Big Data’s potential to provide a quantitative basis for addressing familiar urban problems has prompted several universities and corporations to launch programs dedicated to urban informatics and policy. But the use of extensive data in urban management is not new, which poses questions about what specific qualitative leaps are achievable in the near future, and what data those advances require.

For a few days in September, urban researchers, city planners, and representatives from international organizations and major corporations met at SFI to explore how Big Data can help them better understand and manage cities.

Some Big Data enthusiasts believe “if we can measure everything we can solve everything, without knowing or caring about underlying constraints,” says meeting co-organizer and SFI Distinguished Professor Geoffrey West. The workshop will explore under which specific conditions this may be true.

In that view’s favor, some pressing urban problems – such as effective public transportation or even crime reduction – might be tackled using relatively simple approaches enabled by more and better data. But “we still don’t know how such solutions play out over longer periods of time, when social and economic changes, which tend be slower, but crucial, in cities, come into play,” says co-organizer and SFI Professor Luis Bettencourt.

We also don’t know to what extent seemingly obvious opportunities for the use of Big Data might interfere with human behavior and the creation of productive social environments.

“It seems like a no-brainer to instrument buildings with sensors and actuators to achieve higher energy efficiency, and this is particularly appealing in big cities,” says co-organizer Jose Lobo, a senior scientist in the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. “But often people prefer to open a window or shut the blinds, which undermines such solutions.”

Cities offer a rich interplay of human and social behavior in highly managed and instrumented spaces, Bettencourt notes. The nature of cities is at once to promote efficiencies and socioeconomic development. How this can be achieved through scientific insights, engineering solutions, and creative new policies is the central question for urban research. 

The meeting created the opportunity for an exceptionally varied set of leading urban thinkers to talk openly about the future of cities in the age of Big Data, he says.

The invitation-only workshop, “How Far Can Big Data Take Us Towards Understanding Cities?”, ran September 19-21 at SFI.

The meeting was a prelude to SFI annual Business Network and Board of Trustees Symposium, Big Data Meets Big Theory, October 31-November 1 in Santa Fe. 

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