Glossary

AI Artificial Intelligence is defined as the capacity for a computing system to perform tasks that would normally require a human to undertake them (e.g. reading, language-translation, decision-making).

AI-enabled machine learning Machine learning is based on the idea that we require information in order to make informed decisions. The more information we have, the greater chance we have to make a better decision (at least in theory). Machine learning uses algorithmic processes to incorporate new information into decision-making as the AI progresses. This is used to refine task parameters, to understand the impacts and influences on outcomes, to increase the accuracy of outcomes, and to perform tasks for which there is too much information to process (i.e. beyond human capability). Typical examples of AI-enabled machine learning are tools that can be customised to a person’s individual preferences, or that crowdsource information to identify risk or other parameters. Much controversy surrounds some machine learning tools in relation to the accuracy of the algorithmic processes, due to concerns that bias can be inadvertently built in at the outset by the humans who set the initial design challenge (unconscious bias). Within cities, AI-enabled machine learning is particularly applied to information derived from sensors (e.g. to monitor air quality patterns, noise monitoring, crowd behaviour etc).

Biophilic design principles for cities Principles that draw on the way in which humans relate to nature while being immersed in it, observing it and being ‘of’ it. The principles inform individual building design as well as, fractally, at city scale (access to air, light, water, animals etc). At a deeper level, biophilic design links closely to biomimicry, which replicates natural engineering found within certain organisms to achieve specific results (e.g. nutrient transport, shade, hydration, network communication) and is often applied when designing climate-resilient solutions. These two concepts, applied together, at city scale meet the conditions of being in, drawing on, being of, and observing nature as part of an urban experience.

Blockchain A cryptographic means by which a distributed ledger can be created, using a series of time-stamped, cryptographic blocks of data. The system is considered highly secure as it does not require a centralised authority or server. Typically, they are managed by peer-to-peer networks. Due to their high level of security, blockchains are used by cryptocurrencies. There are many potential applications for blockchain distributed ledger technology beyond cryptocurrencies. Blockchain technology is highly energy intensive and this remains a key concern about its widespread usage.

City systems Understanding the city in terms of city systems requires a system-thinking analysis. City systems within this framework are a series of interconnected pathways, from nature to the economy. Within this approach, all systems have interconnections but some systems have greater interconnectivity with others (e.g. energy, water, waste; food, waste, water; health, transport, air quality). Systems theory is also used widely in digital applications and smart city systems draw on both digital/computing and on ‘city-as-a-system’.

Complexity (in the context of city systems) A concept that reflects that city-as-a-system highlights that no problem can be solved by one actor alone due to the interconnectedness of city systems. A siloed approach can do more damage than good if the knock-on effects into the wider system are not fully understood. Complexity therefore requires a multi-stakeholder, multi-system approach to resolve challenges at scale.

Context broker A piece of software designed to gather reachable context data. It harmonises different data sets using standard data models so that they can be read and accessed by analysis and visualisation tools.

COVID-19 The viral disease that results from being infected by the virus SARS-COV-2. The virus was first discovered in China in 2019 and spread quickly across the globe. It was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation in March 2020.

Data Any collection of information that is grouped together. For example, the different pieces of information on an invoice is data about a financial transaction. When ordered, data can be considered a data set.

Data aggregation The process of gathering data from multiple sources and presenting it in a summarised format. Data aggregation can comprise multiple datasets within an organisation or from across organisations.

Data (and tech) Driven Innovation (DDI) A term that refers to the innovation processes occurring because of data emerging from a particular area. New data and insights might reveal the need for new solutions. A good example is the DDI that has occurred as a result of the pandemic - where epidemiological insights have driven innovation in tech applications (e.g. test and trace apps) as well as non-technical solutions (e.g. restaurant seating).

Data economy An economic concept for describing the way in which data has a monetary value based on its application. The ubiquity of data that has value means it can be exchanged widely and for many purposes. The data economy alludes to a system of exchange where the data itself becomes the ‘currency’.

Data ecosystem (cities) The series of components required by an organisation to use data intelligently. This includes infrastructure and applications to deliver analysis and insight capacity and usually the application of AI. Within the context of an open data ecosystem, the range of technologies and applications required spans many organisations that are working within the ecosystem.

Data lake A space within which an organisation or several that can include data in a range of formats and states of completion/hygiene. This enables users to work with data at different stages and from a range of sources. The lake acts in an agile methodology as an unstructured store - meaning that the data is not necessarily curated, but ensures that it can be used randomly in many applications.

Data maturity The level to which data is being used and integrated into an organisation’s strategic approach to achieving its goals. Data maturity implies that data is being reviewed and refreshed regularly across the board.

Data sharing The process by which data is shared to enable multiple users to access it without the original data being altered. This implies a way to lock the data so that it cannot be altered or manipulated at source.

Data silo A collection of data that is isolated from other data within an organisational or governance field. The silo’s isolation means that other data sources are unable to interact with the data within the silo, creating a barrier to data analysis and insight. The silo might arise through physical, governance or management factors and may be proactively established or created by default.

Data spaces (and local data spaces) Places where towns and cities (and other organisations) can store data for use by stakeholders, and where data integration occurs on a tactical basis - generally in a user-pays format. This technique has been used to produce rapid data analysis as part of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data visualisation The act of portraying data in visual terms to highlight a data insight or to demonstrate data analytics (e.g. as a graph, chart, diagram or even as an animation).

Digital divide Describes the difference between those who are able to take advantage of the digital economy and those who cannot. The digital divide is increasing and is now considered an urgent challenge for communities worldwide.

Digital literacy One of the key contributors to where individuals sit in relation to the digital divide. Age, affordability, skills, access to education and employment are all critical elements in determining whether a person is likely to be digitally literate, and the extent to which they will remain literate throughout their lifetime.

Edge computing The capacity for computing power to be deployed ‘at the edge’. The edge is defined as being at the edge of the cloud or in a localised location. Computing power deployed locally enables tasks to be directed with lower latency because the computing power is physically closer to the activation site.

Extreme weather events A range of weather phenomena that are unusual and extreme for the local climatic conditions in terms of frequency, type, and severity - or where the event is rare yet typical, but its severity is not (e.g. increasingly severe hurricanes within areas that already experience them).

5G Refers to the fifth generation wireless network. The 5G network is being rolled out in cities globally and is expected to deliver transformative change to the data and telecommunications industry by increasing the amount of data that can be uploaded or downloaded at any one time 10-20 times faster than is currently available under 4G technology.

Healthy mobility A concept that puts the person at the heart of transport solutions. Healthy mobility therefore refers to any mode of human transport that promotes health for the user, such as walking and cycling, and that forms a substantial part of the journey (e.g. a 15 minute walk at the beginning and end of a commuter mass transit journey). In designing for healthy mobility, the quality of the urban environment is considered to determine whether a person is able to use the route safely, securely and regularly (e.g. lighting, trip hazards, air quality etc).

Housing management voids The process by which housing providers manage properties becoming vacant in the cycle of total housing management for a portfolio.

Insights (related to data) Data insights are created when information is gathered to create data, which is analysed, usually in relation to more than one data set or source, when patterns are identified and an insight is revealed that was otherwise obscured. Data insights require data analysis (or analytics) in order to reveal patterns and trends within the data.

Nature-based solutions (in the context of cities) An umbrella term encompassing solutions to a range of urban and nature-based challenges drawn from and incorporating nature as part of the solution. The concept relies on understanding how natural systems work to resolve naturally occurring challenges, and to incorporate this logic and design into the wider urban field. This is often undertaken in conjunction with interconnecting solutions resulting in multiple social, environmental and place-based benefits (e.g. borrowing elements of natural floodplain dynamics in designing urban flood responses in regard to urban rivers and canals).

Net Zero Strategy A strategy for a city to drive down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions deriving from activities and consumption within the city to as close to zero as possible, while addressing remaining emissions via technological and non-technological means of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The timeframe for achieving net zero is crucial in understanding whether the strategy will materially support global efforts to change the trajectory of global warming. Some net zero strategies have been criticised for setting net zero targets over a timeframe perceived as being too late to prevent excessive warming.

Open and agile (in the context of cities) Refers to data being ‘open’ for others to use, including by the city itself. Agile, as a concept, is grounded in computing project management approaches where new stages can commence before the previous phase has been completed or as and when required - breaking tasks into short bursts and allowing for results to be incorporated quickly. Agile approaches are often used in innovation to speed up outcomes (e.g. testing different parameters in parallel and incorporating the learnings from varying streams while the innovation is still being tested. Open and Agile Cities are those that work transparently with data, fostering innovation within an ecosystem of actors. It is closely linked to the concept of Open Innovation.

Open data At its core, this is data that can be freely used, re-used and shared by anyone. To be able to fulfil this criteria, the data needs to be made available (i.e. published) and can be accessed by people or a machine. The format for publishing and accessing open data is not straightforward. Many organisations purporting to provide open data publish it in formats that are not digital (i.e. non-machine readable), making it difficult to re-use the data through analysis or aggregation.

Open Data Platform Similar to Open Data Portals in that they are publicly available websites from which open data can be accessed. However, Open Data Platforms tend to include data analysis and visualisation in, for example, a dashboard format. These can be applied to any sets of data (health, mobility, sustainability) with cities being one of many organisational types establishing and using them.

Open Data Portal Websites established by organisations that generate and/or own data that could be considered ‘public’ in that it is in the public interest for it to be made available. The portal might host data about a range of attributes linked to a specific topic or topics, generally for public consumption (e.g. policing, health, environment, housing etc). Many cities have established portals, and some cities have worked together to create regional portals. A critical underlying reason Open Data Portals have been established is the commitment of information providers to the implicit or explicit right of the public to access information in a democratic and transparent way. Not all Open Data Portals provide fully machine-readable data, or provide all data as machine-readable. This limits their usefulness in creating interoperable opportunities for re-using the data.

Pandemic A global or country-wide epidemic with infectious disease affecting a large population/s as determined by the World Health Organisation.

Resilient The capacity to withstand shocks to the system, or to create a new stable state following a system shock. Resilient cities are those which, through adaptive capacity, can withstand such shocks. With its origins in ecology, the term is widely applied in systems theory, and additionally in computer science. Redundancy within a system (the capacity to draw on extra resource, storage etc) is one way to create adaptive capacity. Single points of failure are avoided in resilient systems.

Sensing, automating and intelligent technologies Devices that undertake these functions separately or in combination: sensing - can identify external stimuli (e.g. temperature, moisture, movement); intelligent - can create information from this data to inform decisions on the next action(s) that can be made independently of human involvement; automating - can undertake tasks that otherwise would require human control (e.g. turning on/off devices, activating an activity such as cleaning or searching).

Sensitive data Data that cannot be made open or fully open, and which may only be shared with limited users due to its nature. The data could be considered sensitive for a range of reasons including that it is commercial, personal, IP-related, legal/security related, of national importance etc.

Shared data Data that can be accessed by multiple users at the one time without altering the original data. Shared data can be ‘open’ in that it is available to all users. It can also be ‘closed’ in that users of the data must have the required permissions to access the data, but it cannot be made public or be accessed by users beyond those who have access permissions.

Smart (in the context of cities) While many definitions exist, the OASC concept of ‘smart’ can be summarised as a city that is enhanced by a range of interoperable, replicable, ethical technologies and data driven insights (impacting city systems, health and wellbeing, economy, nature and society). The concept is not divorced from ethical values and recognises city diversity in terms of culture, technical, economic and social structures.

Smart, healthy ageing Healthy aging puts the person at the centre of their aging process, looking for ways to improve health and quality of life, or to minimise negative impacts over time. Smart, healthy aging focuses on ways tech and data can enhance healthy ageing strategies (e.g. smart materials used in clothing to minimise temperature disruptions, personal alarms and reminder devices, personalised services for navigation and completing everyday tasks).

Standard data model An agreed format for organising data with particular attributes (e.g. a standard data model exists for air quality, noise, velocity etc).

Tech As opposed to the more general term ‘technology’, tech refers to technology applied within the data-driven space. This includes tech deriving from quantum, edge, IoT, hybrid computing, and in relation to telecommunications (5G/6G). Applications can be across any field of activity (e.g. finance, health, agriculture, urban design) and can be aimed at individuals or at other scales (e.g. company through to supply-chain).

Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) The micro-climatic impact of stored heat within the thermal mass of urban areas (paving, roadways, building surfaces) creating large areas of elevated heat after the radiant heat of the sun has disappeared. The concept is widely recognised as a key contributor to human health impacts from climate change in cities, although UHI can exist without being caused by a changing climate. Mitigating actions include those that reduce the cause of UHI and lessen its impact (active and passive cooling of cities, people and animals).

Urban/Local Data Platform Spaces that combine the benefits of open data portals with the analysis and insights capability of dashboards. They can be synonymous with Open Data Platforms, but not necessarily. For example, Urban Data Platforms may not be fully open, and, as the name suggests, are focused on metropolitan areas. Variations on nomenclature (naming) can occur to encompass data platforms that reach across cities, towns and rural hinterland (hence, ‘Local Data Platforms’ or ‘Community Data Platforms’).

Zettabyte A measure of digital data storage capacity, defined by a single byte. A zettabyte is 1 sextillion bytes.