City Forward is an IBM initiative that provides a web-based platform for visualizing and exploring open city data. It allows users to interact with data, engage in discussions, and share insights. The platform contains tools to turn raw data into meaningful visualizations and analyses to help reveal patterns and guide decision making. City Forward is intended to help citizens, practitioners, and local governments make more informed decisions about issues facing cities.

1. Making Open Data Accessible to Communities:
City Forward and other Data Visualization Tools
John C. Reinhardt, AICP - Program Manager, City Forward
IBM Corporate Citizenship
November 18, 2011

2. Presentation Overview
Data and Cities: an IBM perspective
City Forward: a Corporate Citizenship Initiative
The Future: Data Literacy and Real-World Examples
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3. Our Cities Generate Vital Signs
Today, almost anything—any object, process or system—can be instrumented, inter-
connected and infused with intelligence.
Data is lying in archives, published on government websites, being sensed from in-
strumentation in the environment, deduced from aerial imagery, and built from the
ground-up by citizens electronically communicating about city life.
This reality holds enormous promise for people everywhere. Nowhere is the potential
for progress more evident than in the world’s cities.
Instrumented | Interconnected | Intelligent
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4. The Future is Urban
13% 50% 70%
1900 2007 2050
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5. Cities are a Complex System of Systems
Here, all man-made systems intersect, interact and interconnect with one another.
On average 45% of a city’s budget goes to providing public safety services
Up to 40% of world energy use takes place in buildings
In Mexico City, 600 new vehicles enter the congested streets every day
A 1% increase in the college-educated population of a metropolitan area raises ev-
erybody else’s average wages by 0.8%-1.2%
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6. Data in Cities
National Data - Relatively easy to secure.
-Good for comparing cities to national averages.
- Can be by academics, NGOs, think tanks.
City Data - Relatively easy to secure.
- Good for comparing peer cities (as cities like to do!)
- Can be used by journalists, city governments, academic
researchers.
Neighborhood - Di cult to secure.
Data - Good for making policy & resourcing decisions.
- Can be used by citizens, CDCs , urban planners, etc.
Individual - Explosion with new instrumentation
Data - Allows for interesting predictive analytics
- Privacy concerns
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7. Importance of Data
Smarter Cities bring together information in ways that lead to new insights
and support decision-making.
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8. What is City Forward?
City Forward is a free, web-based platform
that lets users visualize and interact with
city data while engaging with a community
of people who are passionate about the
future of cities.
cityforward.org

9. What does City Forward do?
Interactive exploration tools
turn raw data into actionable
information—revealing
important patterns and insights
Easy-to-use collaboration
tools enable robust discussion,
annotation and social sharing
functionality
Thought leadership and data
curation guide the discussion
of open data and cities
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10. Explorations
Data sources, visualizations
and user commentary are com-
bined to create explorations
that bring important aspects of
the data into focus for further
analysis
Explorations can be created by
anyone from the community of
City Forward users
An Exploration can be about
one or more topics in one or
more cities data + visualization + commentary = an “Exploration”
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11. An Exploration - Syracuse and Housing
Building Permits in Syracuse
(Syracuse’s boom occurred in the late
90s)
Homeowner Vacancy in Peer cities
Baltimore, Syracuse, Detroit
(Baltimore’s vacancy was more stable. What
policies were in place?)
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12. How Does it Work?
Community & City
Data Explorations Services
Community Government
Agency
Exploration
User
Content Database Data
Acquisition &
Transformation
Services
Community
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13. IBM Technology in Action
IBM DB2 Database for data storage
IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence
for data analysis
IBM ILOG Elixir for Data visualization
IBM Tivoli software for user info mgmt
IBM Rational products for
requirements and project mgmt
IBM Lotus products for content
mgmt and social networking
Click here for a full technology overview.
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14. Focus Audiences
Audience 1 Audience 2
Citizens Practitioners
Students Cities
Media Corporations
NGOs Government
SMEs
Academics
In need of tools, data, and training Have tools, data, and expertise to share
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15. City Forward Model
Kno
Act
Dat
wle
ion
a
dge
Data identification, Explorations Best Practice Community*
vetting, and storage
Expert Blog Posts* Community Networking
Discussions of open
data standards* White Papers*
Conferences & Events
* coming in 2012
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16. City Forward Model in Action
Would congestion pricing
Data work in my city? Action
Data sets on bridge & Citizens weigh in on congestion
tunnel crossings, toll pricing exploration using
collection, commuting Facebook and Twitter.
patterns, etc. loaded into
City Forward.
Knowledge City leadership reviews case
studies of New York City
Academics export data and London posted in the
City Forward exploration visualizes trends in
sets for use with SPSS, City Forward best practices
bridge & tunnel use, traffic jams, and toll collection
GIS, etc. community.
revenues.
Local IBM CC&CA Rep hosts a
Expert Blogger weighs in on the economics of
City Forward working session
congestion pricing on City Forward Blog.
with NGO and government
experts in the city.
City Forward publishes white paper on data
and transportation, which includes a section on
City reviews all information
congestion pricing.
and recommends a congestion
pricing strategy.
IBM CC&CA staff advises local university capstone
project, results distributed through City Forward.
Smarter Cities Challenge includes City Forward
Explorations
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17. City Focus
SCC Cities
Academic Partnership Cities
Business Opportunities
CC&CA Field Representatives
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18. Topic Focus
Chosen based on several criteria:
Emerging sectors for IBM, hot topics in the media, data availability,
and ability to engage in thought leadership.
Education & Workforce Development | Social Safety Net
Disaster Management | Food Systems
Citizen Engagement (across all vertical topics)
Focus topics are not at the exclusion of other explorations, but help
focus the outreach to speci c user groups.
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19. Successes to date
Total
Number of Explorations 102
Number of Subjects 31
Number of Cities 78
National Average Cities 32
Data Sources 42
SCC Integration - City Forward is part of the 2012 City
Selection Process.
- Integration with Syracuse, Philadel-
phia, and Helsinki
Academic Partnerships NYU Urban Systems Competition, NC
State Youth Services Project, Notre
Dame Foresight Course
Yale, MIT, Harvard Capstones
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20. Other Tools
m Many Eyes
Independent Discovery Social Networking and
Community Building Tools
Included
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21. “The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to
explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate
over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand. You
don’t have to be a data expert to navigate between di erent views,
make your own comparisons, and share your ndings.
Students, journalists, policy makers and everyone else can play with
the tool to create visualizations of public data, link to them, or embed
them in their own webpages. Embedded charts and links can update
automatically so you’re always sharing the latest available data.”
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22. Simple, Minimal Interface
Animations of data over time
Ability to embed and share
User-uploaded datasets
Datasets from:
World Bank; Eurostat; OECD;
US Bureau of Labor Stats;
US Census; CDC; World
Resources Institute; NYC
Department of Public
Health, etc.
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23. “Tableau Public is a free service that lets anyone publish interactive
data to the web. Once on the web, anyone can interact with the data,
download it, or create their own visualizations of it. No programming
skills are required.
The free version of Tableau Public is for people. This includes writers,
bloggers, students, professors, hobbyists, journeymen, critics,
citizens and more. It’s also meant for organizations, but only as an
introductory service. If your organization wants to put data online for
the public, you are welcome to use this as an introductory service.”
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24. Users must download software
Robust “Community” section
O ers best practices on visualization
Does not store datasets, but links to
publicly available data.
Allows users to share and comment
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25. m Many Eyes
“Data visualisation tools from IBM. Site allows users to upload data
and then produce graphic representations for others to view and
comment upon.”
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26. m Many Eyes
Robust “Community” section
Users can upload their own data
Users can share data sets
Allows users to share their viz
Many good looking viz options
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27. “Data visualization works so well because the human brain is extremely well-equipped to process visual
information. We can capture patterns and essential themes in huge data sets very, very quickly through
visual means.
Unfortunately, the tools to create these visual representations are usually too expensive and di cult
for smaller news organizations and everyday citizens to use, creating a gap for the future of community
journalism. With the generous support of the Knight Foundation, we created VIDI, a suite of powerful
intuitive Drupal data-visualization modules for anyone to use on any standard set of data ranging from
government databases to demographics and statistics.
Jack Knight called for media to inform and enlighten, so the people might determine their own true
interests. As we come to understand his exhortation’s new, evolving meaning, we must continually
challenge ourselves to break down professional barriers in order to empower the in nite diversity of
equally true interests. “Raw Data Now” should be our battle cry, and open-source data visualization
modules our weaponry. Visualize the power of data!”
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28. Developed speci cally for Journalists
Users must identify data sets
To share, users must have a Drupal-based
website
The best looking visualizations are created
through Google API
Tool is set up to visualize by selecting
“Time”, “Geo” or “Comparative” data
Requires some technical skill and data
literacy
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29. “The Global City Indicators Program provides an established set of city indicators
with a globally standardized methodology that allows for global comparability of
city performance and knowledge sharing. This website serves all cities that become
members to measure and report on a core set of indicators through this web-based
relational database.”
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30. Allows for city to city comparison
Allows comparisons of “peer cities”
Could have useful data for City Forward
visualizations
Many cities do not have data
Reports are only in “chart” form
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31. What’s Next?
The future of urban data:
More Data
Better Data
Better Use of Data
More Collaboration Amongst Professions
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32. What’s Next?
City Forward is currently the only tool with the following features:
Extensive City-level data
Storage of datasets on the City Forward website
City comparison features using city-reported data
Global scope at the city level
Thinking about:
How to Scale the number of cities and data sets included
User experience redesign, built around cities as hubs
City Forward as a data literacy tool
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33. Data Literacy
Accessing, understanding and processing data will be key to accessing the best
opportunities in cities in the 21st century
Where to send the kids to school
Where jobs are located and where they pay the most
How to minimize energy consumption
“We didn’t build libraries for a literate citizenry. We built libraries to help citizens
become literate. Today we build open data portals not because we have public
policy literate citizens, we build them so that citizens may become literate in public
policy.” - David Eaves
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34. Challenge to the Urban Systems Collaborative
What are we doing as a group to foster citizen interaction with
data, increase data literacy, and improve the understanding of
urban systems among the general public?
Questions | Open Discussion
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