Automating the War on Noise Pollution

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Linda Poon: “Any city dweller is no stranger to the frequent revving of motorbikes and car engines, made all the more intolerable after the months of silence during pandemic lockdowns. Some cities have decided to take action. 

Paris police set up an anti-noise patrol in 2020 to ticket motorists whose vehicles exceed a certain decibel level, and soon, the city will start piloting the use of noise sensors in two neighborhoods. Called Medusa, each device uses four microphones to detect and measure noise levels, and two cameras to help authorities track down the culprit. No decibel threshold or fines will be set during the three-month trial period, according to French newspaper Liberation, but it’ll test the potentials and limits of automating the war on sound pollution.

Cities like Toronto and Philadelphia are also considering deploying similar tools. By now, research has been mounting about the health effects of continuous noise exposure, including links to high blood pressure and heart disease, and to poor mental health. And for years, many cities have been tackling noise through ordinances and urban design, including various bans on leaf blowers, on construction at certain hours and on cars. Some have even hired “night mayors” to, among other things, address complaints about after-hours noise.

But enforcement, even with the help of simple camera-and-noise radars, has been a challenge. Since 2018,  the Canadian city of Edmonton has been piloting the use of four radars attached to light poles at busy intersections in the downtown area. A 2021 report on the second phase of the project completed in 2020, found that officials had to manually sift through the data to take out noise made by, say, sirens. And the recordings didn’t always provide strong enough evidence against the offender in court. It was also costly: The pilot cost taxpayers $192,000, while fines generated a little more than half that amount, according to CTV News Edmonton.

Those obstacles have made noise pollution an increasingly popular target for smart city innovation, with companies and researchers looking to make environmental monitoring systems do more than just measure decibel levels…(More)”.

A tale of two labs: Rethinking urban living labs for advancing citizen engagement in food system transformations

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Anke Brons et al: “Citizen engagement is heralded as essential for food democracy and equality, yet the implementation of inclusive citizen engagement mechanisms in urban food systems governance has lagged behind. This paper aims to further the agenda of citizen engagement in the transformation towards healthy and sustainable urban food systems by offering a conceptual reflection on urban living labs (ULLs) as a methodological platform. Over the past decades, ULLs have become increasingly popular to actively engage citizens in methodological testbeds for innovations within real-world settings. The paper proposes that ULLs as a tool for inclusive citizen engagement can be utilized in two ways: (i) the ULL as the daily life of which citizens are the experts, aimed at uncovering the unreflexive agency of a highly diverse population in co-shaping the food system and (ii) the ULL as a break with daily life aimed at facilitating reflexive agency in (re)shaping food futures. We argue that both ULL approaches have the potential to facilitate inclusive citizen engagement in different ways by strengthening the breadth and the depth of citizen engagement respectively. The paper concludes by proposing a sequential implementation of the two types of ULL, paying attention to spatial configurations and the short-termed nature of ULLs….(More)”.

Smart Cities: Mapping their Ethical Implications

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Marta Ziosi, Benjamin Hewitt, Prathm Juneja, Mariarosaria Taddeo, and Luciano Floridi: “This paper provides an overview of the various definitions and labels attached to the concept of smart cities in order to identify four dimensions that ground the analysis of ethical concerns emerging from the current debate. These are: (1) network infrastructure, with the corresponding concerns of control, surveillance, and data privacy and ownership; (2) post-political governance, embodied in the tensions between public and private decision-making and cities as post-political entities; (3) social inclusion, expressed in the aspects of citizen participation and inclusion, and inequality and discrimination; and (4) sustainability, with a specific focus on the environment as an element to protect but also as a strategic component for the future. Notwithstanding the persisting disagreements around the definition of a smart city, the article uses these four dimensions to analyse both the different types and conceptions of smart cities and the multiple aspects in which smart cities reinforce old and introduce new ethical problems…(More)“

Toward A Collaborative Smart City: A Play-Based Urban Living Laboratory in Boston

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Eric Gordon, John Harlow, Melissa Teng & Elizabeth Christoferetti: This article reports on an urban living laboratory that designed a suite of play-based prototypes, as an attempt to “institution” collaborative smart city governance in the city of Boston. This project was called “Beta Blocks,” and it geographically defined “Exploration Zones,” governed by local residents and business owners, who decided whether, where, and why to temporarily install technologies in the public realm. To recruit and facilitate the participation of Zone Advisory Group members, the authors fabricated a lavender, parking-space-sized, inflatable art exhibition (Beta Blob) that hosted a suite of public-facing activities. Although the composite model failed at “institutioning” itself into Boston’s government through this prototype, the discrete components succeeded in centering play in public learning situations and prototyping a model for collaborative governance between publics, and the public and private sectors…(More)”.

Amsterdam introduces mandatory register for sensors

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Sarah Wray at Cities Today: “Private companies, research institutions and government organisations in Amsterdam are now obliged to report sensors deployed in public spaces.

The information is being displayed via an online map to give residents more insight into how, where and what data is collected from sources such as cameras, air quality and traffic sensors, Wi-Fi counters and smart billboards. The map shows the type of sensor, the owner and whether personal data is processed.

A statement from the city said: “Amsterdam believes that residents have the right to know where and when data is collected. The sensor register and the reporting obligation help to create awareness. It is one of the 18 actions from the Amsterdam Data Strategy.”

The requirement applies to new sensors and those that are already installed in the city, including mobile sensors.

So far, only sensors from the City of Amsterdam have been included in the register. Other owners are now urged to report their sensors and have until 1 June 2022 before enforcement action will be taken.

If there is no response even after warnings, the municipality can remove the sensor at the owner’s expense, the city said.

The obligation to report sensors  is part of a regulation update recently passed by the City Council…(More)”.

Social Media and the Contemporary City

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Eric Sauda, Ginette Wessel and Alireza Karduni: “The widespread adoption of smartphones has led to an explosion of mobile social media data, more than a billion messages per day that continuously track location, content, and time. Social Media in the Contemporary City focuses on the effects of social media on local communities and urban space in a variety of political and economic settings related to social activism, informal economic activity, public art, and global extremism.

The book covers events ranging from Banksy art installations, mobile food trucks, and underground restaurants, to a Black Lives Matter protest, the Christchurch mosque shootings, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. The interplay between urban space, local community, and social media in each case study requires diverse methodologies that are both computational (i.e. machine learning, social network analysis, and natural language processing) and ethnographic (i.e. semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis, and site analysis). The book views social media not as a replacement for the local community or urban space but rather as a translation of the uses and meanings of all three realms….(More)”.

‘Anyway, the dashboard is dead’: On trying to build urban informatics

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Jathan Sadowski: “How do the idealised promises and purposes of urban informatics compare to the material politics and practices of their implementation? To answer this question, I ethnographically trace the development of two data dashboards by strategic planners in an Australian city over the course of 2 years. By studying this techno-political process from its origins onward, I uncovered an interesting story of obdurate institutions, bureaucratic momentum, unexpected troubles, and, ultimately, frustration and failure. These kinds of stories, which often go untold in the annals of innovation, contrast starkly with more common framings of technological triumph and transformation. They also, I argue, reveal much more about how techno-political systems are actualised in the world…(More)”.

User-Centricity: What It Means, How It Works, Why It’s Needed

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Policy Brief by UserCentriCities project: “.. looks critically at the need for putting citizens at the heart of digital government – and analyses six successful projects in key European cities: Bologna (Emilia Romagna Region), Espoo, Milan, Murcia, Rotterdam and Tallinn. Building on lessons learned in a year of structured interviews with leading officials in the UserCentriCities project, the policy brief looks at key trends driving breakthroughs in digital-service delivery – in the public and private sector – and proposes a five-point roadmap for greater Europe-national-local collaboration in the service of citizens. The policy brief will launch at The 2021 UserCentriCities Summit, in the presence of Boštjan Koritnik, minister for public administration of Slovenia, which currently holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union….(More)”.

How the Data Revolution Will Help the World Fight Climate Change

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Robert Muggah and Carlo Ratti: “…The rapidly increasing volume and variety of Big Data collected in cities—whose potential has barely been tapped—can help solve the pressing need for actionable insight. For one, it can be used to track the climate crisis as it happens. Collected in real-time and in high resolution, data can serve as an interface between aspirational goals and daily implementation. Take the case of mobility, a key contributor to carbon, nitrogen, and particulate emissions. A wealth of data from fixed sensors, outdoor video footage, navigation devices, and mobile phones could be processed in real time to classify all modes of city transportation. This can be used to generate granular knowledge of which vehicles—from gas-guzzling SUVs to electric bikes—are contributing to traffic and emissions in a given hour, day, week, or month. This kind of just-in-time analytics can inform agile policy adjustments: Data showing too many miles driven by used diesel vehicles might indicate the need for more targeted car buyback programs while better data about bike use can bolster arguments for dedicated lanes and priority at stoplights.

Data-driven analytics are already improving energy use efficiency in buildings, where heating, cooling, and electricity use are among the chief culprits of greenhouse gas emissions. It is now possible to track spatial and temporal electricity consumption patterns inside commercial and residential properties with smart meters. City authorities can use them to monitor which buildings are using the most power and when. This kind of data can then be used to set incentives to reduce consumption and optimize energy distribution over a 24-hour period. Utilities can charge higher prices during peak usage hours that put the most carbon-intensive strain on the grid. Although peak pricing strategies have existed for decades, data abundance and advanced computing could now help utilities make use of their full potential. Likewise, thermal cameras in streets can identify buildings with energy leaks, especially during colder periods. Tenants can use this data to replace windows or add insulation, substantially reducing their utility bills while also contributing to local climate action.

The data revolution is being harnessed by some cities to hasten the energy transition. A good example of this is the Helsinki Hot Heart proposal that recently won a city-wide energy challenge (and which one of our firms—Carlo Ratti Associati—is involved in). Helsinki currently relies on a district heating system powered by coal power plants that are expected to be phased out by 2030. A key question is whether it is possible to power the city using intermittent renewable energy sources. The project proposes giant water basins, floating off the shore in the Baltic Sea, that act as insulated thermal batteries to accumulate heat during peak renewable production, releasing it through the district heating system. This is only possible through a fine-tuned collection of sensors, algorithms, and actuators. Relying on the flow of water and bytes, Helsinki Hot Hearth would offer a path to digital physical systems that could take cities like Helsinki to a sustainable, data-driven future….(More)”.

Privacy Principles for Mobility Data

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

About: “The Principles are a set of values and priorities intended to guide the mobility ecosystem in the responsible use of data and the protection of individual privacy. They are intended to serve as a guiding “North Star” to assess technical and policy decisions that have implications for privacy when handling mobility data. The principles are designed to apply to all sectors, including public, private, research and non-profit….

Increasingly, organizations in the public, private and nonprofit sectors are faced with decisions that have data privacy implications. For organizations utilizing mobility data, these principles provide a baseline framework to both identify and address these situations. Individuals whose data is being collected, utilized and shared must be afforded proper protections and opportunities for agency in how information about them is used and handled. These principles offer guidance for how to engage in this process.

Human movement generates data in many ways: directly through the usage of GPS-enabled mobility services or devices, indirectly through phones or other devices with geolocation and even through cameras and other sensors that observe the public realm. While these principles were written with shared mobility services in mind, many of them will be applicable in other contexts in which data arising out of individual movement is collected and analyzed. We encourage any organization working with this type of data to adapt and apply these principles in their specific context.

While not all mobility data may present a privacy risk to individuals, all stakeholders managing mobility data should treat it as personal information that is sensitive, unless it can be demonstrated that it doesn’t present a privacy risk to individuals.

These principles were developed through a collaboration organized by the New Urban Mobility (NUMO) alliance, the North American Bikeshare & Scootershare Association (NABSA) and the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) in 2020. These groups convened a diverse set of stakeholders representing cities, mobility service providers, technology companies, privacy advocates and academia. Over the course of many months, this group heard from privacy experts, discussed key topics related to data privacy and identified core ideas and common themes to serve as a basis for these Principles….(More)”.