Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Feike Laffeber
Thank you. Good afternoon.
Thank you for that introduction.
Today, I would like to talk to you
about why I believe that big data is good data.
And I am going to explain why I think that
by talking through another passion of mine, which is cities.
Some of you may already be aware,
but in 2008, we passed an important tipping point globally
whereby now more people live in cities
than they do in rural environments across the world.
And that trend is set to continue.
We have millions of people moving into cities across the world.
So that, by the time a majority of this audience is retirement age,
70% of the world's population will live in cities.
Cities are also proving slightly problematic.
They are the cornerstones of consumption.
They take up just 3% of the world's land surface area,
and yet they are responsible for 75% of global resource consumption.
So when we're thinking about sustainability,
that battle will either be won
or indeed lost, in our cities.
Thirdly, cities are proving to be more powerful than ever.
We are seeing mayors to become pragmatic global leaders
willing to take on issues that nation states are struggling with.
They're also willing to collaborate, to come together,
and the compact of mayors at the recent UN Climate Summit in September
was testament to this.
So whilst we have this rise of the city
with all its challenges, and its opportunities,
we also have within the same generation an incredible shift,
and that is the digital revolution.
The Internet has transformed our lives.
It's funny--
When I think back to a time when I was home after school,
and a gentleman came to the door, a salesman,
and he was selling encyclopedias.
And these were physical books
that you would buy, and you would have on your bookshelf,
and you would refer to them when you were doing your homework.
(Laughter) and it's like-- It's life before Google!
it feels like an eon ago.
but, you know, I don't consider myself to be that old.
And this is not just about how the Internet has also transformed
the way we search for information, the way we educate ourselves.
This is also about the fact that all manner of appliances and devices
are increasingly online, increasingly connected,
to the point that by next year,
there will be double the number of devices online
than there are people on the planet.
And each of these devices,
these tiny sensors, these smart TVs, these connected cars,
they are each creating a tiny, continuous vapor trail.
And it's the aggregation of these vapor trails into a common place
which creates the big, a big data.
90% of the data that exist today
did not exit 3 years ago.
Which is crazy, right?
And so, when we are thinking about
we have the rise of the city, and we have the explosion of big data,
it's when you bring these two things together,
it's at this point of convergence I think things get really interesting.
And that's the exact field of work that I am in.
So in the context of the city,
you have these millions of data streams being generated,
New York generates a terabyte of data a day.
This data is coming from traffic lights,
from energy meters, from people's mobile phones,
and its the ability to bring together these data streams
that allows you to better sense the city.
To better understand its metabolism in real time.
To better match supply with demand for resources.
And it's my belief that this is the tool
that we use to better design and run our cities in the future,
to secure the future of prosperity.
So perhaps I could give you a couple of examples.
The first example is in US cities,
and in the context of crime.
The use of acoustic sensors which are calibrated to detect gun shots
have shown that, while people assume that people would report a gun shot heard
around 80% of the time it was heard,
the reality was actually people only reported it around 10% of the time.
So imagine this asset class
to be able to understand in which neighborhoods,
at which times of the night or day these things were occurring
helps the police to deploy precious resources.
A second, completely different example, and this time it's really interesting,
because they're using the public to actually help gather their big data set
so in the case of Amsterdam,
they are actually providing citizens with small umbrellas
which have the ability to detect the level of rain fall at any given time.
And combined with a small app on citizen's phones,
they are then becoming the crowdsource sensing
that enables the city to understand the real-time propensity for flood risk.
That's just two good data examples.
I think if we took a step back,
and perhaps if I'd asked you when you walked into the auditorium this afternoon,
what do you think of, when you think of big data?
I think a majority of people
would have connotations of Google or Facebook.
We might presume this new commodity is something
that requires a complex machinery to refine it,
and is something that will remain under the auspices
of large private sector players, maybe a bit like oil.
Don't get me wrong, I think companies like Google and Facebook
have a role to play in this future economy,
but I would like to pose it
that it's our cities that stand to benefit the most.
But that's if we get the right mindset,
and critically, it's if we get
the public and private sector to working together effectively.
This first came into my consciousness around three years ago.
I was working with the city of Copenhagen,
and we were starting, as we do,
to unpack the challenges of the city and figure out how we could solve them.
And so, one area that Copenhageners are interested in helping, in solving
is they want to reduce the energy spend at the municipal building stock.
They own over 1,000 buildings across the city,
and they want to reduce their energy expenditure
and the emissions that go with it.
A second area they are looking to improve is
they want to be able to make it easier for people to find a car parking space
when they arrive in the city center
to stop them from driving around looking for a car parking spot,
and reducing local air quality causing emissions.
And as we dug into this problem, it became clear
that the city had a really good grasp on the problem from their side.
So they understood where the municipal parking spaces were,
and how they were used.
They understood where their buildings were,
what size they were, what their uses were.
But they didn't have an important piece of the puzzle
which was how were the private garages within the city used,
and how does their energy spend,
for example, compare with other buildings of similar size?
Because that's held by The Utility Company.
And you really need to bring together these two parts of the puzzle
to be able to have a holistic view on urban challenges.
But here's the tricky bit
which is how do you get the private sector to be involved?
What is their incentive?
Ultimately, there is a cost affiliated with capturing these data streams,
with storing them, with providing them to a common platform for a common good.
And they are private, they have shareholders,
they need to show financial returns and be remunerated.
And that's when we came across the idea of the urban information marketplace.
The urban information marketplace
is the bringing together of public and private data
into a common platform
which digital entrepreneurs can then subscribe to
to access data streams, to create innovative apps and services,
to make cities more effective.
And this could be open data,
public data which has already been paid for through taxation,
or it could be proprietary data streams gathered by the private sector
for which there is a value attributed.
And suddenly, you have got a sustainable business model,
and suddenly, it's not just the public sector trying to fix the public sector.
A whole pool of innovators are invited to this problem solving.
So why, isn't this coming through faster?
I think, intuitively,
a lot of people would agree that this seems like a good concept,
but I think there are three reasons why this isn't coming through faster.
Firstly,
I think this is related to the fact
that this is technically complex.
There are millions of data streams that need to come together,
and they need to be organized, they need to be anonymized,
they need to be applied the appropriate digital rights,
and offered out appropriately.
And that is technically complex, but I think possible.
Secondly, the public sector needs to lead.
If this is going to be successful,
if this is going to have the appropriate trust,
and the appropriate governance model,
then we need to have the public sector as the key protagonist.
And although digital innovators in the public sector are on the rise,
they are still a rare breed.
Thirdly, there are the issues of data privacy and cyber security
which are valid and which warrant a good discussion,
but I really believe that stringent legislative regimes
could slow this down to the point that is counterproductive.
And when I look at examples from the Netherlands
- where by the roll out of smart energy meters to homes
was held up in court for two years
because of concerns over infringement of human rights -
I think we cannot forget the opportunity cost of inaction.
When I think about examples from the printing press,
imagine if that had undergone a stringent legislation in its early years
how that would have slowed the important transmission of ideas.
We are about to repeat
the last 400 years of civilization building
over the next four decades.
And we have a choice.
We either do that relatively blind
using the techniques we've used in the past few decades,
using intuition versus data-driven decisions,
rehashing the same mistakes,
or we use the tools we have,
we experiment with data sharing,
we bring together the public and private, and we reinvent.
Kevin Kelly, the founder of WIRED Magazine,
often talks to the power of technology to change our lives.
He puts forward that all technology is inherently good,
and that it's up to us, as society, to find the appropriate use for it.
He gives the example of nuclear, and speaks to the fact
that, although it can be used in the context of nuclear weapons,
it can also create thousands of terawatt hours
of emission-free power for our increasingly hot planet.
So my suggestion is that we put big data
to the best use we can possibly.
That we bring together public and private,
that we invite entrepreneurs to the problem solving,
and that we make big data, good data
for the future of our cities, for everyone.
Thank you.
(Applause)