Urban Sensors

Barcelona counts several spars flow sensors deployed on the city bike trails.

A bike counter in Barcelona
So far these data have been kept by urban planners away from the people who actually produce them. The emergence of “web of data” platforms such as freebase and geocommons offer the opportunity to use a new kind of urban data. I mentioned in a previous talk, using these systems to cross-linking official data with (explicit and implicit) citizen-generated digital footprints might produce an awareness on the pulse of a city valuable to both city planners and citizens (e.g. “my pulse in the city”).

New sources of urban data

Relation to my thesis: Thinking on new sources of urban spatio-temporal data and how to deliver (with their imperfections) a global and individualized awareness to their “producers”,