Systems for SolvingWicked Urban ProblemsRobert Goodspeed MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning October 7, 2011 Urban Systems CollaboraDve Seminar Audio online at: urbansystemscollaboraDve.org

Outline1.  Can the city system be opDmized? The case of metropolitan Boston 2.  What informaDon systems should we build to solve wicked urban problems?

Can the city system be optimized?IBM Rio Operations Center Conceptual Drawing of “City Planning Center”“Smarter Cities are urban areas that exploit From Melvin Branch’s 1981 book “Continuous Cityoperational data, such as that arising from traffic Planning: Integrating municipal management and citycongestion, power consumption statistics, and planning”public safety events, to optimize the operation ofcity services.” (Harrison et al 2010)Image Source:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ibm_media/5299500003/

Source: Savas, ES. 1970. “Cybernetics in City Hall.” Science 168 (3935):1066.

Dynamics of city governmentSource: City of Boston

Goal setting Who has the legitimacy to set goals? What if they disagree? Goal Stakeholders Source of Legitimacy Dilemmas Multiple levels ofElected Officials Democracy (elections) government Should there be limits?Experts Professional Which professions?Residents Personal Which residents?Committees, commissions, Member identities How should they beboards, etc. Group activities involved?

Structure of government and service deliveryPower fragmented across the metropolis Source: Map by author using MAPC MetroBoston•  101 municipalities Datacommon (metrobostondatacommon.org)•  Myriad of public and private agencies –  Transit: MBTA, private, city –  Sewer: MWRA, munis, private –  Electrical: Nstar, National Grid, munis –  Rail: Amtrak, freight companies –  Roads: MassDOT, DCR, municipalitiesPowers restricted by state law –  E.g., cannot create new taxesPower fragmented within city hall•  Multiple departments, agencies, advisory committees•  Separation of powers – city council

Administration ORGANIZATION OF CITY GOVERNMENT Non- Mayoral City Clerk Office of the Mayor CITIZENS OF BOSTON (appointed by City Council) Chief of Staff (1) Intergovernmental Corporation Counsel (1) Relations City Council Office of Emergency Neighborhood Services (elected position) Preparedness (1) Office of New Bostonians Chief of Policy and Mayor Office of Public Information Finance Commission Planning (1) (appointed by Governor) Licensing Board (appointed by Governor) Office of the Chief Operating Officer Chief Operating Officer Boston Public Library Labor Relations Graphic Arts Human Resources Management & Information Services Registry Division Housing & Public Health Public Works & Economic Environment and Education Finance Public Safety Public Property Human Services Neighborhood Commission (2) Transportation Development Energy Development Boston Property &Boston Public Assessing Fire Public Works Redevelopment Neighborhood Boston Housing Construction Environment Civil Rights Schools Authority* Authority/Economic Development Management Development Industrial Auditing Police Transportation Commission * Open Space Planning Boston Centers for Parks & Recreation (3) Youth & Families Boston Residents Budget Management Job Policy Office Consumer Affairs & Elderly Commission Inspectional Services Licensing Small & Local Purchasing Business E nterprise Arts, Tourism & Veterans Services Office Special Events Emergency Shelter Treasury Elections Womens Commission Retirement Board * Where is the control center? * Not In Operating Budget Youth Fund (1) Has cabinet rank. (2) The Boston Public Health Commission is an indepe ndent authority created in June 1996. Do all departments (3) Programmatically within this cabinet; financially in Parks & Recreation share the same goals?

Source: NASA GSF GOES Project/NASA Earth Observatory (Irene)Disturbances http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=51899 Unpredictable, unprecedented Exogenous forces: economic shiRs, climate change, gas prices

Source: Flickr/Evan Leeson http://www.flickr.com/photos/ecstaticist/3423689554/Can the city be modeled asa complex system?•  Natural and physical systems•  Human behavior •  Poorly described by any theory •  Complex interactions•  Subject to exogenous forces•  Highly stochastic

Simulation UsefulCritique of urban models:•  Not practical for real-life•  Not rigorous enough for researchLee’s Seven Sins:(still a major problem = ✔)–  Hypercomprehensiveness ✔–  Grossness–  Hungriness–  Wrongheadedness ✔–  Complicatedness ✔–  Mechanicalness ✔ Allocation modeling makes many assumptions to find useful–  Expensiveness ✔ results. Image: Lulu Xue for MIT Class 11.951, M. Flaxman, Simulating Sustainable Futures, Fall 2008.“Build only simply models”Source: Lee (1974, 1993)

Information FeedbackPractical•  Dumb systems, lack of dataInstitutional•  Systems in silos within and between governments (Ferreira and Evans 1995)Theoretical•  Data we have like trace measures The City of Boston crime tracking system is may not measure what we want to not easily available to other departments, or the public. Image source: City of Boston know (Webb 2000)

OK, opDmizaDon and real-‐Dme control is hard but important for some things such as crisis response and urban service delivery. What it can achieve is fundamentally limited by legal, poliDcal, and pracDcal consideraDons. What informaDon systems do we need to tackle the really big problems?

What is a ‘Wicked’ Problem? Rittel and Webber (1973) Poorly Defined Complex context Many stakeholders involved Solutions require design Decisions require weighing Long time horizons and analysis value trade-offsExamples:How should our city grow? How can we improve equity? How do we create jobs?

Can they be tackled? Yes! Analytic-Deliberative-Design ProcessesSource: Faga 2006

What information systems do we need? •  Public informaDon collecDon and access •  Public and private data infrastructures •  Public measurement systems •  DeliberaDve analysis and modeling •  Enhanced access to analysis skills, improved modeling methods •  Federated modeling systems •  Process support •  ParDcipaDon technology •  Knowledge and process management

Public information collection and access systems (designed with humanist values)•  Public and private data infrastructures •  SpaDal data infrastructure •  Data portals and APIs •  Public measurement systems •  Crowdsourced datasets •  Volunteered geographic informaDon •  Humanist values •  Security (Supply and Demand) •  Privacy (Fair InformaDon PracDces) Functional view of SDI •  Democracy •  Others?

ExamplesShort-term Public Value•  Useful apps•  Access to government services•  Crisis mapping/emergency responseLong-term Public Value•  Open innovation•  Operational improvements•  Research uses•  Policy and planning monitoring and analysis

Deliberative Analysis•  All stakeholders should be able to create, critique, and understand models (NOT everyone – sociotechnical perspective)•  Goal is improved ability to use them to test alternatives, evaluate policies•  Most tools still expensive “black boxes” even for appropriate users •  E.g., GIS-based tools, Transportation models•  Developments: •  XML for planning analytics (Singh 2003) •  Envision Tomorrow going open source? •  Lincoln Institute open source tools book Source: Fregonese Associates

Process Support •  Analytic •  Spreadsheets, GIS, models •  Deliberative Management Planning Systems Tools •  Forums, polling, surveys, websites •  Design •  GIS, Sketchup, Design softwareSystem Inside Outside Example Government GovernmentGIS Operational needs, Various ESRI ArcSDE mapping & analysisProject Tracking Project Transparency Paladin Data Management SystemsPermitting Business process Monitoring and management indicatorsPlan creation Document Commenting and Limehouse management feedback Software

Public Citizen/employee Stakeholderknowledge Accessmanagement Information System (web-based) Paladin Data Systems – Mukilteo, Washington

How to move forward?•  Design science research methodology •  “If the tool is all there is, the level of knowledge is that of a craft-based discipline” (Gregor and Jones 2007) •  “scientific” approach to technology development •  Kernel social science theories applied to guide problem solving technology•  Information system development methods •  Zachman framework

Information Systems for Solving Wicked Problems Public Information Deliberative Analysis Process Support Collection and Access and Modeling•  City data portals •  Improved methods and models •  Participation technology•  Crowdsourcing systems for •  Focus on transparency and •  Improved understanding of needed information accessibility of assumptions integration of existing tools•  Spatial data infrastructure •  Multiple models •  Process evaluation

Works CitedBranch, Melville Campbell. 1981. Continuous city planning : integrating municipal management and city planning. New York: Wiley.Box, George E.P. "Robustness in the Strategy of Scientific Model Building" (May 1979) in Robustness in Statistics: Proceedings of a Workshop (1979) edited by RL Launer and GN WilkinsonEvans, John, and Joseph Ferreira. 1995. Sharing Spatial Information in an Imperfect World: Interactions Between Technical and Organizaitonal Issues. In Sharing Geographic Information, edited by H. Onsrud and G. Rushton. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research.Faga, Barbara. 2006. Designing public consensus : the civic theater of community participation for architects, landscape architects, planners, and urban designers. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley.Goodspeed, Robert. 2010. Open Government Strategy for the City of Boston.Harrison, C., B. Eckman, R. Hamilton, P. Hartswick, J. Kalagnanam, J. Paraszczak, and P. Williams. 2010. Foundations for Smarter Cities. IBM Journal of Research and Development 54 (4):1-16.Lee, Douglass B. 1973. Requiem for Large-Scale Models. Journal of the American Planning Association 39 (3):163.Lee, Douglass B. 1994. Retrospective on Large-Scale Urban Models. Journal of the American Planning Association 60 (1):35.Rittel, HWJ, and MM Webber. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy sciences 4 (2):155-169.Savas, ES. 1970. Cybernetics in City Hall. Science 168 (3935):1066.Singh, Raj. 2003. Speaking the Same Language: Using XML for Distributed and Collaborative Planning Analysis and Modeling. In ACSP/AESOP.Webb, Eugene J. 2000. Unobtrusive measures. Rev. ed, Sage classics series. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.Wiener, Norbert. 1965. Cybernetics : or, Control and communication in the animal and the machine. 2d ed, The M I T paperback series,. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press.

Discussion Robert Goodspeed MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning web.mit.edu/rgoodspe/www/ rob.goodspeed@gmail.com Twitter: @rgoodspeed

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Information Systems for Solving Wicked Urban Problems

by Robert Goodspeed

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