1) The document summarizes the context, motivation, objectives, background, state of the art, fieldwork, experience, lessons learned, and open issues of an IT roles project on decarbonization for a Municipality. 2) The project aims to design and prototype a "data integration platform" to improve sustainability, mitigate climate change, and reduce emissions by integrating data from various sector-specific platforms on air quality, parking, traffic, water management, and more. 3) Fieldwork involved exploring different data source types, formats, and visualization solutions to enable technical dashboards and public summaries from the centralized data lake and APIs while managing diverse data.

1. IT roles on decarbonization
A Municipality context for City Data integration
Candidate: Pedro Pimenta
Supervisor: Alexandre Sousa
Mestrado em Tecnologias da Informação, Comunicação e Multimédia
ISMAI, Maia, December 29th, 2022
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2. Contents
•Context, Motivation and Objectives
•Background
•State of the art
•Fieldwork
•Experience and Lessons learned
•Conclusion and open issues
2

3. Context - worldwide
Climate change + need for decarbonization + GGE
Russia – Ukraine conflict (...)

National Governments / Supra-national
Cities / Urban territories (50 ~ 60% persons, ≈ 70 % energy, ¾ GGEmissions)
Companies (Industry, transportation, Services), business
The Citizen
Human
activity
3

4. Ongoing iniciatives on Sustainability / Climate Change:
• (...)
• 2016 – Plano Municipal para a Mobilidade Sustentável
• 2017 – «Projecto BaZe – Balanço Zero de carbono»
(Fundo Ambiental)
• 2020 – Plano Municipal de Adaptação às Alterações
Climáticas
4
Context – Maia Municipality
Human
activity

5. A set of multisectoral pilot-size initiatives to test new
technologies (IT based tools) aiming to improve sustainability,
mitigate climate changes and reduce GGE emissions:
- Air quality
- Street Parking
- Traffic
- Rain / irrigation water
management
- Green roof
- Mobility integration
- Electrical energy consumption
of a complex building
- Solid waste management
ICT
5
Context – BaZe – Balanço Zero de Carbono

6. BaZe challenges
• «multisectoral», «holistic», and aiming to raise citizenship awareness on
environmental and decarbonization issues.
BaZe authors were aware of a particular challenge:
• BaZe project includes a WP – WP6 - for a «data integration» platform
• BaZe Project Managers / Maia Municipality made clear that «data
integration» were a serious concern - i) internal know-how and ii)
technical limitations and iii) deficit of human resources.
6
Motivation...
ICT

7. ① Design and prototype a «data integration plataform» (WP6)
② Explore and evaluate different solutions for different needs (WP6)
③ Contribute to CMMaia awareness on the need for internalization of
IT know-how (‘IT’ DEng/DSci roles on decarbonization)
④ My own learning and development
7
... and Objectives

8. • Cities (population density) have always been the place where
innovation is more live, pervasive, notorious and impacting
on human life (public lighting, transportation, healthcare,
safety, water supply, waste management, etc...)
• In the last years, fast ICT innovation occurred essentially
outside of national / city government structures and thus
Municipalities (among others) are final clients of the
products / services (perpetual beta) provided by the
Companies.
8
Background...

9. City Managers
The market provides new technologies / services for several sectors as
independent (‘silo’ approach) key-in-hand complete solutions:
City / Territory
ICT
Air
Quality
(Prov. A)
Street
Parking
(Prov. B)
Traffic A
(Prov. C)
• Rain water /
irrigation
• Electricity
consumption
(Prov. K)
Traffic B
(Prov. D)
(...)
9
State of the Art

10. • Design and prototype a «data integration platform» (WP6)
Fieldwork – from «verticals»...
City Managers
City / Territory
ICT
Air
Quality
(Prov. A)
Street
Parking
(Prov. B)
Traffic A
(Prov. C)
• Rain water /
irrigation
• Electricity
consumption
(Prov. K)
Traffic B
(Prov. D)
(...)
ti on
gra
te
In
ta
Da

11. Fieldwork ... to «data flow»
The
«verticals»
The
Citizen
The
Municipality
③
①
②

12. new technologies / several sectors  «Verticals»:
Variety of new platforms
12
Fieldwork ... not only ‘vendor platforms’

13. Fieldwork ... but also a datalake + REST-API
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/api4gj.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/api4s.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/pqart.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/pwapi.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/scooters.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/scootersindi.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/ecoces.php
• http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/api/pwbit.php
• (...)

14. Fieldwork ... enabling ‘ad-hoc’ «tech» dashboards
http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/cverde3.htm
http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/iso37120T6.htm

15. Fieldwork ... and ‘ad-hoc’ «Public summaries»
http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/pwall2.htm (2-5) and http://baze.cm-maia.pt/BaZe/videowall/

16. Fieldwork ... and standard «data platforms»
OpenDataSoft
MangoMaps
Carto
GisCloud

17. Data Source
1
Data Source
2
Data Source ...
BaZe
database(s)
REST APIs
Open format
JSON / geoJSON / ...
OpenDataSoft
Carto
Mangomaps
GisCloud
base2b
pwall5
Data
harvesters
python / ...
BaZe datalake
geojson.io

18. • Data is / might be difficult to access – some data ‘owners’ (energy,
public transportation, official entities as Qualar) are (surprisingly ?)
not keen to share data, even with a public administration entity as
Maia Municipality [persistence and political involvement];
• Even when (eventually) I get access to the data, sometimes access is
granted to ‘platforms’ / ‘portals’, not to REST APIs [persistence and
technical involvement, data engineering];
• It’s challenging to interpret data from different sources - nature of
the date, formats, units, timestamps, need to store, process and
share [multidisciplinary team, holistic perspective];
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Experience and Lessons Learned (I)

19. • “Same data” has to be processed and shown in different ways, for
different publics, perspectives and purposes [data science and
visualization];
• Data portals and tools as opendatasoft, city-platform, carto, giscloud,
mangomaps, Power BI, etc., are powerful tools to access and interpret
data more easily [data analysts];
• Contacts with HEIs (IPMAIA, FCUP, FLUP) and a Professional School
(AECastêlo) allow me to involve student interns “Curricular
Internships” in the BaZe project [Need to partnership with Schools
and Acedmia, citizen awareness]
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Experience and Lessons Learned (II)

20. 20
Conclusion...
⓪ The role IT plays in decarbonization pathway;
① The «data integration platform» is prototyped
and running smoothly;
② Diversity is being managed:
• (Input) data sources, protocols, supports, formats, units,
contexts, time granularity, etc...
• (in between) summaries, simulation, etc..
• (output) tech dashboards, «real-time», public summaries
{portrait | landscape}, data visualization tools / portals,
maps, charts, etc...
③ CMMaia is onboarding two IT profiles to work in
Data Eng. / Data Sci. (First arrived June 1st)
④ The fact that I’m here 

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... and Open Issues
1) How to further align to Decarbonization / Climate Change challenges?
2) How to ‘raise awareness’ and bring ‘Data Users/Clients’ – «The Citizen» to the
Project? How to setup and nurture a «Open Data ecosystem» or a
«Interoperable Data ecosystem»?
3) What IT competences have to be internalized by CMMaia ? And which not?
4) How to partnership with other stakeholders (HEIs, Companies, ... ?)
5) How to level up to FiWare – based solution?
6) How the actual platform will escalate and grow beyond the prototype (average
load as .40 0.28 0.17, data increases 2 Mb/day)?

22. 22
Thank you for your attention
Looking forward for your
feedback