This presentation looks at what 'The Age of the Platform' means for smart city policy challenges and opportunities. Presented as a Keynote Address a the Media Architecture Biennale held as part of Sydney's Vivid Festival in June 2016.
Platform Urbanism: The politics and practices of data-driven citiesSarah Barns
Presentation delivered as part of an Urban Studies Foundation event showcasing the work of its first cohort of International Post-doctoral Fellows (of which I am one). Presented at the University of Glasgow, April 30 2015.
Open city? Platform Urbanism and the data-driven urban innovation agendaSarah Barns
What are the possibilities of open data in the city? This presentation takes a look at different ways of imagining cities in the age of big data - and introduces some critical questions about rights to knowledge and infrastructure not only for urban planners but everyday citizens as well.
When Two Worlds Collide: Data Strategy and Strategic Planning for 'Smart Gove...Sarah Barns
The rise of the data economy and support for ‘government as platform’ models of digital governance have seen growing appetite among city governments to invest in public-facing dashboards, which use open data channels to promote greater transparency in the monitoring a city’s well-being and functional performance. Well known examples include the London Data Store, the Dublin Dashboard and the NYC Open Data.
As the dashboard model grows traction and is embraced by Australian governments, this paper reflects on the institutional design of city dashboards, as they cut across the worlds of ICT policy and strategic urban planning. Based on recent case study research across Sydney, London and New York, this presentation compares a series of dashboard examples with a view to understanding the relationship between data-driven discovery programs, open data release channels or platforms, and the mechanisms of city performance management and strategic planning. In particular, it addresses the ‘back end’ support programs that support data discovery and harvesting; the challenges of persistent ‘data shadows’; and the forums needed to support alignment between data discovery, citizen engagement and strategic planning.
The analysis highlights the need to address the rise of city dashboards not simply as end products, but as more open-ended processes through which decision-makers, researchers and urbanists and technologists can seek to test the potential for data-driven methodologies to guide responses to contemporary city challenges.
Painel SBRC 2018 - Smart Cities: Tendências e DesafiosKiev Gama
Slides de minha participação no painel do Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores - 2018.
Smart Cities: Tendências e Desafios
Moderadora: Thais Vasconcelos Batista (UFRN)
Participantes:
Vinícius Garcia (CPqD)
Alexandre Nogueira (Ericsson)
Daniel Batista (USP)
Kiev Gama (UFPE)
Computer Vision & Communities - State of The Map LatAm 2016 - Sao PauloClaudio Cossio
Computer Vision and communities are a powerful mix to create opportunities for society, empowering individuals to co-create with the information extracted from images on a map. Discuss the use cases where organizations are leveraging photomapping
By Michael Thatcher, Keystone Accountability. Presented at Crowdsourcing Week Global 2015. Learn more and join us at our next event: www.crowdsourcingweek.com
Platform Urbanism: The politics and practices of data-driven citiesSarah Barns
Presentation delivered as part of an Urban Studies Foundation event showcasing the work of its first cohort of International Post-doctoral Fellows (of which I am one). Presented at the University of Glasgow, April 30 2015.
Open city? Platform Urbanism and the data-driven urban innovation agendaSarah Barns
What are the possibilities of open data in the city? This presentation takes a look at different ways of imagining cities in the age of big data - and introduces some critical questions about rights to knowledge and infrastructure not only for urban planners but everyday citizens as well.
When Two Worlds Collide: Data Strategy and Strategic Planning for 'Smart Gove...Sarah Barns
The rise of the data economy and support for ‘government as platform’ models of digital governance have seen growing appetite among city governments to invest in public-facing dashboards, which use open data channels to promote greater transparency in the monitoring a city’s well-being and functional performance. Well known examples include the London Data Store, the Dublin Dashboard and the NYC Open Data.
As the dashboard model grows traction and is embraced by Australian governments, this paper reflects on the institutional design of city dashboards, as they cut across the worlds of ICT policy and strategic urban planning. Based on recent case study research across Sydney, London and New York, this presentation compares a series of dashboard examples with a view to understanding the relationship between data-driven discovery programs, open data release channels or platforms, and the mechanisms of city performance management and strategic planning. In particular, it addresses the ‘back end’ support programs that support data discovery and harvesting; the challenges of persistent ‘data shadows’; and the forums needed to support alignment between data discovery, citizen engagement and strategic planning.
The analysis highlights the need to address the rise of city dashboards not simply as end products, but as more open-ended processes through which decision-makers, researchers and urbanists and technologists can seek to test the potential for data-driven methodologies to guide responses to contemporary city challenges.
Painel SBRC 2018 - Smart Cities: Tendências e DesafiosKiev Gama
Slides de minha participação no painel do Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores - 2018.
Smart Cities: Tendências e Desafios
Moderadora: Thais Vasconcelos Batista (UFRN)
Participantes:
Vinícius Garcia (CPqD)
Alexandre Nogueira (Ericsson)
Daniel Batista (USP)
Kiev Gama (UFPE)
Computer Vision & Communities - State of The Map LatAm 2016 - Sao PauloClaudio Cossio
Computer Vision and communities are a powerful mix to create opportunities for society, empowering individuals to co-create with the information extracted from images on a map. Discuss the use cases where organizations are leveraging photomapping
By Michael Thatcher, Keystone Accountability. Presented at Crowdsourcing Week Global 2015. Learn more and join us at our next event: www.crowdsourcingweek.com
Urban Mobility
SNC-Lavalin keynotes for the ITS World Congress
Authors:
- Donna M. Huey Senior Vice-President, Client Technology Director, Atkins
- Philippe Morais Regional Director – Eastern Canada, Rail & Transit, Infrastructure, SNC-Lavalin
Next Generation Broadband Cities - Lightning TalksUS-Ignite
Lightning Talks fromMegan Smith U.S. Chief Technology Officer
NIST, OSTP, Tech Hire, Maker Movement, CitySDK, Regional Big Data Hubs, Start-up in a Day, Broadband Connectivity Index, ConectED, Community Gigabit Fund
at the Launch of Smart Gigabit Communities event January 26, 2016
How relevant is the age of a city in determining its interest in, and ability to use, 'big data'? This briefing explores how both old and new cities have distinct advantages and disadvantages in their ability to use big data effectively, the lessons they can learn from each other, and their common challenges.
Benefits of the implementation of technology in newarkNaitwa Evans
Implementation of technology is crucial for any growing city (Sarkar, 2016).
Growing cities such as Newark need to leverage communication and information technology to enhance service delivery.
With the experienced rapid growth in Newark, implementation of technology makes the city more effective and efficient
This presentation explains the benefits of implementing technology in Newark
We will work to acquire donations and fund development of key projects: Trusted News, Outcome-based Consensus, a Mobile civ.works platform and Virtual TownWorks.
Presentation by Karima Kourtit and Peter Nijkamp
Advanced Brainstorm Carrefour (ABC): ‘Urban Empires - Cities as Global Rulers in the New Urban World’
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland (August, 2016)
Speed and scale are hallmarks of thisTechnology, which makes sharing and participation fast and easy, also empowers people who will create the new economy of the future. This talks gives examples of technology platforms that invite end-user contributions.
NZ National Digital Forum Keynote Presentation Sarah Barns
Titled 'Past Forward: Speculative Adventures in the city's archive', this presentation provided an outline of some the different projects and methodologies I've developed which re-imagine the applications and experiences of digital archives for community based storytelling, urban history and location-based services.
Urban Mobility
SNC-Lavalin keynotes for the ITS World Congress
Authors:
- Donna M. Huey Senior Vice-President, Client Technology Director, Atkins
- Philippe Morais Regional Director – Eastern Canada, Rail & Transit, Infrastructure, SNC-Lavalin
Next Generation Broadband Cities - Lightning TalksUS-Ignite
Lightning Talks fromMegan Smith U.S. Chief Technology Officer
NIST, OSTP, Tech Hire, Maker Movement, CitySDK, Regional Big Data Hubs, Start-up in a Day, Broadband Connectivity Index, ConectED, Community Gigabit Fund
at the Launch of Smart Gigabit Communities event January 26, 2016
How relevant is the age of a city in determining its interest in, and ability to use, 'big data'? This briefing explores how both old and new cities have distinct advantages and disadvantages in their ability to use big data effectively, the lessons they can learn from each other, and their common challenges.
Benefits of the implementation of technology in newarkNaitwa Evans
Implementation of technology is crucial for any growing city (Sarkar, 2016).
Growing cities such as Newark need to leverage communication and information technology to enhance service delivery.
With the experienced rapid growth in Newark, implementation of technology makes the city more effective and efficient
This presentation explains the benefits of implementing technology in Newark
We will work to acquire donations and fund development of key projects: Trusted News, Outcome-based Consensus, a Mobile civ.works platform and Virtual TownWorks.
Presentation by Karima Kourtit and Peter Nijkamp
Advanced Brainstorm Carrefour (ABC): ‘Urban Empires - Cities as Global Rulers in the New Urban World’
Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland (August, 2016)
Speed and scale are hallmarks of thisTechnology, which makes sharing and participation fast and easy, also empowers people who will create the new economy of the future. This talks gives examples of technology platforms that invite end-user contributions.
NZ National Digital Forum Keynote Presentation Sarah Barns
Titled 'Past Forward: Speculative Adventures in the city's archive', this presentation provided an outline of some the different projects and methodologies I've developed which re-imagine the applications and experiences of digital archives for community based storytelling, urban history and location-based services.
Creating Municipal ICT Architectures - A reference guide from Smart CitiesSmart Cities Project
E-government operations require citizens and external organisations to receive appropriate e-services, delivered by an organisation’s automated business processes and supported by information and communication technologies (ICT). This area of service management can be reinforced and strengthened, however, by using architectures: business architectures, information systems architectures, technology architectures and the processes used to produce them.
Architecture frameworks often are difficult concepts to understand. This publication is a collection of ideas about enterprise architecture which will contribute to people’s understanding of this subject. This publication answers some basic questions: What is an ICT architecture? What is the value of ICT architectures and how are they produced? Why should we bother with them? Using the enterprise architecture approach we show how architectures and the processes followed to produce them can help the development and improvement of e-government.
Delivering Urban Efficiency through Collaboration: Smart Cities & ITSchneider Electric
Smart city is a change management journey. Citizens at the center. Technology as enabler. Business as partner.
Presented by Régis Largillier, Leader Of Smart City, Schneider Electric during Power To The Cloud, Schneider Electric Middle East Datacenter Solutions Conference
Exploration of a conceptual framework that might be adopted by any municipality or community and enables them to deploy the physical and logical infrastructure required to support all SMART functional technology going forward.
Presented by: Jean-Noe Landry (Open North) & Dr Tracey P. Lauriault (Carleton University) & Rachel Bloom (Open North)
Content Contributors: David Fewer CIPPIC, Mark Fox U. of Toronto, Stephen Letts (RA Carleton U.)
Partner Cities: City of Edmonton, City of Guelph, Ville de Montréal & City of Ottawa
Project Name: Open Smart Cities in Canada
Date: August 30, 2017
The role of digital technologies in promoting smart city governance; Data-driven decision making.
Gabriela Viale Pereira, Postdoc, Danube University Krems, AU
Open Smart Cities in Canada - Webinar 1 - EnglishOpen North
Slides presented for Open Smart Cities in Canada's first webinar.
Listen to the webinar at: https://bit.ly/2HH7x29
Learn more about the project at:
http://www.opennorth.ca/projects#1
The future of cities: creative solutions for a brighter urban life Individual mobility is as simple as taking a walk. But the more that humans have to live in shared spaces, the more mobility becomes about technology—powering transit, but also coordinating it. And nowhere is this linkage as vivid as in cities.
Tomorrow's cities will be shaped by human-centric technology solutions—more ""Iron Man"" and less ""Skynet."" Over the coming decades, we'll see the proliferation of autonomous, connected, electric, shared transportation systems that will increase, rather than decrease, the importance of superb mass-transit systems and multi-modal options for getting from point A to point B. We'll create public/private partnerships, with policymakers at the local level creating markets for new technologies, infrastructure development, and advancing new thinking like mileage-based user fees. At the same time, denser cities will blur the lines between where we live and work, our energy consumption and production, and how we get around.
Ultimately, this upheaval creates vast new opportunities for business model innovation and startup wealth creation. Join URBAN-X Managing Director Micah Kotch for his view from the frontlines of urban mobility."
8. City Science: Urban Big Data and New Urban SystemsMITEF México
Data-driven analysis of economic
activity, human behavior, mobility
patterns, resource consumption, etc.
in order to inform an evidence-based
process of designing new cities
On November 14th 2016 the Urban Transformations programme, funded by the ESRC, kicked off the first knowledge exchange activity by bringing together academics and practitioners in the research/policy field of urban transformations from all over Europe. This workshop was the first of a series entitled Bridging European Urban Transformations that has been established in partnership between the Urban Transformations programme led by the University of Oxford at COMPAS and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), particularly with the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies. In this post-Brexit era, commitment and willingness to cooperate seems more important than ever before. Therefore, the workshop series, which runs from November 2016 to October 2017, emphasises the value of connections between institutions and key players in the field of urban transformations in the UK and in the rest of Europe.
This abstract paper talks how we can think a certain city as a smart one, representation on modern practices to make cities smart. A set of the everyday multidimensional factors motivating the smart city concept and the primary things for anup-and-coming smart city lead is identified by exploring current working definitions of smart city and a diversity of various theoretical connections related to smart city. The document deals considered principles aligning to the three main dimensions (technology, people, and institutions) of smart city: integration of infrastructures and technology-mediated services, social learning for strengthening human infrastructure, and governance for institutional improvement and citizen engagement.
The 2014 edition of the Networked Society City Index examines and ranks 40 cities from around the world, looking at their performance, challenges and opportunities in terms of ICT, sustainability and development. The extensive research gives us a glimpse into the future of the city.
The report also continues to explore the connection between ICT maturity and triple bottom line development in cities around the world.
Information & Communication Technology key to enable sustainable urbanizationEricsson
For the first time in human history more people live in cities than in rural areas. By 2050 it is expected that 7 out of 10 people will be urbanites, with the majority of growth occurring in cities of the Global South. A new report co-written with UN Habitat shows how technology can enable economically, socially and environmentally sustainable cities, with emphasis on solving the challenge of access to water.
Smart Cities 2019: What kind of smart city do you want to build?Sarah Barns
Presentation to Smart Cities 2019 Conference, focusing on how smart city development models have changed over the past two decades, and what is needed to shift to a more positive story.
My presentation to the American Association of Geographers Annual Conference, San Francisco, April 2017. A digital storytelling approach to public engagement and place-making in Sydney, Australia.
Presentation to the International Conference of Digital Humanities at the University of Western Sydney, 1 July 2015. The presentation reflects on our use of digital projection as a form of site writing, historical interpretation and digital storytelling, against a backdrop of wider public interest in the spectacle of large scale light shows and events.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Search and Society: Reimagining Information Access for Radical FuturesBhaskar Mitra
The field of Information retrieval (IR) is currently undergoing a transformative shift, at least partly due to the emerging applications of generative AI to information access. In this talk, we will deliberate on the sociotechnical implications of generative AI for information access. We will argue that there is both a critical necessity and an exciting opportunity for the IR community to re-center our research agendas on societal needs while dismantling the artificial separation between the work on fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics in IR and the rest of IR research. Instead of adopting a reactionary strategy of trying to mitigate potential social harms from emerging technologies, the community should aim to proactively set the research agenda for the kinds of systems we should build inspired by diverse explicitly stated sociotechnical imaginaries. The sociotechnical imaginaries that underpin the design and development of information access technologies needs to be explicitly articulated, and we need to develop theories of change in context of these diverse perspectives. Our guiding future imaginaries must be informed by other academic fields, such as democratic theory and critical theory, and should be co-developed with social science scholars, legal scholars, civil rights and social justice activists, and artists, among others.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
JMeter webinar - integration with InfluxDB and GrafanaRTTS
Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
To view the webinar recording, go to:
https://www.rttsweb.com/jmeter-integration-webinar
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Software Delivery At the Speed of AI: Inflectra Invests In AI-Powered QualityInflectra
In this insightful webinar, Inflectra explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming software development and testing. Discover how AI-powered tools are revolutionizing every stage of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), from design and prototyping to testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Learn about:
• The Future of Testing: How AI is shifting testing towards verification, analysis, and higher-level skills, while reducing repetitive tasks.
• Test Automation: How AI-powered test case generation, optimization, and self-healing tests are making testing more efficient and effective.
• Visual Testing: Explore the emerging capabilities of AI in visual testing and how it's set to revolutionize UI verification.
• Inflectra's AI Solutions: See demonstrations of Inflectra's cutting-edge AI tools like the ChatGPT plugin and Azure Open AI platform, designed to streamline your testing process.
Whether you're a developer, tester, or QA professional, this webinar will give you valuable insights into how AI is shaping the future of software delivery.
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Assuring Contact Center Experiences for Your Customers With ThousandEyes
Cities in the Age of the Platform
1. Cities in the
Age of the
Platform
Getting the
Deal Right on
City Data
Smart Cities and Urban
Innovation Forum
UNSW 1 June 2016
Dr. Sarah Barns,
Urban Studies Foundation
Postdoctoral Fellow
Western Sydney University
Director, Esem Projects
Future Cities Advisor, Data61/CSIRO
4. Metcalfe’s Law: value of a network is proportional to the square of the number
of connected users to the network
5. ‘A new science of
cities’
“New sources of data coordinated with urban policy
can be applied following fundamental principles of
engineering to achieve new solutions to important
age-old urban problems”
– Luis Bettencourt, Santa Fe Institute
THE STUDY OF THE CITY AS A SYSTEM…to
help it become more productive, livable,
equitable and resilient
6. “Not since the planting of
cobblestones, the laying of water
mains, or the roll out of sewage pipes
have we installed such a vast and
versatile new infrastructure for
controlling and organising
our physical world”
Anthony Townsend, Smart Cities,
2013
7. In 2012, for the first time ever, the TED Prize
went not to an individual, but to an idea on
which our planet's future depends:
the City 2.0
8.
9. “[From] 2012 it made less and less sense
to talk about 'the Internet’, 'the PC
business,' 'telephones,' 'Silicon Valley,' or
'the media,' and much more sense to just
study Google, Apple, Facebook,
Amazon and Microsoft.
These big five American vertically
organized silos are re-making the world in
their image. ”
-Bruce Stirling speaking to Kevin Kelly (Wired)
10.
11. Combine technology layer, data layer and
community layer.
APIs build ecosystems of producers and
consumers that deliver services to each other
on a common platform.
Platforms are software-driven innovation ecosystem
15. “Nurturing platforms requires
thinking at the nexus of software
design and business strategy”
“The architecture of a platform is
inseparable from how it ought to
be governed” —Amrit Tiwana
“Platforms are only as useful as
the communities that use them”
—Tom Baker
16. second wave of digital transformation in government – Gov.Uk’
‘Government as a Platform’
24. Governments lack access to
essential data to improve
data-driven decision making
Dealing with data shadows…
25.
26.
27. Document &
measure
impact
Match public
challenge areas &
data custodians in
trusted
environments
Convene data
providers and
users
Experiment
and scale
Data
Collaboratives
Source: Gov Lab,
Verherst
Thanks for the opportunity to be here today.
Very stimulating and exciting set of sessions from UNSW – innovation ecosystems, entreprenuership
Love the connectivity across smart cities and digital place making – both areas are very dear to my heart.
I work across a few different domains – smart cities, digital placemaking and urban research. Some in university, some in small business, some with tech companies and orgs.
I’ve always found working across domains offers a good perspective
Today I’m here to talk about ‘Cities in the Age of the Platform’. This essentially combines thinking from my work in digital strategy with experience working with city governments on data discovery and data governance.
In my day to day work we often do a lot of wrangling around the art of the feasible or possible, but a forum like this hopefully allows us to life our vision and look at some of the bigger issues we need to consider.
Start with a bit about me
I’m someone who has spent the past decade exploring and navigating the opportunities that digital technologies offer to how we experience and manage cities.
While I already had a degree in city policy and planning, I spent the early part of my career advising the Government on broadband policy, and then R&D for the ABC.
We used to wonder what people were going to do with these devices technology companies were developing, and how to design and push the boundaries of content innovation for these platforms.
A bit like Mark Weiser. – see image, late 1980s – wondered what it would be like when computers moved into the foreground of our attention. What kinds of experiences could be designed?
It was as a digital researcher for the ABC working with 3G mobile technology that I started developing media platforms that really interrogated how we might design content that took into account not only the user interfaces of the screen, but also the interfaces of the street, the public domain.
At the time very speculative ideas about how people might use technology.
Fast forward a few years, and today of course, we are in a less speculative mode.
Smartphone enabled navigation is a daily reality for millions around the world, and more and more of our everyday social and economic interactions are migrating online, generating petabytes of data every second.
The ‘data exhaust’ generated by our daily lives, is now a productive resource – some have called it the ‘new oil’ – from which more and more services are designed – whether its transit apps, ride sharing apps, accommodation services, bike rental services.
Increasingly, designing and responding to the conditions of urban life & behaviour is becoming as much an information design challenge as it is an urban design challenge.
Its this sense of data abundance that really drives the excitement around smart cities and the potential to design and manage cities differently in the digital age
I was lucky enough to win a postdoctoral award from a UK organisation called the Urban Studies Foundation which has enabled me to look at how this data-driven future is being tackled by cities around the world.
We not only have smart phones generating data, but a wider array of connected devices.
“An explosion of connected possibility“
Here we have the IoT landscape of connected devices. Here the power of connected devices grows exponentially.
Sense of data abundance and its powerful possibilities is driven by the assumed power of the network
Think in terms of Metcalfe’s Law, which says that the value of a network increases proportionately to the square of the number of users.
In essence, the power of the network is greater than the sum of its parts, making the Internet of Everything, incredibly powerful
Giving rise to a new science of cities.
We have UNSW Professor of Urban Science, urban science labs.
Sense that we may be able to solve age old problems – finally show how the city is comprised of systems of systems
There is a sense of this vast new power – data infrastructure for controlling and organising our physical world.
Somewhere along the lines, data went from being something about the messages we sent each other, to being a fundamental infrastructure of the city
There has also been this great sense of optimism around how urban technologists can reshape city services – adapting the crowd sharing and collaborative nature of Web 2.0 technologies and thinking about how these might be applied these to urban life.
Reflecting this optimism, we have seen new digital players were emerging
Where previously urban design was (still is) a field populated by strategic planners, architects, urban designers, quantity surveyors, city administrators – there was this whole new field of city focused professions emerging that were in a sense making new claims on their ability to design city outcomes
Data scientists, app builders, digital strategists, data infomediairies, Building information modellers, city information modellers GIS professionals, civic hackers – all becoming increasingly central to the way a city is experienced, designed.
But while there was this optimism, there were also increasing concerns about the politics and economics of the internet itself.
Was the internet simply an opportunity for the creation of large monopolistic companies?
Just as there was this great optimism about city transformation, there was this growing concern that the ‘networks of networks’ age of data abundance might not quite enable the freedoms we wanted to see.
Backlash against smart city – would this just lead to too much power in the hands of technology companies?
This rise of these vertically integrated companies ‘taking over the internet’ has since become the focus of many digital and business strategy books
Countless books on the rise of the Platform – you can look them up.
The platform play is really fundamental to the digital disruption we see all around us.
Anyone who has worked in digital industries over past 10 years knows – core to digital entrepreneurialism.
Apple was the first
The key players and their disruptions are obvious – Uber, AirBnB, Facebook, YouTube, Google.
Media, Hotel, Taxi industries
‘The Platform’ has been described as - ‘the business model of the 21st century’ – as other companies emulate this model and as these specific platforms reshape a number of different industries.
What defines a platform?
It would be a mistake to think of a platform as purely a technology platform, or an app, or a social media service
Combine technology, data and community into a software driven innovation ecosystem
Success is defined by providing a marketplace in which buyers and sellers can exchange goods or services.
No longer build websites, we build platform ecosystems.
As the platform provider, the owner is not the only one creating the services
Majority of successful digital user interfaces are driven by platform-based ecosystems
The platform business model explains the kind of scale of company we’re seeing more and more. The effectiveness of companies like Uber
I have become aware of how we often look at the opportunities through the lens of the technologies, but ultimately it’s the business strategy that leads to a sustainable digital engagement, whether from a government or a business.
I find it a bit curious how little this digital business strategy gets discussed when it comes to smart cities and urban innovation.
Is this a problem? Well, yes. Platform plays can result in their own challenges for cities.
The problem is that it’s leading to an increasing asymmetry - between what’s going on in the private sector, and the capacity of governments to respond to these opportunities, in ways that can improve their ability to build a digital economy to support a city over time.
In a platform play, data driven by interaction is the infrastructure that creates value, in the form of targeted services to users.
As we’ve heard many times before, if you’re not paying for something, it’s you that’s being sold.
Because it drives the value of the platform, much of the data generated by user interactions on a platform is not open or usable by others – or only on very defined terms.
Fields of intersection: city management, digital business, data governance and citizens.
Spent some time in New York at the Centre for Urban Science and Progress, and later this year with the Greater London Authority, and last year working with Department of Planning helping to advise on data development strategy for the Greater Sydney Commission.
What I’ve discovered is that we need to interrogate a bit more this idea of data abundance. There is this sense that there is absolute freedom to re-invent in the midst of the abundance, but this is absolutely not the case.
Instead of a cornicopia of networks, smart cities may look more like this
Instead of building large warehouses of data, we have APIs than enable connectivity between these platforms ecosystems.
There are some important lessons and insights around building successful platform.
Don’t only think about technology or software
Setting up a platform requires ongoing governance
Platform model increasingly recognised as one of the key ways that governments are positioning themselves in an age of big data
Gov as platform is being pursued at national scales by US and UK government, a very significant new digital era governance framework. Now also being implemented in Australia.
The idea of ‘Government as a Platform’ actually originated from Tim O’Relly back in 2008. It was part of the motivations behind the open data – the call for governments to release their data in open, machine readable formats.
“Release the data so that your customers and partners can build new features, before you do” O Reilly
Build only fundamental applications and services on which others can innovate and deliver new products –
In this model, government is a convenor and an enabler rather than a first mover of civic action (Oreilly, 2010).
This model has helped drive the open data policies of many city governments around the world.
This is the New York open data site – thousands of data sets released on a whole range of different topics.
In Australia we have open data sites in most states and territories, Turnbull has aggressively pursued at the federal level.
Now, it’s been about 8 years – nearly a decade! – since this work began, so what outcomes are we seeing?
How is the platform model shaping city services for governments?
One of the biggest success stories is Socrata - has made a strong platform play into the open data hosting space
‘A cloud software company focused exclusively on democratising access to government data’. –Socrata
These days I’ve heard Socrata described as the Microsoft of cities open data – the problem is that cities get locked into the hosting service, and so much investment in the platform that it makes no sense to pull out.
Collaborations between cities and educational institutions is an important area of innovation.
NY City and Centre for Urban Science produced this visualisation.
This paper details two ongoing projects to increase both the availability and comprehensiveness of building energy data. The first is a web-based visualization tool which allows users to understand patterns of energy consumption in individual buildings and across the city.
The second project attempts to generalize from disclosure data by creating a predictive model of annual energy consumption for each building in the city.
Open data has been used to good effect in places like Detroit – combine city government data with crowdsourced data to help identify site of urban blight.
We’re also starting to see progress in aligning open data programs with performance indicators.
The ISO 37210 measures cities progress against a number of goals, and as part of the process of signing up a city will also contribute its data to this global portal.
You need to be a signatory city to get the data, otherwise I believe you have to pay
Integrating the two – strategic planning and digital strategy – isn’t easy, but there is progress being made.
The Greater London Datastore is also an interesting initiative -
This combines the platform of the data dictionary, API model but it is actually supported to improve city-wide governance, under the remit of the Greater London Authority.
Datastore is supported by active Data Partnerships, that recognise that urban issues cut across adminstrative boundaries, so you need better co-ordination across government departments to add high value data to the system
Having worked on this with the Greater Sydney Commission, I think it’s clear that these platforms and services aren’t really going far enough.
Part of the major issues is a lack of high value data being released by city governments – and a
Progress is being made - but is this enough? Very nascent
Releasing data helps to support a city data ecosystem, and may support some app developers, but I feel we’re yet to see real transformative value for cities from these initiatives.
I am increasingly concerned that what is happening in the public sector is out of synch with the wider digital economy.
Part of the reason for this is a lack of understanding of how to benefit from the virtues of the platform model.
Many platforms are developed that focus on the data release programs, but not the community of users that build value.
As we heard, the success of any platform lies in the interactions of its users. Many of the public sector platforms are not promoting an ecosystem approach that sees users create value. Instead, it’s a case of release the data and hope for the best!
Access to high value data to support government decision making is an issue
Widespread privatisation of city infrastructures means that City governments do not in fact have access to enough urban scale data to allow for effective city peformance monitoring using real time data feeds.
This issue is now widely recognised across many different sectors, as governments increasingly partner with the private sector to support improved management of services.
World Bank is actively pursuing ‘Data PPPs’
Data philanthropy is a growing area for corporations
Emergence of data sharing, data philanthropy, neighborhood data labs - recognition of the need to think about the value of data for the public good.
Data for public good recognises that it is effective data ecosystems that allow a range of partners to work collaboratively to leverage data assets for the good of cities.
In other words, smart cities need to value their public data ecosystems in the way that they might have valued public spaces of the past
If we truly want to leverage the potential of data to improve people’s lives, then we need to accelerate the creation and use of “data collaboratives.”
Execute a data strategy around a goal, strategy. Not a closed group that enacts that digital product, but a process of data engagement, partnership and experimentation
Look at the traditional goals of urban strategy – strategic planning – here is a set that most from NSW Planning
This list is indicative of many city strategies
Think more strategically about the health of a cities data ecosystem. Can we focus efforts around building data ecosystems around these strategies?
In an age of smart cities, a city’s data assets need to be understood as a core public asset, an important basis from which urban services and quality of life can be effectively supported.
Achieving this puts the onus on city governments to understand how to do platform strategy well – not only release data sets, but ensure strong ecosystems of different users and contributors that are each building value of the ecosystem.
Here is a sense of the range of users and perspectives that should be engaged in this effort
When cities fund new infrastructure they should ensure the right data sharing arrangements are in place
Digital urban strategy is becoming an important dimension to the wider planning process - and needs to become an important tool for city governance
When it comes to digital platforms, we need to move away from pure product focus towards instutitional service design
This will ultimately mean rethinking smart city not just as a set of data-driven technology services but as collaborative platforms for value generation by their users that support city challenge areas.
This is an ongoing institutional effort, not only a technology agenda.
We often think of data in terms of protection of privacy – but what about the protection of one of our greatest public goods – the city?
The failure to think of city data as a public good can will only lead to greater assymetries between public and private players – with the strongest platform provider ultimately having the greatest influence on the shape of a city.
Puts too much power in a small number of hands – perhaps only one?!
Getting this deal right will be a core challenge for city in the future, if they want to be smart.
It may be hard work, but we should at least try.