Building Urban Resilience using Open Data & AI
By Gaurav Godhwani & Jeeno George, CivicDataLab
This article is part of CivicDataLab’s initiative Urban Development. While every member of the CDL team has made valuable contributions to the initiative, the leadership and dedication demonstrated in the projects highlighted in the blog by Gaurav, Deepthi, Apoorv, Shreya, Bianca, Ruthwik, Jeeno, Tauseef, and Sravani have been exemplary.
Rapid urbanisation has created both new opportunities as well as unique challenges for economic development, infrastructure growth, migration and sustainability. Cities are constantly evolving complex clusters and with more than 50% of the world’s population living in cities, there is an urgent need to strengthen urban infrastructure and make them resilient. Evidence based interventions can enhance climate resilience, citizen participation and secure vulnerable communities in the urban landscape.
Technology, through geo-informatic tools and computer-aided designing, has aided the urban planners and decision-makers to shape cities, long before the age of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) became the go-to tools for evidence based decision making. With growing momentum in the efforts to harness the potential of open knowledge movements to strengthen the data-for-public-good ecosystem, we have the chance to make urban governance more effective and participatory.
In India, with the advent of the Smart Cities mission and adoption of Internet of Things (IoT), our cities have gigabytes of near real-time data to derive timely and actionable insights to make them more resilient and increase civic-engagement. At present, our cities have the unique opportunity to open-up crucial data, bring various actors together and leverage open-source technology to focus on local issues and improve public service delivery.
CivicDataLab, in partnership with other stakeholders of the data-for-public-good ecosystem, has created a few such models that can address the new opportunities and challenges. Over the past six months, CivicDataLab, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, has been expanding this work through co-creation of knowledge and dialogue between a diverse group of stakeholders. We have conducted virtual as well as in-person convenings to further strengthen the open data for public good ecosystem for leveraging evidence based decision making for sustainable climate action.
Cities are a critical for democratising local climate adaptation
With increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, the need to invest in city-level climate action is critical. The human, economic and infrastructure losses in cities due to climate change related occurrences like floods, storms, cyclones and other critical disasters are intensifying with every passing season. As a result city administrations need to treat extreme weather events as periodic events requiring a predictable response, enhanced disaster planning and management.
Open-source tools like CogniCity Software deployed in collaboration with PetaBencana and CivicDataLab are helping cities like Jakarta, Manila, Panama City and more to create a two-way information sharing platform to enable better citizen-led reporting of disasters.
Similarly, in the flood-prone state of Assam, in the north-eastern part of India, city officials and state disaster management authority are working with Open Contracting Partnership and CivicDataLab’s Open Contracting India initiative to open-up disaster-related public procurement data and reports related losses and damages.
This collaboration delivers a functional and scalable intelligent data science model that helps government agencies to make data-driven decisions to improve disaster risk reduction and prioritise resource mobilisation to protect the most vulnerable people from the adverse effects of climate change.
Enhancing citizen participation in urban governance
Most cities have a long-standing tradition of hosting city council meetings, these meetings are led by local councillors inviting citizens to participate in some of the pressing urban issues of their localities. But often, these meetings have witnessed irregular schedules, rigid agendas and low citizen turnout restricting participatory governance. Cities cannot be effective or resilient without people’s participation and that is why service delivery and infrastructure development by authorities needs to be informed by the needs of the people living in the cities.
In the digital age, civic engagement through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) platforms for real-time reporting of urban issues in public service delivery can amplify and encourage citizen voices to improve public services. The ICT platforms enhanced with AI chatbots can enable two-way communication between the users and the service providers, directly linking user feedback to different as well as integrated complaint-tracking governance systems.
Globally, we are seeing most grievance redressal systems moving to a two-way information sharing AI-based chatbots, enabling more citizens to share their feedback related to urban service delivery in their neighbourhood, ranging from reporting potholes to quality water supply. This practice is gaining momentum in India over the last decade, as well.
CivicDataLab is working with the Smart City administrations of Ahmedabad and Indore to co-create and deploy CivicCity — an open-source data intelligence platform to improve urban planning and timely grievance redressal.
In Ahmedabad, government officials are now able to monitor citizen grievances on a daily and weekly basis at the ward and neighbourhood level. This data is going to inform the urban planning and infrastructure strengthening by the authorities, especially during the monsoon season to proactively plan repair of roads and drainage. The two-way information sharing will ensure that government efforts and expenditure is spent in a sustainable, effective and timely manner. And at the same time also enable citizen participation in evidence-based decision making processes.
Making cities safe for children & other vulnerable residents
Cities, like all human settlements, are inhabited by diverse groups of people, where some have resources and access while others struggle to find their place. CivicDataLab, has been working closely with civil-society organisations to develop certain data-science models to address the needs of the vulnerable urban residents like children and migrants.
In collaboration with HAQ Centre of Child Rights, CivicDataLab’s analysis of Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences (POCSO) report has collated data that clearly shows the effectiveness of existing laws. Based on judgements, of the past eight years, recorded in the e-courts data-base, the detailed report highlights the impact and implementation of laws governing child protection in different geographic regions and the legal clauses.
Others in the data-for-public-good ecosystem strengthen aspects like gender inclusivity and access for the economically weaker sections of society. For instance, often, city governance and administration are unable to overtly address inclusivity. Given the pace and scale of urban existence, gender inclusivity does not come naturally to the urban landscape. However, there are efforts within the data-for-public good ecosystem to address some of these challenges.
One such example would be of the work Safetipin has undertaken. Working with a diverse group of urban stakeholders, including governments, Safetipin is committed to making public spaces safer and more inclusive for women. They collect data using their own mobile phone applications and present this to relevant stakeholders with recommendations. The organisation also generates a safety score, based on the collected data, and provides it on the My Safetipin app for users to make safe and informed decisions about their mobility.
Similarly, the Migrants Resilience Collaborative, is working to strengthen the safety of city-level migrant population and urban makeshift communities. Migrants are among the most vulnerable city populations and while migrants are instrumental to building the urban infrastructure, they are not among the key-stakeholders of the urban facilities and rights awarded to the urban residents.
The Path Forward: Responsible Urban Data for Public Good
India’s G20 presidency and the Delhi Declaration have exemplified the shared commitment among Urban20 City Mayors to co-create shared global standards for digital infrastructure, encouraging inclusive technologies and providing uninterrupted and affordable internet services and open data as public goods. This is an ideal environment to build on strengthening and building sustainable urban resilience using open-data and AI.
We recently concluded a two-day gathering — CivicSabha — with support by The Rockefeller Foundation, in Delhi. This conference was attended by central and state government agencies, philanthropic organisations, civil society organisations, entrepreneurs, industry thought leaders and others working in the open-data-ecosystem. Here, we gathered perspectives and learnings from innovative data practitioners working in India and other countries to harness the potential of data-driven decision making for resilient action on climate change.
One big takeaway from all the plenaries, workshops and presentations during the course of CivicSabha, is the need to harness AI’s power to unlock our cities’ true potential, creating spaces that are not just smart but also compassionate, inclusive and empowering for all. The blueprint for a brighter, more connected future lies in this fusion of human ingenuity and data science. By embracing the power of open data and steering it toward the greater good, we can transform our cities into vibrant, intelligent ecosystems that meet every citizen’s needs, and no one is left behind.
