Earlier today Rob Kitchin presented a paper jointly written with Gavin McArdle and Sophia Maalsen at the Association of American Geographers meeting in Chicago titled: The politics and praxis of urban data: Building the Dublin Dashboard. The submitted abstract is below, along with the powerpoint slides. Hopefully the full written paper will be published as a working paper shortly.
This paper critically reflects on the building of the Dublin Dashboard (www.dublindashboard.ie) from the perspective of critical data studies. The Dashboard is a website that provides citizens, planners, policy makers and companies with an extensive set of data and data visualizations about Dublin City, including real-time information, indicator trends, inter and intra-urban benchmarking, interactive maps, the location of services, and a means to directly report issues to city authorities. The data used in the Dashboard is open and available for others to build their own apps. One member of the development team was an ethnographer who attended meetings, observed and discussed with key actors the creation of the Dashboard and its attendant praxis and politics up to the point of its launch in September 2014. This paper draws on that material to consider the contextual, contingent, iterative and relational unfolding of the Dashboard and the emergent politics of data and design. In so doing, it reveals the contested and negotiated politics of smart city initiatives.
The Programmable City submitted the following to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform public consultation on the Open Data Licence for the Government of Ireland.
In November 2014 members of the Programmable City team visited the Smart City Expo and Congress in Barcelona. The organisers have now posted up videos of all of the sessions on their YouTube channel. Together they make interesting viewing for anyone interested in understanding what is happening with regards to creating smart cities. Rob Kitchin and Gavin McArdle presented a paper at the Congress (below) entitled, ‘Dublin Dashboard: Open and real-time data and visualizations for citizens, government and companies’.
We’re proud at the Programmable City project to be launching the Dublin Dashboard, one of the first major outputs from the project. Below is a short video overview, part of the press release, and our slides from the launch.
The Dublin Dashboard provides citizens, researchers, planners, policy makers and companies with real-time information, time-series data, and interactive maps about all aspects of the city. It allows users to gain a better understand how the city is performing, to undertake evidence-informed analysis, and to improve their everyday decision making. For example, you can learn about how the city economy is performing at a glance, visualise crime levels by garda station and district, and monitor traffic flows and car parking spaces in real time.
Owen Keegan, Chief Executive for Dublin City Council officially launched the Dublin Dashboard. “The Dublin Dashboard is a great example of a local authority and a university working together for the benefit of citizens. The real value for city leaders is how the dashboard will help Dublin to monitor performance.
“A massive wealth of data is being made available, including real-time data, about the economy, transport, planning, housing, health, population, the environment, and emergency services. We are committed to further developing and improving the range of city data and information available on the platform.”
The dashboard is made up of a number of modules that can be easily used to explore hundreds of graphs, maps and apps concerning how Dublin is performing over time and in relation to other locales, what is happening in the city right now, the location of all kinds of facilities, and how to report on particular issues.
Professor Rob Kitchin, the project principal investigator, welcomed Dublin City Council’s support in making data available for the Dashboard. “The aim of the site is to empower people living and working in Dublin by providing them with easy to access intelligence about the city,” he said. “For example, users can jump onto the system before they leave for work to see how the traffic is flowing or see what spaces are available in different car parks. Prospective house buyers can explore the characteristics of an area and how close different amenities are.”
Dr Gavin McArdle, the lead developer for the Dashboard, explained that the site is based on a principle of openness. “We wanted to create an open platform where anyone can take the data we use and build their own apps, or to connect their own apps back into the site to add new functionality,” he said. “Our approach has sought to avoid re-inventing the wheel, so if a good app already exists we just link to that rather than creating our own version.”
The data underpinning the website is drawn from a number of data providers — including Dublin City Council, Dublinked, Central Statistics Office, Eurostat, and government departments, and links to a variety of existing applications. The underlying data is freely available so others can undertake their own analysis and build their own applications and visualisations.
There are plans in place to add new real-time datasets, including maps of social media, and new interactive mapping modules.
We would like to invite you to the launch of the Dublin Dashboard.
The Dublin Dashboard provides citizens, public sector workers and companies with real-time information, time-series indicator data, and interactive maps about all aspects of the city. It enables users to gain detailed, up to date intelligence about the city that aids everyday decision making and fosters evidence-informed analysis.
The Dublin Dashboard pulls together data from major data sources — including Dublin City Council, Dublinked, Central Statistics Office, Eurostat, and government departments, and links to a variety of existing applications — to provide thousands of interactive data visualisations. The underlying data is freely available so others can undertake their own analysis and build their own applications and visualisations.
The Dublin Dashboard has been produced by The Programmable City project and AIRO at Maynooth University, working with Dublin City Council, and has been funded by the European Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland.
The event will take place in Wood Quay, Dublin City Council on Friday, 19th September 2014. Registration will start at 10.30am, and Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council, will officially open the event at 11.00am, which will close no later than 13.00.
