Open APIs are great for cities.
One of my favorite mobile applications is an application showing current locations of the city buses in Tampere. It is a simple little app that allows the user to select the bus lines you are interested in and displays their locations and direction of movement real-time on a map. It’s a favorite, because I often have trouble making it to the bus stop on time.
This app is possible, because the city of Tampere chose to open up their transport data APIs. The city opted for innovation and now individual developers and companies are offering a variety of apps for the application stores in different mobile platforms. But this is just a start.
Initially, the administration in cities have mainly concentrated on providing access to their open datasets — either out of interest in opening up their data or by legal obligation. But what would happen, if the sensor data collected throughout the city would be available? Developers could access data for example on parking, air quality or pedestrian traffic.
This urban IoT could be used for building services and applications, and could result in more automated maintenance. Being hard evidence, the collected data could affect policy and decision making. Imagine, if you could combine separate datasources to compare pollution data and promises made by politicians.
If you take one step further, you can also allow citizens to contribute data through API infrastructure. A good example of two-way information flow for cities and government is the Open311 ecosystem. Open311 originated from United States, 311 being the non-emergency telephone helpline. It is an open standard or protocol that allows service request from citizens to city departments. For example, the good city folk can report faults like damage in sidewalks or bicycle paths through simple apps. This is a great opportunity for the city administration to use citizen feedback.
Collecting urban data from several sources and opening it through APIs has the potential of making the cities more open, more innovative and more livable. That requires not just top-down opening of data, but services that people need and use. Imagine, for example, if city road-work data would be updated to your map application real-time thanks to APIs to ensure effective re-routing? Or the app could show available parking slots near your destination? One thing the cities might not be wanting to disclose: real-time location of traffic wardens.
Posted by Taija Björklund, APInf team
