As they go about their business of producing most of the world’s wealth, novelty and human interaction, cities also produce a vast amount of data. The people who run cities are ever more keen on putting those data to work. Hardly a week passes without a mayor somewhere in the world unveiling a “smart-city” project—often at one of the many conferences hailing the concept. In August China announced such a programme, this one spread around nine pilot sites across the country. Earlier this year Kenya’s then president, Mwai Kibaki, broke ground on Konza Techno City outside Nairobi.
Although many such systems are supposed to work automatically, it is a rare smart-city project that does not aspire to a NASA-style control room filled with electronics, earnestness and a sense of the future. In Rio de Janeiro, for instance, dozens of operators from 30 different departments sit in front of a wall of screens showing images from some of the 400 CCTV cameras placed throughout the city, as well as weather data and police reports. The hope is that the system will help Rio manage the crowds during next year’s football World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.
