Author Archives: Geothink

Call for Papers (Book): Geoweb Policy, Law, and Ethics

Hello everyone,

We are putting together a draft prospectus for consideration by the University of Ottawa Press for their Law, Technology and Media book series. The edited volume will focus on the legal, policy, regulatory, and ethical issues arising from the geoweb. Anticipated issues that the volume will cover include privacy, surveillance, IP, licensing, open data, the public/private divide, citizen engagement, and governance.

We seek brief expressions of interest for chapters. Please send to both Elizabeth and Leslie, by August 30, a chapter title and a short (150-200 word) abstract for our consideration.

Thank you,
Leslie and Elizabeth

Crosspost: Green Cities and Smart Cities: The potential and pitfalls of digitally-enabled green urbanism

The Vancouver Convention Centre in Vancouver, BC, Canada was the world’s first LEED Platinum-certified convention center. It also has one of the largest green roofs in Canada. Image Credit: androver / Shutterstock.com

This post is cross-posted with permission from Alexander Aylett, from UGEC Viewpoints. Aylett is an Assistant Professor at the Centre on Urbanisation, Culture and Society at the National Institute for Scientific Research (UCS-INRS) in Montreal, Quebec.

By Alexander Aylett

Since its early days, the discourse around “smart cities” has included environmental sustainability as one of its core principles. The application of new digital technologies to urban spaces and processes is celebrated for its ability to increase the well-being of citizens while reducing their environmental impacts. But this engagement with sustainability has been limited to a technocratic focus on energy systems, building efficiency, and transportation. It has also privileged top-down interventions by local government actors. For all its novelty, the smart cities discussion is operating with a vision of urban sustainability that dates from the 1990s, and an approach to planning from the 1950s.

This definition of “urban sustainability” overlooks key facets of a city’s ecological footprint (such as food systems, resource consumption, production related greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and the urban heat island effect). It also ignores the ability of non-state actors to contribute meaningfully to the design and implementation of urban policies and programs. But that doesn’t need not be the case. In fact, if employed properly, new information technologies seem like ideal tools to address some of urban sustainability’s most persistent challenges.

Progress and Lasting Challenges in Local Climate Governance

Let’s take a step back. Often discussions of smart cities begin with an account of the capabilities of specific technologies or interfaces and then imagine urbanism – and urban sustainability – through the lense of those technologies. I’d like to do the opposite: beginning with the successes and lasting challenges faced by urban sustainability and interpreting the technologies from within that context. To understand the role that “smart” technologies could play in enabling sustainable cities, it’s useful to first look at what we have managed to accomplish so far, and what still needs to be done.

For those of us working on sustainable cities and urban responses to climate change, the past two decades have been a period of both amazing successes and enduring challenges. In the early 1990s a handful of cities began promoting the (at that time) counterintuitive idea that local governments had a key role to play in addressing global climate change. Since then, the green cities movement has won significant discursive, political, and technical battles.

Global inter-municipal organizations like ICLEI or the C40 now have memberships that represent thousands of cities. Two decades of work have created planning standards and tools and an impressive body of “best practice” literature. Through the sustained efforts of groups like ICLEI, cities are now recognized as official governmental stakeholders in the international climate change negotiations coordinated by the United Nations.

But – crucially – real urban emissions reductions are lagging well below what is needed to help keep global CO2 within safe limits. Looking at the efforts of individual cities and the results of a global Urban Climate Change Governance survey that I conducted while at MIT (Aylett 2014, www.urbanclimatesurvey.com ) shows why. Apart from a small contingent of charismatic cities like Vancouver, Portland, or Copenhagen, cities are struggling to move beyond addressing the “low hanging fruit” of emission from municipal facilities ( i.e., vehicle fleet, municipal buildings, street lighting – known as “corporate emissions”) to taking action on the much more significant emissions generated by the broader urban community (i.e., business, industry, transportation, and residential emissions).

This problem has been with us since the early days of urban climate change responses. But how we understand it has changed significantly. Where some cities used to inventory only their corporate emissions, this is now rare. Current guidelines cover community-wide emissions and work is underway to create a global standard for emissions inventories that will also engage with emissions produced in the manufacture of the goods and services consumed within cities (see Hoornweg et al. 2011).

Built on the increased scope of our technical understanding of urban emissions, is a change in how we understand the work of governing climate change at the local level. A top-down vision of climate action focused on the regulatory powers of isolated local government agencies is being replaced by one that is horizontal, relational, and collaborative. This approach transforms relationships both inside and outside of local governments, by linking together traditionally siloized municipal agencies and also forging partnerships with civil-society and business actors (Aylett 2015).

The increased prominence of non-state actors in urban climate change governance has led to growing calls for partnerships across the public-private divide (Osofsky et al. 2007; Andonova 2010; Bontenbal and Van Lindert 2008). These partnerships play an important role in overcoming gaps in capacity, translating the climate change impacts and response options into language that is meaningful to different groups and individuals, and accelerating the development of solutions. Follow-up analysis of the 2014 MIT-ICLEI Climate survey shows that these partnerships have an important positive impact on the scope of concrete emissions reductions. Cities with stronger partnerships appear to be more able to create concrete emissions reductions outside of areas directly controlled by the municipality.

The street car in Portland, Oregon, USA. Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

This evolution in approaches to climate change planning follows a broader current in urban planning more generally which, since the 1960s have moved away from expert driven and technocratic processes and created increasing amounts of space for participatory processes and facilitative government.

In a nutshell, an increasingly complex and holistic technical understanding of urban emissions is being matched by an increasing horizontal and networked approach to governing those emissions. (A similar shift is taking place in the more recent attention to urban adaptation and resilience.)

But plans and programs based on this understanding quickly run into the significant barriers of institutional siloization and path dependency, a lack of effective information sharing, challenges of data collection and analysis, and difficulty mobilizing collective and collaborative action across multiple diverse and dispersed actors (Aylett 2014). The strength of collaborative multi-stakeholder responses is also their weakness. While effective climate change action may not be possible without complex networks of governance, coordinating these networks is no simple task. The subject of urban climate change governance has been the focus of an expanding body of research (Aylett 2015, 2014, 2013; Betsill & Bulkeley 2004, 2007; Burch 2010; Burch et al. 2013; Romero-Lankao et al. 2013.)

“Smart” Urban Climate Governance

Seen from this perspective, the allure of “smart” approaches to green cities is precisely the fact that information technology tools seem so well suited to the challenges that have stalled progress so far. Collecting, sharing and analysing new and existing data, and coordinating complex multi-scalar social networks of collaborative design and implementation are precisely what has drawn attention to new technologies in other sectors.

Disappointingly, current applications of a data-driven and technologically enabled approach to urban sustainability are far from delivering on this potential. Reading through the literature shows that the many interesting works that address the impacts of new technologies on urban governance (for example Elwood 2010, Evans-Cowley 2010, Goldsmith and Crawford 2015, Moon 2002) have nothing to say about the governance of urban sustainability. Work that does address environmental sustainability is dominated by a technocratic focus on energy systems, building efficiency, and transportation that privileges top-down action by municipal experts and planning elites (The Climate Group 2008, Boorsma & Wagener 2007, Kim et al. 2009, Villa & Mitchell 2009). This literature review is ongoing, and I continue to hope to find a body of work that combines a developed understanding of urban sustainability with a detailed reflection on digital governance. As it is, we seem to be working with outdated approaches to both urban sustainability and planning.

An off-shore wind farm near Copenhagen, Denmark. Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

How to update this approach, and use the full potential of data-driven, technologically enabled, and participatory approaches to spur accelerated transitions to sustainable cities is a key question. This research is necessary if we are going to unlock the full potential of the “smart” urbanism to address the necessity of building sustainable cities. It is also important that we avoid rolling back the clock on two decades of “green cities” research by basing our digital strategies around outdated understandings of the urban sustainability challenge.

Conclusions

Cities are responsible for as much as 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions and consume 75 percent of the world’s energy (Satterthwaite 2008). These figures are often repeated. But taking action at that scale requires both technological and socio-institutional innovations. Efforts to reduce urban emissions are challenged by the complexity of coordinating broad coalitions of action across governmental, private, and civil-society actors, and the need to effectively collect, share, and analyse new and existing data from across these traditionally siloized sectors.

These complexities have played an important role in limiting actual urban emissions reductions far below what is needed to stabilize global emissions within a safe range. Interestingly, these complexities are also the very strengths of emerging information and communications technologies (ICT) tools and Geoweb enabled approaches to urban planning and implementation. Currently, the use of “smart” approaches to address the urban climate challenge has been limited to narrow and technocratic initiatives. But much more is possible. If effective bridges can be built between the ICT and Urban Sustainability sectors, a profound shift in approaches to the urban governance of climate change could be possible. It is important to increase both sustainability and digital literacy among those involved. Only then will innovations in urban sustainability benefit from a deep understanding of both the new tools at our disposal, and the complex challenge to which we hope to apply them.

(A previous version of this was presented as part of the Geothink pre-event at the 2015 American Association of Geographers conference in Chicago. IL. See: www.geothink.ca)

Alexander Aylett is Assistant Professor at the Centre on Urbanisation, Culture and Society at the National Institute for Scientific Research (UCS-INRS) in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

RECODE Open Data Youth Leader – My View on A Week of Open Data Events

By Suthee Sangiambut

This article contains personal reflections from Geothink’s Newsletter Editor and Student Coordinator, Suthee Sangiambut.

This year’s Canada Open Data Summit and International Open Data Conference confirmed that open data and open government are quickly becoming mainstream topics for all sorts of disciplines and subject areas. I consider myself part of the open data community, due to my masters research on open data as well as my involvement in the Geothink grant.

I had heard of some of the people and institutions prior to the event and felt excited to have the chance to talk in person. My own interactions with representatives of government and non-profits had already indicated a lot of optimism and passion for open data and government. From this perspective, I got what I was expecting – plus an eagerness to tackle problems of implementation. My hopes of getting an update on the current status of open data in Canada were also met, especially with people from so many sectors and multiple levels of government.

The panels and workshops throughout the week were informative. In particular, I enjoyed Bianca Wylie’s great line that “open government is government,” as a way to set our expectations of how essential the idea of open data has become for many governments.

It was interesting to listen to speakers from Canada, USA, and beyond on different open data-related initiatives. The panels confirmed for me a couple of observations: those implementing open data and open government initiatives around the world are facing similar problems (such as resources, politics, organisational culture), engagement through one-off events (such as hackathons) is insufficient, and there is still work to be done to make studies and evaluations (especially in the non-profit sector) more rigorous.

I had assumed that there would be groups of attendees who would be sending different messages. However, after listening to talks on “Moving beyond the hackathon” at the Canada Open Data Summit, and various panels on “Open Cities” at the IODC, I found speakers at both making the same point—that citizen engagement with open data needs to go beyond one-off events such as hackathons, and that we need to address the issue of ‘capacity building’ or ‘data literacy’.

As an aside, this issue of ‘training in open data’ also surprised me as a conversation that was both too broad and too vague. And the idea of ‘open data skills’ should have been discussed in much more concrete terms, as attendees were not able to separate out what levels of programming or analytical skills were required. On the other hand, this level of vagueness was also quite appropriate, given the rate of change we experience in technology. In fact, attendees often spoke on similar subjects but used slightly different terminology.

I was also rather surprised to see representatives of organisations and governments implementing open data initiatives in developing countries. What was surprising for me was that, to some of them, open data was another tool to tackle corruption. The potential for open data initiatives in countries experiencing endemic corruption is quite different from countries with much lower levels of corruption. What attendees appeared to be assuming was that open data could be a catalyst for social change.

My main take-home points were on citizen engagement and the need for sustained engagement. Furthermore, the conversations on capacity building were very welcome, as they help to address the issue of keeping people actively engaged with open data in the long term. Increasing people’s programming and analytical skills could potentially increase their demand for data as they increase their capacity to inform themselves of new data or the potential for new types of analysis. However, opening a new open data community or initiative in one’s own community would require a long-term plan in addition to short events.

If I met local open data activists in Thailand (my home country), my recommendations would actually be rather different from what I learned at the Canada Open Data Summit. Continuing on the thread from above, tackling transparency and accountability in countries experiencing endemic levels of corruption with the use of open data is perhaps a step too far. Solutions must always be appropriate and tailored to the locale. In the case of large digital divides (both in terms of broadband access and skills), gaps in education (both in society and in the public sector), and low quality in government data collection, it is really quite debatable whether or not open data is an appropriate or even cost effective solution to both social and economic problems. The first step to implementing open data and open government initiatives, is to think about democracy and its various forms. There is no single way to implement democratic government and I think this is an important point to recognise, as the open government and open data movement are, at the highest level, still ‘one size fits all’ movements. In the conversations during the week in Ottawa, there were only two situations mentioned where it was acceptable to withhold data – security/strategic assets and privacy. In countries like Thailand where democratic government is implemented very differently from Canada, open data activists in Thailand must be able to resolve the principles of open government and open data with their local contexts.

Thank you to the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation for their support with the RECODE programme, and thank you to Open North for their organisation of the Canada Open Data Summit.

For more summary of the events of the week, see our posts on the Canada Open Data Summit, IODC 2015 Day 1, and IODC 2015 Day 2.

If you have thoughts or questions about this article, please get in touch with Suthee Sangiambut.

Geothink at the International Open Data Conference – Day 2

By Suthee Sangiambut

This Friday saw the conclusion of the International Open Data Conference (IODC) 2015, with an atmosphere of optimism and celebration. Attendees came from all corners of the world in numbers far greater than previous conferences—one indication that the open data movement may be gaining momentum. On this final day, stories of open data implementation were shared from both the developed and developing world.

Friday’s panel emphasized questions that went beyond the release of data. A panel which included top officials from Canada, the United States, and the World Bank answered questions on how to break down data silos to ensure people can work together. Commonly referred to as open by default, the panelists felt data ownership needs to be discouraged so that more data ends up in this format.

In particular, they felt such a cultural shift within governments would allow for knowledge sharing with the publics they serve and within the state. Furthermore, it would produce efficiencies that are impossible under today’s paradigm of data produced by a single agency for its own use. Instead, interoperability needs to be technical (such as data formats and standards which would allow the combining of data from different departments), human (common nomenclature and processes to allow communication between departments), and legal (so issues of copyright and intellectual property do not prevent data sharing).

Amparo Ballivan, a lead economist at The World Bank, added that governments not only need more openness in data but that “openness in partnerships” is also desirable. In other words, our outreach and educational programmes to promote open data and data sharing must be as transparent as the data they seek to open up.

“We are called to display the same kind of behavior that we demand of others,” she said.

Catherine Woteki, under secretary for research, education & economics and chief scientist at the United States Department of Agriculture, proposed another solution for this challenge. In particular, she felt that a ‘thesaurus’ is needed to provide links between data-sets in different silos. She emphasized a problem-driven approach to releasing data, with priority given to sharing the data needed to address real problems that has the highest impact.

Throughout the conference, there was also discussion on the role of intermediaries or the non-profit or advocacy groups that promote the usage and availability of open data. Intermediaries were acknowledged as crucial in bridging digital and data divides, to bring open data and its benefits to those unaware or without the skills to leverage it. Intermediaries will also be important actors when attempting to capture local knowledge.

Panelists in other sessions felt that the private sector has become interested in opening up data. At a panel titled “Corporate data sharing for the public good: shades of open,” there was much discussion on the potential benefits of having the private sector open up their data to the public. Potential first steps to be taken were: regulatory frameworks, connecting practitioners, and creating tangible use cases.

The day ended with a recap of the conference, hosted by David Eaves. Key points included: the move beyond engagement through hackathons, moving beyond simply releasing data on portals towards addressing impacts, and general inequalities such as digital divides. On the subject of intermediaries, it was noted that the public is still speaking mainly through intermediaries, resulting in a gap between the demand and supply sides for data. This gap needs to be bridged in order to meet people’s needs.

IODC 2016 will be hosted next year in Madrid, Spain. For web archives of the panels, visit the IODC 2015 website.

The Final take-home points:

Citizen engagement needs to become a more sustained effort
Standardization still needs to be pushed
Measurement of outcomes and impacts need to be formalized
‘Open’ culture and ways of thinking need to be promoted in all sectors
Data must move away from silos to become interoperable
Intermediaries are important actors that help bridge gaps between demand and supply sides
Problem-driven approaches to releasing open data should be encouraged

If you have thoughts or questions about this article, get in touch with Suthee Sangiambut, Geothink’s Newsletter Editor, at suthee.sangiambut@mail.mcgill.ca.

Geothink at the International Open Data Conference 2015 – Day 1

By Suthee Sangiambut

The 2015 International Open Data Conference (IODC) opened today, May 29, at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa. Below, we detail the conclusions from several panel discussions on open cities.

In fact, open cities were the featured topics in two of the day’s panel sessions. While a number of case studies were given, panelists emphasized that few cities (less than 1%) globally have adopted any type of open city initiative.

However, the case studies demonstrated the potential for sensing and data analysis to be used to improve resource allocation and targeting in a city’s public services. A good example given was by Stephane Contre, the chief analytics officer for the City of Edmonton. In particular, he mentioned how hotspot mapping using a kernel density function was done on light bulb point data and on crime point data. This results in new layers representing point data with continuous surfaces. Such a representation allows officials to layer the light bulb, other hotspot data, and various crime data sets, identify correlations, and identify areas in need of additional resources or patrolling.

Not only was there a focus on the data side of open cities, there was also an emphasis on the need for citizen engagement. Without citizen engagement in an open city initiative, city residents simply become receivers of public services. Feedback loops that allow citizen input are needed to make sure city officials can adequately gauge and react to the demands of citizens.

Furthermore, big barriers to releasing open data still remain, especially in the organizational culture within government and due to the lack of political support. Additionally, civil servants require better computer and data literacy to bring about a ‘data first’ mindset where civil servants keep in mind the idea of openness as well as the possible analysis they could perform on a given data set.

Closing remarks were made by Sir Nigel Shadbolt of the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Tony Clement, president of the Treasury Board of Canada, who both expressed great optimism for the future of open data. According to Shadbolt, the next step for open data is in empowering individuals with their own data. He believes a mashing of open government data with personal data and even mobiles and wearable personal sensors will allow us to create even richer data driven experiences that improve quality of life.

Follow #IODC15 for rapid updates by attendees on conference activities.

If you have thoughts or questions about this article, get in touch with Suthee Sangiambut, Geothink’s Newsletter Editor, at suthee.sangiambut@mail.mcgill.ca.

Geothink at the Canadian Open Data Summit 2015

By Suthee Sangiambut

The Canadian Open Data Summit 2015 wrapped up yesterday at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa with the City of Edmonton receiving this year’s Canadian Open Data Award—a nod to the advancement of their open data and open government initiatives. The event was hosted by Open North, and a number of Geothink’s team, partners, and students were present.

To start the day, Tim Davies gave an overview of trends and attitudes in the global open data community. He raised the question of whether open data is just another community or economic input, or whether it is becoming another way of performing coproduction between citizen and government. A summary of his opening talk is here.

A number of other panels and workshops also produced interesting points to take home. With the understanding that we have, in large part, moved beyond the simple problem of getting government data out to the public, these sessions focused on the problems of standards, consistency, engagement, and impact.

Two issues tackled at the summit, in particular, included the problem of bridging out beyond hackathons and closing gaps in institutional culture. The sentiment of many participants was that additional or improved methods are needed to maintain and deepen citizen engagement with open data over the medium and long term. Hackathons are great for initial engagement, but are perhaps not able to sustain interest in open data for long.

Additionally, hackathons have limited reach in terms of audience. Efforts in engagement need to move beyond the open data and hackathon communities to reach those not yet exposed to the data or technologies. Institutional culture refers to attitudes and approaches to open data management in bureaucracy. While openness in data is becoming the norm in some places, legislation is not enough and requires adoption and understanding of concepts of open government by civil servants themselves.

A detailed overview of the events will be available in the next Geothink Newsletter. For rapid updates on the week’s events in Ottawa, follow #IODC2015 on Twitter.

If you have thoughts or questions about this article, get in touch with Suthee Sangiambut at suthee.sangiambut@mail.mcgill.ca.