Connectivity is the foundational promise of smart cities, allowing various objects like sensors to generate data and interconnect. While this data can automate processes and guide actions, it must be interpreted carefully and with consideration for privacy and security. True smart city connectivity requires determining what issues data can address, ensuring open and interoperable data that empowers communities, and balancing data sharing with necessary privacy protections. Examples show how infrastructure and partnerships between public and private groups can build connectivity from existing resources like personal devices or open data platforms.

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Connectivity is the foundational promise of the smart city. Although cities across the globe
define "smart" targets and aim to reach them in different ways, underlying the very idea of
“smart” are arrays of interconnected objects generating data on everything from traffic flows
and transactions to air quality and water use. Conventional brick-and-mortar cities are
overlaid by sensors, computing devices, and software which automate both processes (like
dispatching packages) and data collection.
“Look in your pocket,” , “You already own a smart-city
construction kit… You are no longer just a cog in a vast machine. You are part of the mind
of the smart city itself. And that gives you power to shape the future.”
exhorts author Anthony Townsend
IC
@UXTrendpotting
ix Notes for mart
Cit Futures
Note 1: CONNCTIVITY

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Central though human agents are to the emergence of the smart city, we are hardly its only
nodes. "Things" in the IoT can refer to heart monitoring implants in humans, biochip
transponders on farm animals, , smartphones, pigeons
equipped with telematics, GPS devices, and environmental sensors, home appliances with
sensors using wi-fi for remote monitoring, and much more. Each is a mashup of hardware,
software, data, and services. Connectivity brings such objects into conversation with one-
another via the internet, and releases a constant flow of numerical data: frequencies,
measurements, readings, locations, amounts, and more.
electric clams in coastal waters
"It is getting difficult," says Geoffrey Bowker in , "to walk the
streets of a major city without having one's progress captured by some hidden gatekeeping
device. It is getting difficult for trees to fall in forests without nonhuman observers… [Data
is] stored in thousands of virtual locations [and as] that data is reworked, processed through
an online algorithm or spat out to somewhere and somewhen to the computer screen of a
vigilant operator, my possibilities for action are being shaped…"
Raw Data is an Oxymoron

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And yet, as the authors of the 2014 volume warn, our collective
zeal for data must not become “a faith in their neutrality and autonomy.” “Data” is not the
pre-analytical information we often take it to be, but itself already an interpretation. What
environmental data the electric clamshell or the pigeon returns depends on what we send it
to collect—and what we think it can tell us. Mental disorders and complex relationships can
be represented by just their measurable effects—raising legitimate questions about the
sufficiency of these pictures. For, as , “for Big Data to be analyzable, it must
use normalizing, standardizing, defining, clustering, all processes that strips the data set of
context, meaning, and stories.”
Raw Data is an Oxymoron
Tricia Wang adds
The availability of data does not make research any the easier, but in fact
. We need to continue asking what it means to know a city through data, in what
efforts data can support us and where it might fail us, and from where we might seek the
best data to answer our most pressing questions and guide our actions.
throws up new
challenges
Unsplash, Jeremy Thomas

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We thus take connectivity to refer to the infrastructure that allows things to generate
data the resulting frameworks for interpretation and action. Smart City aspirants will
need to consider three key areas to realize the promise of Connectivity:
both
and
1. How will we determine the issues which can be addressed by data? How will we build up
the infrastructure to generate the data we need? How will we assess the impact of these?
2. How will we ensure the openness of data – or allow for the data generated to be open to
further (multiple, contested) interpretations? How will we enable data to guide action and
empowerment?
3. With the open-ness of data come risks to privacy and security. Un-addressed, these can
cause panic, harm, and a loss of trust in the very public processes which enable
infrastructure-building and data generation. How will we when we
need it, and cordon data sharing at other times?
ensure interoperability

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While street lights may to increase
internet penetration, where would we begin to place sensors?
provide an already-established physical infrastructure
"An ideal beginning," , “is to leverage the growing array of smart
personal devices we all wield and recruit people as the sensors of a city rather than relying
only on formal systems embedded into infrastructure.”
say Ratti and Townsend
“The traffic function on Google Maps is a good example. Instead of building a costly
network of dedicated vehicle sensors along roadways, Google constantly polls a large
network of anonymous volunteers whose mobile devices report their up-to-the-minute
status, which reveals where traffic is flowing, slowed or stopped. The information is delivered
to drivers via mobile mapping applications in various ways—as colored overlays indicating
traffic speeds, as estimated driving times that account for delays or as a factor in determining
mart cit connectivit in
most cities will emerge
from what is alread there.

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alternative routes. These handy data allow users to see the circulatory network of the city in
real time and to understand the constantly changing cost in time of getting from point A to
point B.” ( )
Ratti and Townsend, , 2011
Scientific American
Take the case of Estonia. Effectively a "disconnected" society in the early 2000s, two
interlinked initiatives built the sort of backbone that smart cities would also need:
. The
initiative backed by a consortium of banking and telecom industries, as part of their CSR
and because their services increasingly relied on internet use.
Look@World sought to bring Estonia's internet penetration on par with Finland
Unsplash, Mika Ruusunen
Political will is needed,
ut the infrastructure for
connectivit
can also emerge from
strong pulic-private
collaorations

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for residents, public
institutions, and private companies. Information sharing enabled services which people
could access with e-IDs—and do everything from filing taxes to viewing medical records,
starting a company, transferring automobile titles and voting.
X-Road then became a secure and transparent data exchange
Crucially, individuals could also see who held and accessed their information: a strong
transparency policy was key to trust-building and uptake.
-governance means connecting people to open data sources and
setting up springoards for innovation
is an open platform for the collection, analysis, and distribution of realtime
data that describe local urban dynamics—data generated by communications devices,
microcontrollers and sensors in multiple networks. It creates the space for developers to
Live Singapore!

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build multiple applications to realize the value of this real-time data: giving "data back to the
people who themselves generate it through their actions, allowing them to be more in sync
with their environment as well as to taking decisions on the basis of information that reflect
the actual state of their city." Examples include: apps that tell commuters how they can reach
their homes fastest, how residents can reduce their neighborhood's energy consumption, or
how to find a cab when a rainstorm is crossing the island.
People can also tell us what data the need—and determine how to use
it
P-Tracking or Participatory Tracking is a World Bank project
in Tamil Nadu, India where researchers worked with local networks of women and self-help
groups to
What does "well being" mean?
1, determine (such as: do you get to choose your
clothing, who gets to decide when to visit your parents' home, and was your marriage
consensual?)
indicators for measuring well-being
and
2, to so that it is both and a
comprehensible framework for further action
visualize the results accessible to local community users
Broken Toilets, Radhika Vishwanathan

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Democratizing Data to Empower Communities
World Bank, Participatory Tracking

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Communities can push to make more informed decisions—for more
open data
is an open data civil
society organization which partnered with the
: a website which provides easy-to-comprehend, searchable and visualized
infographics based on open government health data.
Datos Abiertos, Transparencia y Acceso a la Inform (DATA) Uruguay
Uruguayan Ministry of Health to create A Tu
Servicio
The project is a collaboration between civil society, media, health care data providers, and
government. It enables Uruguayan citizens to make data-driven, informed decisions on
choosing health care providers—thereby cutting through corrupt and monopolizing
practices of big healthcare providers.
As the tool came into wide use, (such as the number
of births by cesarean section) from the government: information not public by default. The
community push for open data lead to the finding that
.
DATA could request more information
local C-section rates were 44%
beyond WHO recommendations
It's not enough to sa
we're connected. We have
to measure openness,
accessiilit, and impact.

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How accessible is the data released by governments to civil society, media, and citizens? The
examines the claims of governments to openness, by measuring
and benchmarking the openness of data around the world. It produces an annual peer-
reviewed ranking of countries.
Global Open Data Index
The "aims to uncover the true prevalence and impact of open data
initiatives around the world" via analyses of global trends, comparative data on countries and
regions, contextual data, technical assessments and secondary indicators. The ODB ranks
nations on readiness, implementation, and impact.
Open Data Barometer
, "When I retired as professor, the mayor sent me a letter saying that the
politicians wouldn't have dared to make Copenhagen the most livable city without our
documentation of how people used the city. Being able to document how people use the city
in exactly the same way that traffic engineers document how the traffic works in a city has
been a very strong strategy. The minute you have the data—the base study—you can ask
questions about how things are vs. how they should be, make comparisons with other cities,
and start a process of change. Five or ten years later, you can measure improvements—that
there are more people in public spaces and that they are more happier—which pleases the
politicians and sometimes motivates them to work harder and faster than without the data.
In Copenhagen, we found that the data over 40 years time was like strong medicine,
influencing the way the city is planned and how they talk about its public life."
Says Jan Gehl
Unsplash, Scott Webb
accessiilit, and impact.

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To draw out the contours of what the "smart city" is and could yet become, we offer six core
notes by which the "expressive, cognitive, and imaginative possibilities" of the city in the age
of data may be realized—six promises to guide the way to improved urban futures:
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
Subsequent notes will be released in serialized form throughout November 2016. We invite
you to join us in our quest to re-imagine the city and our shared urban futures through the
data we collect.
Introduction
Connectivity
Inclusivity
Responsivity
Heritage
Mobility
Sustainability
Have an example or an idea of how data can be used to address urban dilemmas and build
brighter urban futures? Share it with us on our
UX Trendspotting page.
Unsplash, Linh Nguyen

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Deepa S Reddy, Anand Vijayan, and Tushar Jain, for the
at
Report authors: Institute of
Customer Experience Human Factors International
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