Given the rapid pace of city growth and the concurrent demand for better infrastructure and services, pressure on city leaders and managers to make smart policy and planning decisions around investment has never been greater. Limited public budgets, demands for open participatory government, and aging and deteriorating infrastructure also add to the complexities of achieving prosperous, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive cities. This increasingly complex planning environment is driving the demand for data on cities.
The massive collecting and sorting of information known as Big Data is responding to this need and becoming a necessary and useful tool for city leaders. However, in order to create broader knowledge of cities, Big Data must be contextualized and complemented by standardized and comparative city metrics, driven by demand of city leaders themselves. Standardized indicators reported by cities, such as those in the new international standard ISO 37120 Sustainable Development of Communities - Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life are needed to provide a more complete picture of city performance to inform decision making.
ISO 37120 was published in May 2014 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 31720 defines and establishes methodologies for a comprehensive set of indicators that will enable any sized city in a developed or developing economy to track and measure its social, economic, and environmental performance in relation to other cities.
Standardized indicators can help reframe the Bent Flyvbjerg question—“where we are going?”—to “where ought we be going?” For cities, standardized indicators are important for benchmarking, guiding investments, and tracking progress. Cities are positioned to benefit from this type of data precisely because standardization of data enables city-to-city learning and the exchange of best practices, and data also empowers citizens by making them more informed about their city’s service delivery, with the end goal of improving quality of life.
ISO 37120 represents a critical shift in thinking when it comes to city data. It provides cities and stakeholders with a standardized approach and a global framework for third party verification of city data.
Noah Toly points to an example from Anthony Townsend on how Big Data helped to locate residents in Chicago who were vulnerable to extreme weather events. While Toly points out that Big Data may be able to provide this type of information, he argues that it is less likely to inform decision makers on why these people are vulnerable and what should be done to mitigate their risk. This is where standardized metrics can complement Big Data by helping to track the impact and readiness of cities to respond to extreme weather events and other risks. For this reason, in addition to ISO 37120, another standard for indicators on urban resilience is now being considered by the ISO. Risk and resilience indicators reported by cities will complement and in fact inform Big Data on risk from extreme weather events and track how neighborhoods will be impacted.
The first ever certification system and Global Registry for ISO 37120 has been developed by the World Council on City Data (WCCD). The WCCD, launched in May 2014 at the Global Cities Summit in Toronto, has been established to take this critical data agenda forward. The organization is coordinating all efforts on city data to ensure a consistent and comprehensive platform for standardized urban metrics through ISO 37120 and future standards under development.
Back to the question at hand: Big Data can be a tool for government. However, with regards to the concerns that Toly raises, it should not be the only tool. Big Data should be one of many datasets that cities turn to in order to ensure that cities are in fact headed in the right direction when it comes to sustainable planning for the future.
Part 4 of the series Thriving Cities in a World of Big Data