[Ica-osgeo-labs] CitySmart/SmartCity Road Map: 'The Challenge'

[Sven Schade]

Suchith, Patrick, all

Indeed, the meeting on Monday was a good mile stone to touch base and get
additional ideas from other communities.

In my presentation, I tried to raise the discussion about common interests
and possible future direction(s). At the moment interests are manifold, but
we might focus too much on the technical issues only.

For your convenience, this were the basic directions/dimensions of
addressing Big Data and Geospatial Information Science:
- On the technical/methodological dimension: advancing (Big) data handling
to unite geospatial science and statistics research.
- On the legal dimension: investigating and suggesting the required
framework to preserve privacy, ensure equity (equality in access to data and
computing capacities), protect IPR and copyrights.
- On the economic dimension: creating sustainable Research Infrastructures
(RI) for the public and private sector, investigate possibilities for Public
Private Partnerships (PPP).
- On the social dimension: Fostering public engagement in Big Data (theory,
i.e. participation in related debates, and practice, i.e. data gathering and
analysis).

I believe that this holds for Big Geospatial Data in general, but equally
for urban analytics. Taking the example of our great discussion of the Road
Map Challenge  [1], it currently addresses the technocratic dimension only.
While this is certainly the area most of us are comfortable with and where
much progress can be made, any serious roadmap on urban science should also
consider the other dimensions - in my opinion most prominently the social
dimension. In this respect, a roadmap would look quite different to what is
currently discussed. We would need to:
1) Identify the intended direct beneficiaries (aka users, customers,
consumers) - instead of focusing on producers of data, infrastructures,
software and services. Possible beneficiaries might be: urban planners,
scientists/academia, city councils and majors, citizen, young people (pupil
and students), etc. While these intended audiences might partially overlap,
all might have different needs and need a different approach for
participation.
2) Identify and get into contact with some representatives of the intended
target group, e.g. with champions in digital social innovation and open
minded individuals, or via associations that are directly connected to these
communities, such as citizen associations.
3) Engaging with these people in order to identify their real needs for city
analytics, in order to first of all get their requirements, but also to
co-develop products, get direct feedback (e.g. be including them in review
panels for the NASA WW Challenge), etc.
4) Expand from few collaborations into a wider network in which solutions
are replicated or adopted for one city after the other - each time
customized to the individual needs.

While the discussions so far (for good reasons) focused on a technology push
("People of city X, come and see what a nice open solution we developed for
you!"), we should do our best to complement this with an application pull
("Urban Science and City Analytics experts, we have a serious problem, can
you help us?").

Thoughts?

Best,
Sven

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_UrbanScience_CityAnalytics

-----Original Message-----
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[mailto:ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Suchith Anand
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 9:37 AM
To: Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX); ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [Ica-osgeo-labs] CitySmart/SmartCity Road Map: 'The Challenge'

Patrick, many thanks for the Road Map Challenge to take this forward.  "Open
Cities - Guiding Principles" will be great basis for everyone interested to
collaborate and build upon ideas specific to their use cases.  Seeing the
expertise of the people who have expressed interest in working on this
common theme, it is good momentum. 

Let me thank all the presenters and participants for of our yesterday's
meeting (both who were present in venue and online) and to Chris for
chairing this session. It is really appropriate that we build stronger
synergies with the work  being done by colleagues in Big Data theme for
this. Thanks to Sven, Didier, Chris, Mark, Peter for their excellent
presentation and sharing ideas.

Sven- your last slide on what should the two groups focus for synergies
(technical, social,policy...) was thought provoking.  Pity we did not get
time to discuss this . Let us discuss ideas on this over mail as this is key
for thinking for future work ideas.  

The session was recorded , so we will be able to send the url of the
recording to others who were not able to attend also.

So thanks all and this meeting has been a good start to get our ideas
together.The main problem i realised was we had only less than 30 minutes
for the  Q& A and discussions, so it was not possible to get time for
everyone to get opportunity to discuss thier ideas, so please use the email
to inform your ideas/proposals, so we can move ideas forward.

Best wishes,

Suchith


________________________________________
From: ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
[ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of Hogan, Patrick
(ARC-PX) [patrick.hogan at nasa.gov]
Sent: Monday, March 09, 2015 11:41 PM
To: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: [Ica-osgeo-labs] CitySmart/SmartCity Road Map: 'The Challenge'

OSGeo GeoForAll Folks,

We had a nice joint-session today of the OSGeo GeoForAll 'movers and
shakers' orienting mostly to 'what's needed.'
https://rd-alliance.org/ig-geospatial-p5-joint-session.html

It looks like we have needs to do big analytics on big data. This is not
^new^ news and 'yet we have yet' to find the rally point where we actually
begin to move forward together. This is the purpose of our Road Map
Challenge. And what do we all have in common? We all need to see pixels show
up when and where we want them, the geospatial visualization medium, the
picture that speaks a thousand words. For spatial data this means a dynamic
virtual globe, and for OSGeo, FOSS4G and the scientific research community,
this also means open source! Something we all collectively own.

We need a 'Road Map' for that open source virtual globe platform (the app).
And, if this app had an API for the menu system, it would allow anyone to
build whatever functionality they desired and essentially 'drop-it-in.' The
immediate 'global' benefit of this is that it will also greatly facilitate
sharing of those functionalities. And for the open functionalities versus
the proprietary one (yes, both are allowed), these functionalities could be
continually advanced by the global community, as would the platform itself.

Cities need urban management tools! Not surprisingly, most city needs are
quite similar in nature. So, this is an exciting opportunity to serve our
own interests, that of each city, and yet by doing so, also collectively
serve the interests of a global community. In this way each forward step one
of us makes moves us all move forward together.

I have added a base set of requirements to the 'Road Map Challenge' for
those who might wonder what 'basic' virtual globe requirements look like:
http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_UrbanScience_CityAnalytics#CitySmart.2F
SmartCity_Road_Map:_.27The_Challenge.27

We dare any group who wants to win the Crystal Bull (see it here,
http://eurochallenge.como.polimi.it/) to take up this challenge, or forever
sit on the sideline waiting for something good to happen. Please just let
Chris or myself know that you are 'in' and that you plan to deliver your
Road Map Challenge requirements document, with your CitySmart
standard-features and use-cases defined, by May 30.

Thanks much,
-Patrick




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