Pablo Rodríguez Bustamante, Geographer, Owner-consultant at GEOCyL. He holds a Geography, Urbanism and Land Management Advanced Studies Diploma (recognized researcher), PhD candidate and Associate Professor at University of Valladolid (Spain). “Mi Ciudad Inteligente” -My Smart City- Project promoter. He collaborates with several web/blogs writing articles and posts about smart cities, smart mobility and geomarketing and has been recognized with several awards for entrepreneurship.
Urban centers are in constant evolution, they settle as the most common way for society – hence, the territory – to organize. Nowadays, more than half the world population live in cities (according to the UN, this number is expected to increase up to more than 66% of the world population).
We may call them intelligent, sustainable, digital, human, creative, but what is clear is that they follow a common pattern, a common course, a common drive shaft that concerns their managers: their sustainability (on the territory, environmental, economic or social). The area plays a fundamental role in current cities, and from there, their planning. These towns need well-developed, accurate management systems to handle massive amounts of data, which must be open.
The real problem lies with transferring the physical work to the digital world, as Carlo Ratti stated: “We are basically building a digital copy of our physical world and that is having profound consequences.” (Carlo Ratti, director of the Senseable Cities Lab at MIT)
Why should data be open?
Open data allows handling information on a large scale, not just local but global. Therefore the motto of IODC2016 [www.opendatacon.org] fits so well in this lecture: “Global goals, local impact.” Data should be open, affordable for the entire population. Why? Because they generate value.
Data value lies with the user’s capacity to handle them, to use them and make the most of them. Data are the fundamental base of decisions in the organization of territory, the spatial planning. They warn us about previous issues and their evolution so we can predict future outcomes. They allow anticipation.
Governments, regardless of their scale, need to open data. It is fundamental to make them available to users – companies, universities, individuals, etc. The struggle towards transparency is now an open fight as well, in which there is a lot to overcome. Besides, these data need to be homogeneous – for their use and reuse – and standardized – allowing their crossing, speed on analyses and capacity of command and management (over them and the city). Our cities, regions and states need a global data platform to work with, and only then we will be able to obtain more reliable, practical and dynamic results.
Most of these data have a place in space, in territory; this allows Geographic Information Systems to function as a powerful and versatile database for cities. There are various applications for these information systems, and in our current world, where mobility is rather important, many location-based apps or mobile applications to achieve the objectives that both the Administration and the user set themselves.
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