A new study carried out across eighty European cities in the effort to exploit data to monitor and improve city infrastructure reveals increasing use of data in cities. Cities cite main reasons behind urban data platforms to be improving city operations, enhanced environmental sustainability, informed decision-making and a desire to spur innovation and new services.
Urban data platforms enable digital technologies to integrate data flows by means of open standards. This is enabled within and across city systems used by private as well as public sector. For instance, urban data platforms can share streams of raw data or show 3-D visualizations how bus lines, underground piping, thermal grids, and a wide range of other information is connected.
COVID-19 highlights scope of Urban Data Platforms
Meanwhile, during COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of urban data platforms has come to the fore in many cities. Data from traffic sensors, Wi-Fi hotspots, or self-sharing of citizen data can be used to track the effectiveness of social distancing. And, to maintain distance between individuals in public places. Such data could be brought together using urban data platforms and digital twin of cities, and visualize their relevance for different stakeholders.
The study is led by Erasmus Centre for Data Analytics(ECDA), and researchers behind the study published a blog post that provides key results. The study carried out by ECDA is part of the EU-funded project RUGGEDISED, along with support from the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities.
The study reveals uptake in the adoption of urban data platforms and 70 percent cities are using open standards to develop their data platforms. Meanwhile, this highlights the importance of building trust between private and public if cities are to make further use of data in their own clouds.
