Let’s build resilient urban centres with data-driven governance

Rapid urbanisation coupled with Climate Change and unstable economic growth have caused complex challenges in cities. These challenges not only pose a risk to urban services and socio-economic systems, but also to the overall quality of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has further disrupted life in urban areas, thus, highlighting the significance of building resilience in the face of unprecedented crises.

Resilience reflects the ability of urban centres to persevere, adapt, and recover from shocks and stresses. While shocks are sudden such as flooding, stresses are factors that weaken the city over longer periods of time, such as poverty, poor air quality, ageing infrastructure, etc.

Local governments are, therefore, increasingly including resilience as a key element in their sustainable development agenda, also prompting a paradigm shift in their operating/governance mechanisms to build essential capacities. With the smart city swing causing the integration of data in urban management, a promising approach being adopted is data-driven governance — one where data is leveraged in the planning, management, and decision-making aspects of governance.

 Data is the backbone of a resilient urban centre. Through the monitoring of urban services, data can help governments in the early detection of a crisis, and in addressing urban issues more efficiently. For instance, Barcelona’s Sentilo — an integrated sensor network platform — monitors factors such as the city’s air quality, parking space occupancy, traffic flow, and waste management services. With information like this, city governments become well-equipped to prevent chronic stresses by understanding the severity of the issue, and providing timely mitigation responses. In this regard, a data-driven approach does not only place emphasis on the ‘recovery’ of urban systems, rather it takes a proactive approach towards resilience.

Moreover, open data platforms play an important role in communicating real-time information about urban services, and disasters. The London City Dashboard and London DataStore are innovative dashboards that translate data onto a mapped basis, and help citizens understand urban systems better to be able to engage in the solution-development processes. This approach towards information sharing and participatory planning further empowers citizens while simultaneously making the government more transparent, and accountable.

India demonstrated the role of data-driven governance in resilience since the outbreak of COVID-19. City governments used Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) — originally created for municipal functions — to manage the pandemic. These ICCCs brought together data from multiple stakeholders on a single platform to deliver smart solutions using dashboards, predictive modelling, and smart infrastructure. Many cities were able to track, monitor, and treat infected citizens, manage vaccination related data, and ensure delivery of essential services.

Initiatives such as the ICCCs under the Smart Cities Mission, and others such as the National Urban Digital Mission (NUDM) have enabled a swifter adoption of data-driven urban governance in India. A good example is the India Urban Data Exchange (IUDX) platform, a state-of-the-art open source platform that allows data exchange (between government departments, citizens, industry, etc.) and optimisation of governance.

It serves as a strategic tool in the resilience discourse, with cities like Pune developing datasets on it for monitoring air quality, flood levels, and women’s safety. Additionally, the digitisation of land-use records and the census is also a significant opportunity in the future of governance by leveraging existing data for better planning and management of urban risks.

Governments often struggle with data. The use of the ICCCs for combating COVID-19 had its limitations in terms of quality, collection, and sharing of data. A considerable knowledge gap among city officials in applying data insights to decision-making was also reflected in the outbreak management. Moreover, privacy, and security concerns are major hindrances due to lack of legal frameworks, and inefficient data protection policies that impact citizens’ trust in the government. Lastly, the digital divide in India notably affects the spread and effectiveness of digitised approaches, often resulting in non-inclusive data collection.

It is important to address these challenges by having adequate regulatory frameworks for data governance and building systemic capacities. While platforms such as the IUDX can be game-changers by standardising data collection, and building knowledge using use cases, work is still needed in mainstreaming the data-driven approach in cities. Efforts should be put in making long-term improvements to data-based services; and more initiatives to institutionalise, and strengthen this approach are imperative.

Data-driven governance is evidently a powerful enabler in mainstreaming urban resilience, but with great power comes greater responsibility to ensure good governance. Therefore, the co-operation between both must be instituted by building a secure, inclusive, and robust data ecosystem.