Cities Serving Citizens
Listening to citizens’ needs can save lives, save money and make cities more livable. Buenos Aires, for example, regularly suffered from extreme flooding, due to torrential rains and blocked storm drains. In the 2013 floods, 10 people in the greater Buenos Aires area perished. To provide the real-time data its citizens needed to stay safe, Buenos Aires partnered with the software company SAP to collect real-time data from 30,000 storm drain sensors. This allowed the city to understand what storm drains were clogged prior to torrential rainstorms. Over a subsequent period of three days of torrential rains Buenos Aires reported zero flooding. By using realtime data, its streets stayed dry and its citizens stayed safe. Real-time contextual information isn’t just used to save lives. Accurate travel time estimates are one of the most in-demand services, and yet most cities are still without them. For cities, it isn’t enough to create a system of sensors that track real-time traffic data, they also need to combine it with historical data such as rush hour patterns.
NEW MODELS OF INTERACTION This new demand for greater citizen engagement will require new models for services, which may ultimately mean reaching citizens where it is most convenient for them. Starting with parking apps that let drivers pay for parking with their phones, citizens are increasingly doing business with government using all types of mobile devices. While catching up to the private sector by creating app payment systems, cities have been eclipsed by citizen demand for other new customer service technologies. Using their mobile phones and existing messaging apps, citizens want easier ways to obtain information. New forms of engagement can take the form of chatbots. These computer programs are able to learn from repeated interactions with citizens to answer common questions. These always-available, mobile-first tools provide citizens with a new way to directly engage with their cities, and at the same time provide cities with the data they need to create new services. The next generation of citizen engagement extends to a new variety of innovative indirect services, the importance of which many citizens are just now fully recognizing. In Japan, for example, SAP partnered with earthquake monitoring device manufacturer Hakusan and helped develop technology to use iPhones as seismometers in order to measure earthquakes. When an earthquake strikes, cities don’t know what part of the city was damaged the most and where the most people are in need. SAP’s and Hakusan’s technology allows citizens to record seismic data using their phones’ accelerometer. The data is automatically uploaded to the cloud and analyzed in real-time, which is a feat considering this system can produces three to four terabytes of data in a single year. The real-time analysis provides cities with the information they need to direct first responders to the biggest disaster centers after an earthquake. In addition to earthquake detection, sensors on city streets can be used to detect traffic accidents and alert law enforcement, or to detect weather patterns and decrease the brightness of streetlights to avoid glare in rainy conditions. This sort of technology allows cities to serve citizens in ways it has never been able to before.