Paper by Anu Masso, Anniki Puura, Jevgenia Gerassimenko and Olle Järv: “The European Strategy for Data aims to create a unified environment for accessing, sharing, and reusing data across sectors, institutions, and individuals, with a focus on areas like mobility and smart cities. While significant progress has been made in the technical interoperability and legislative frameworks for data spaces, critical gaps persist in the bottom-up processes, particularly in fostering social collaboration and citizen-driven initiatives. What is often overlooked is the need for effective citizen engagement and collaborative governance models to ensure the long-term viability and inclusivity of these data spaces. In addition, although principles for successful data sharing are well-established in sectors like healthcare, they remain underdeveloped and more challenging to implement in areas such as mobility. This article addresses these gaps by exploring how gamification can drive bottom-up data space formation, engaging citizens in data-sharing and fostering collaboration among private companies, local governments, and academic institutions. Using bicycle usage as an example, it illustrates how gamification can incentivise citizens to share mobility data for social good, promoting more active and sustainable transportation in cities. Drawing on a case study from Tallinn (Estonia), the paper demonstrates how gamification can improve data collection, highlighting the vital role of citizen participation in urban planning. The article emphasises that while technological solutions for data spaces are advancing, understanding collaborative governance models for data sharing remains crucial for ensuring the success of the European Union’s data space agenda and driving sustainable innovation in urban environments…(More)”.
How Being Watched Changes How You Think
Article by Simon Makin: “In 1785 English philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the perfect prison: Cells circle a tower from which an unseen guard can observe any inmate at will. As far as a prisoner knows, at any given time, the guard may be watching—or may not be. Inmates have to assume they’re constantly observed and behave accordingly. Welcome to the Panopticon.
Many of us will recognize this feeling of relentless surveillance. Information about who we are, what we do and buy and where we go is increasingly available to completely anonymous third parties. We’re expected to present much of our lives to online audiences and, in some social circles, to share our location with friends. Millions of effectively invisible closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and smart doorbells watch us in public, and we know facial recognition with artificial intelligence can put names to faces.
So how does being watched affect us? “It’s one of the first topics to have been studied in psychology,” says Clément Belletier, a psychologist at University of Clermont Auvergne in France. In 1898 psychologist Norman Triplett showed that cyclists raced harder in the presence of others. From the 1970s onward, studies showed how we change our overt behavior when we are watched to manage our reputation and social consequences.
But being watched doesn’t just change our behavior; decades of research show it also infiltrates our mind to impact how we think. And now a new study reveals how being watched affects unconscious processing in our brain. In this era of surveillance, researchers say, the findings raise concerns about our collective mental health…(More)”.
Measuring the Shade Coverage of Trees and Buildings in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Paper by Amirhosein Shabrang, Mehdi Pourpeikari Heris, and Travis Flohr: “We investigated the spatial shade patterns of trees and buildings on sidewalks and bike lanes in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We used Lidar data and 3D modeling to analyze the spatial and temporal shade distribution across the City. Our analysis shows significant shade variations throughout the City. Western city areas receive more shade from trees, and the eastern regions receive more shade from buildings. The City’s northern areas lack shade, but natural and built sources of shade can improve shade coverage integration. This study’s findings help identify shade coverage gaps, which have implications for urban planning and design for more heat-resilient cities…(More)”
Who Is Government?
Book edited by Michael Lewis: “The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.
Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.
Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters…(More)”.
AI in Urban Life
Book by Patricia McKenna: “In exploring artificial intelligence (AI) in urban life, this book brings together and extends thinking on how human-AI interactions are continuously evolving. Through such interactions, people are aided on the one hand, while becoming more aware of their own capabilities and potentials on the other hand, pertaining, for example, to creativity, human sensing, and collaboration.
It is the particular focus of research questions developed in relation to awareness, smart cities, autonomy, privacy, transparency, theory, methods, practices, and collective intelligence, along with the wide range of perspectives and opportunities offered, that set this work apart from others. Conceptual frameworks are formulated for each of these areas to guide explorations and understandings in this work and going forward. A synthesis is provided in the final chapter for perspectives, challenges and opportunities, and conceptual frameworks for urban life in an era of AI, opening the way for evolving research and practice directions…(More)”.
Smart Cities to Smart Societies: Moving Beyond Technology
Book edited by Esmat Zaidan, Imad Antoine Ibrahim, and Elie Azar: “…explores the governance of smart cities from a holistic approach, arguing that the creation of smart cities must consider the specific circumstances of each country to improve the preservation, revitalisation, liveability, and sustainability of urban areas. The recent push for smart cities is part of an effort to reshape urban development through megaprojects, centralised master planning, and approaches that convey modernism and global affluence. However, moving towards a citywide smart transition is a major undertaking, and complexities are expected to grow exponentially. This book argues that a comprehensive approach is necessary to consider all relevant aspects. The chapters seek to identify the potential and pitfalls of the smart transformation of urban communities and its role in sustainability goals; share state-of-the-art practices concerning technology, policy, and social science dimensions in smart cities and communities; and develop opportunities for cooperation and partnership in wider and larger research and development programmes. Divided into three parts, the first part of the book highlights the significance of various societal elements and factors in facilitating a successful smart transition, with a particular emphasis on the role of human capital. The second part delves into the challenges associated with technology and its integration into smart city initiatives. The final part of the book examines the current state of regulations and policies governing smart cities. The book will be an important asset for students and researchers studying law, engineering, political science, international relations, geopolitics, economics, and engineering…(More)”.
Citizen Centricity in Public Policy Making
Book by Naci Karkin and Volkan Göçoğlu: “The book explores and positions citizen centricity within conventional public administration and public policy analysis theories and approaches. It seeks to define an appropriate perspective while utilizing popular, independent, and standalone concepts from the literature that support citizen centricity. Additionally, it illustrates the implementation part with practical cases. It ultimately presents a novel and descriptive approach to provide insights into how citizen centricity can be applied in practice. This descriptive novel approach has three essential components: a base and two pillars. The foundation includes new-age public policy making approaches and complexity theory. The first column reflects the conceptual dimension, which comprises supporting concepts from the literature on citizen centricity. The second column represents the practical dimension, a structure supported by academic research that provides practical cases and inspiration for future applications. The descriptive novel approach accepts citizen centricity as a fundamental approach in public policy making and aims to create a new awareness in the academic community on the subject. Additionally, the book provides refreshed conceptual and theoretical backgrounds, along with tangible participatory models and frameworks, benefiting academics, professionals, and graduate students…(More)”.
How the UK could monetise ‘citizen data’ and turn it into a national asset
Article by Ashley Braganza and S. Asieh H. Tabaghdehi: “Across all sectors, UK citizens produce vast amounts of data. This data is increasingly needed to train AI systems. But it is also of enormous value to private companies, which use it to target adverts to consumers based on their behaviour or to personalise content to keep people on their site.
Yet the economic and social value of this citizen-generated data is rarely returned to the public, highlighting the need for more equitable and transparent models of data stewardship.
AI companies have demonstrated that datasets hold immense economic, social and strategic value. And the UK’s AI Opportunities Action Plan notes that access to new and high-quality datasets can confer a competitive edge in developing AI models. This in turn unlocks the potential for innovative products and services.
However, there’s a catch. Most citizens have signed over their data to companies by accepting standard terms and conditions. Once citizen data is “owned” by companies, this leaves others unable to access it or forced to pay to do so.
Commercial approaches to data tend to prioritise short-term profit, often at the expense of the public interest. The debate over the use of artistic and creative materials to train AI models without recompense to the creator exemplifies the broader trade-off between commercial use of data and the public interest.
Countries around the world are recognising the strategic value of public data. The UK government could lead in making public data into a strategic asset. What this might mean in practice is the government owning citizen data and monetising this through sale or licensing agreements with commercial companies.
In our evidence, we proposed a UK sovereign data fund to manage the monetisation of public datasets curated within the NDL. This fund could invest directly in UK companies, fund scale-ups and create joint ventures with local and international partners.
The fund would have powers to license anonymised, ethically governed data to companies for commercial use. It would also be in a position to fast-track projects that benefit the UK or have been deemed to be national priorities. (These priorities are drones and other autonomous technologies as well as engineering biology, space and AI in healthcare.)…(More)”.
The Next Wave of Innovation Districts
Article by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner: “A next wave of innovation districts is gaining momentum given the structural changes underway in the global economy. The examples cited above telegraph where existing innovation districts are headed and explain why new districts are forming. The districts highlighted and many others are responding to fast-changing and highly volatile macro forces and the need to de-risk, decarbonize, and diversify talent.
The next wave of innovation districts is distinctive for multiple reasons.
- The sectors leveraging this innovation geography expand way beyond the traditional focus on life sciences to include advanced manufacturing for military and civilian purposes.
- The deeper emphasis on decarbonization is driving the use of basic and applied R&D to invent new clean technology products and solutions as well as organizing energy generation and distribution within the districts themselves to meet crucial carbon targets.
- The stronger emphasis on the diversification of talent includes the upskilling of workers for new production activities and a broader set of systems to drive inclusive innovation to address long-standing inequities.
- The districts are attracting a broader group of stakeholders, including manufacturing companies, utilities, university industrial design and engineering departments and hard tech startups.
- The districts ultimately are looking to engage a wider base of investors given the disparate resources and traditions of capitalization that support defense tech, clean tech, med tech and other favored forms of innovation.
Some regions or states are also seeking ways to connect a constellation of districts and other economic hubs to harness the imperative to innovate accentuated by these and other macro forces. The state of South Australia is one such example. It has prioritized several innovation hubs across this region to foster South Australia’s knowledge and innovation ecosystem, as well as identify emerging economic clusters in industry sectors of global competitiveness to advance the broader economy…(More)”.
WorkflowHub: a registry for computational workflows
Paper by Ove Johan Ragnar Gustafsson et al: “The rising popularity of computational workflows is driven by the need for repetitive and scalable data processing, sharing of processing know-how, and transparent methods. As both combined records of analysis and descriptions of processing steps, workflows should be reproducible, reusable, adaptable, and available. Workflow sharing presents opportunities to reduce unnecessary reinvention, promote reuse, increase access to best practice analyses for non-experts, and increase productivity. In reality, workflows are scattered and difficult to find, in part due to the diversity of available workflow engines and ecosystems, and because workflow sharing is not yet part of research practice. WorkflowHub provides a unified registry for all computational workflows that links to community repositories, and supports both the workflow lifecycle and making workflows findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). By interoperating with diverse platforms, services, and external registries, WorkflowHub adds value by supporting workflow sharing, explicitly assigning credit, enhancing FAIRness, and promoting workflows as scholarly artefacts. The registry has a global reach, with hundreds of research organisations involved, and more than 800 workflows registered…(More)”