How Personal Data can Empower Smart Cities and Even Smarter Residents
These days, more and more cities use sensors to track and measure different environmental conditions, from traffic flow to particles in the air like pollution and allergens. Many cities want to use this data to become “smarter”, giving them greater insight into the problems they face and the solutions to those problems. Individuals also have access to more and more data about their lives and activity, much of which is gathered by wearable sensors like FitBit and Oura Ring. This increase in both personal wearable data and public sensor data presents a unique opportunity to create smarter cities and even smarter residents.
Google Maps optimizes trips by looking at congestion in traffic. Municipal agencies push alerts and notifications to residents based on notable events, such as air quality deterioration during forest fires. These are great examples of how public data can be used on a large scale and pushing down actions to individual segments.
By combining this large scale public data with data that measures my own patterns, such as exercise history and recovery, I can determine what may have impacted my general well-being by referencing exposure to environmental conditions with measurements gathered by my wearables (such as a correlation between drowsiness and a high allergen count). With Prifina, these types of apps would keep personal data entirely on the user’s side, meaning data is combined locally for each individual and not shared with anyone at all.
Our cities are often part of our own identity — when meeting new people, one of the first things we talk about is which cities we are from. Yet our activity in them is also fundamentally private, where location patterns and habits can be difficult to utilize if the data is shared in any way. This is one reason why handling data on the user’s side can help unlock more use cases and tap into data’s fundamental value.
Recently, together with our partners and the Prifina Personal Data Engine, we’ve been exploring possibilities to build “Smart City Applications” that would run on the user side. This means that the user can use their Prifina account to connect to applications that feature public sensor data from smart cities.
As referenced earlier, one possible use-case could take public air quality data, such as pollution, allergens, or air particles overall, and combine it with wearable data to see how your environment influences your stress levels, your physical recovery, and your overall well-being. Based on this data, applications can suggest areas to avoid, or routes to take to decompress.
Similar to how GrubHub or Lyft are only available in certain cities, Smart Resident Apps could become a competitive advantage for municipalities, where their residents can use Smart Apps to better meet their own goals. These goals are inherently personal, which is why it’s important that applications are on the user’s side (your wearable data is personal and meaningful only for you). Your data should remain something that is fully at your own control (i.e., you have complete autonomy to determine how it is used and whether it is shared with anyone).
By separating data from devices, you can really level the playing field and get more opportunity for innovation to flourish. Cities are no different. With all the sensor data available, we need to open the ecosystem to new applications that empower residents and make cities more enjoyable. With all the creativity in the developer community and the common interest in making cities more livable, this seems like an area ripe for innovation.
I for one would like to have smarter “Bay Area” apps.
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Prifina allows you, as an individual, to bring your data from different devices and services into one place under your control. Then, you can take that data and power different applications that give you daily value, such as insights or recommendations, without sharing it with anyone.
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