Adriano Borges, Mauricio Bouskela, Katia Mello and João Melhado participate in the debateAdriano Borges, Mauricio Bouskela, Katia Mello and João Melhado participate in the debate

 

Data-driven technologies can contribute to creating more sustainable, efficient and resilient cities. This was the motto of the event “It’s OK! Smart Cities”, held on March 21st, in the Steffi and Max Perlman auditorium, at Insper. It was organized by the Insper Data Science Center, which in this edition had the support of the Arq.Futuro de Cidades Laboratory. Adriano Borges, professor of mobility and urban data at Insper and lead researcher at the Laboratory, mediated the debate between experts in the area of social urbanism.


To him, digital and computational technology has changed the way we work, have fun and socialize, but other technological developments have also shaped and allowed the construction of cities: electricity, elevators, reinforced concrete, sanitation systems and tunneling machines, among others, which has allowed so many people to live in the same place. “Cities are extremely productive and, for this very reason, they are perhaps the greatest invention of humanity”, said Borges, echoing experts such as the American economist Edward L. Glaeser, advisor to the Laboratory, and the English historian Ben Wilson. “But they also produce many contradictions, inequalities, pollution, congestion, high rental prices — just to name several of these dysfunctions generated by living in cities”, he highlighted.


Technology may be able to overcome these dysfunctions, however some of these challenges will not be answered with new technologies, believes Borges. “It is not with electric or autonomous cars that we will solve congestion”, he explains. “The most we will have is low-emission congestion. The solution to congestion was invented more than a century ago and is called efficient and cheap public transport. However, for so many problems in cities, perhaps technology and the use of data and the ability we have to process and transform data into intelligence can bring answers to some of these challenges.”


Coordinator of the Laboratory's Smart Cities and Big Data Center, Mauricio Bouskela, dealt with the concept of “right data” and the correct interpretation of this information. He began by asking what is the correct data regarding motorcycle traffic in São Paulo — where 1.1 million registered motorcycles provide a significant portion of the city’s circulation. Last year, the capital recorded more than one death per day in motorcycle accidents, usually among men aged 18 to 29. “For any citizen, researcher or secretary, this statistic is absurd,” said Bouskela. "But the actions to reduce the fatalities are not happening as we which. Is it a lack of data? Could it be." He demonstrated how the manager's decision-making process tends to improve with the aggregation of information to the same accident map.


According to Bouskela, the value of data is related to its quality, and not so much to its quantity. “Collection is also very important, because poor quality data impacts decision making,” he explained. “Other challenges are interoperability, privacy and data protection. This can generate something positive if it can be transformed into a few lines that respond to and summarize the condition of the territory. If this 10-line piece of data doesn't tell me a story, it's worthless. For a mayor or mayor, it has a certain value. For one citizen, there is another. For the public community, it is another value. So, the value of the data depends on a cycle.”


Architect and urban planner Graziella Demantova, city manager at the consultancy Bright Cities, commented how strange it may seem to talk about smart cities from the citizen's perspective, because the city is imagined as something made for and by people. “The city, by its nature, has always been the ideal of utopia,” she said. “When we realize the impact of pollution on our way of life and the environment, we begin to desire greener and more sustainable cities. We see the smart city as a great solution to the loss of functionality, traffic, access to housing and education. However, we see the growing movement of cameras and command centers that, in a certain way, increase discrimination and inequality.”


On the other hand, in a world where 2.6 billion people do not have access to the internet, Graziella questioned who benefits from the use of technology in smart cities. “The privatization of infrastructure and services takes the responsibility of appropriate and ethical use of our data out of the government’s hands, so we also need to raise awareness among the stakeholders who are implementing and owning these technologies,” she said. In this sense, she listed the five pillars of the United Nations People Centred-Smart Cities program: community in the spotlight, digital inclusion and equity, data management infrastructure and digital services, security of digital assets and organizational capacity of the smart city.


Graziella cited the Digital Matatus application, which indicates informal transport routes in Kenya, as a project that takes into account the socio-territorial reality and the needs of the population. The challenges are practically the same everywhere: lack of local capacity, community participation, data updating, financial constraints, interoperability and standardization of technologies, awareness of human rights, privacy and the role of residents. However, each location has its specificities. “The right use of data will be one that takes a look at human rights and ethics,” said Graziella.
 

Data shortage

 

Civil and sanitary engineer Katia Mello, founding partner of the socio-environmental management consultancy Diagonal, highlighted that data is fundamental for the sustainable development of territories and social change. However, it is precisely in vulnerable territories that information is scarce, as was evident in the case of the covid-19 pandemic, which began in 2020. On that occasion, Diagonal helped to structure a social intelligence nucleus for planning government actions of the state of São Paulo in combating the disease. The big challenge was to make areas with greater exposure to the virus visible, allowing for faster care.

 

The strategy involved obtaining primary data on access to drinking water and the various risk territories and crossing them with Sabesp's coverage area. “Overlapping the favelas, subdivisions and all degraded areas, we identified 2,000 areas without access to water in the metropolitan region of São Paulo”, recalled Katia. “A program was set up on how to get water there. This is an example of data that helped make a decision at an important moment.” A similar procedure was used in partnership with the Butantan Institute, organizing population testing and subsequent distribution and application of the vaccine against Sars-CoV-2.

 

Economist João Melhado, director of public policies and compliance at the startup Loft, told how the use of data helped combat the cholera epidemic in London, England, back in the 19th century — a story told in the book The Ghost Map, by the American Steven Johnson. “When the cases and deaths that occurred due to cholera were placed on a map of the city, we began to discover that deaths were happening close to the artesian wells,” he wrote. “People thought that cholera was transmitted through the air, just like we washed the packages we received for delivery during Covid times, because we didn’t really know how the virus was transmitted.”

 

The difference is that the ability to analyze and process data has increased since then, due to the emergence of new technologies.

 

Access to real estate market information, however, remains opaque, in Melhado's opinion. “Those who are buying have no idea what a property is worth and those who are selling don’t know either,” he said. “This applies to public policy. We were just discussing the Master Plan for the city of São Paulo with little evidence-based information. The Laboratory carried out interesting studies along these lines to bring a little more science to the discussion. The real estate market is essentially housing and, at the end of the day, it is people’s housing. How many times do you buy a property in your life?”

 

To Adriano Borges, the event brought together different views on the concept and application of smart cities. At the end of the event, he presented a diagram with the various dimensions of smart cities, covered in the course “Smart Cities: technology, digital transformation and urban innovation”, the next class of which starts on April 25th. “We talk about data-based decision culture, data capacity and intelligence, and long-term planning,” he highlighted. “Other important dimensions are dialogue with people from academia and the private and public sectors; governance and communication mechanisms and recognition of all the pieces that make up an innovation ecosystem and smart cities in a municipality; infrastructure and technology; and resources, without which we can do little.”

 

English version:  Ana Clara Kransfeld

English version review: Randy Charles Epping




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