The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> RAQUEL RENNO: Good morning, everyone. Thank you all for coming. This is Smart Cities in the Global South, coding rights women led organization in Brazil. We are going to discuss some of the challenges, some of the issues, and some of the opportunities of Smart Cities. Focusing in the Global South context.
So, in a broader sense, what we have is, there are ‑‑ it's a context with lack or very fragile Democracies and data protection law and kind of a lack of transparency and also we have an issue of the media being paled by the government to say that all of the solutions are good after they've been implemented so there's not a history of public consultation.
But the Smart Cities concept can be very broad and very unspecific, and also changes a lot, according to the country. And in my case, just to briefly explain why I'm here, in coding rights, we publish like two reports. One is in anti-vigilance, a newsletter, and another one here is called Chupadatas where we organize all the Smart Cities in the Rio de Janeiro area because they got Meg a funding because of this world event, the World Cup and Olympics. We analyze the solutions and find very complicated situations like an increase in terms of surveillance of the streets and the citizens, and we also have the use of smart cars there combined with biometry that generates a great amount of data that we don't know how is being used, and in specifically the case of Brazil, we don't have any data protection law.
We can discuss, I can explain about this later, but I think that one of the things that makes the discussion about Smart City less generic and more specific so we can focus on the opportunities and the challenges is to bring people in this table that have different perspective, different experiences and also we're going to start with specific case analyses. India case analyses, then Chile, then Mexico, and then we're going to have also the perspective from the public and the private sector. And we should start with Mr. Sinha. Can you introduce yourself?
>> AMBER SINHA: Thank you. Am I audible? My name is Amber Sinha. I'm from the Center for Internet Society which is based out of Bangalore and New Delhi in India. I'm here because we've been studying, among other things, Smart Cities. As one of the new phenomenons, society moving towards a more datafied economy and databased governments so in that context, I wanted to talk about a couple of thing. One, Smart Cities has been an emerging phenomena globally and in the last few years and we looked at the Smart Cities initiative as a case study within that.
Before I go into that in more detail, just as an aside, I wanted to mention that when we talk of things like Smart Cities, it's important to understand it within the logical context of this narrative which is developing in the Global South about jurisdictions moving towards a data‑rich economy. So not just Smart Cities. We see other initiatives like National ID products, e‑governance projects on a much larger scale and various private sector models. I wanted to just lay that con text because I think Smart Cities also doesn't exist in isolation. I think Raquel mentioned that the thing with Smart Cities is that it evolves very often. The context changes from time to time so that is something to keep in mind.
Now coming back to specifically the Smart Cities, Raquel also mentioned and I would like to elaborate on that about the fact that there is a specific lack of discourse so as opposed to the things like Human Rights data have become very much part of conversation around Smart Cities but discourse in the Global South is still largely around the issue of development and questions related to Human Rights, what are the implications of these sorts of technological contributions, they have not come very much into the fold. In India, we've been involved with a few actors trying to bring that critical discourse. We've published articles in newspapers and online as well and also carried out some research around the position, but by and large, the popular discourse is still sorely lacking in any form of critical discourse around Smart Cities.
The next issue I want to talk about is with regards to Smart Cities from the north and to the south. As I mentioned, the phenomenon around vs. means that the global south has a very large market for large corporations looking to sell these technologies. For example, you have IBM building solutions for transport in Viet Nam, in Africa. In India, the Smart Cities mission is supposed to involve hundred cities, parts of which will emerge as Smart Cities over the next coming years. The mission is still at its early stages. However, over 50,000 countries from 14 jurisdictions have shown an interest in consulting in helping these cities create primary proposals and then implementing those solutions.
So, this is also an interesting phenomenon we see around the Global South emerging as a market for these technologies. And especially I think in the context of the resource conducted in India, there is one aspect that I would like to highlight. The Smart Cities mission doesn't define what Smart Cities are. If we actually look at the initiative, despite the name, they are more in the nature of planning initiatives rather than actually initiatives which involve smart planning or sensors or aspects of measuring the city and using those data derived from it for planning.
However, despite that the government has gone ahead and sought services from companies with a specialized in knowledge on providing solutions so there is also building on the part of government to seek these solutions without truly understanding the scope of the project that they are themselves undertaking.
Finally, the point that I want to highlight is the fact that the Global South is also emerging as a very interesting sandbox for Smart Cities distribution. The few things that we're noticing is there's been a marked increase in penetration of mobile phones in these countries. There's been a number of digital ID projects that have emerged. There is a general push towards cashless transactions and using of digital payments that could use to more datafication of transactions so all of this has contributed greatly to the amount of data which is available. Then a phenomenon like Smart Cities emerges here, it is also a complete lack of regulatory framework. For instance, in India, we have a very token data protection law which is not comprehensive at all and doesn't include all the sectors. We have very good antidiscrimination law and definitely not robust enough to deal with any instead impacts which emerge from solutions like Smart Cities.
We have very big consumer protection law, so these are also very interesting things to keep in mind because what this means is that there are less obligation on practitioners and technologists who are dealing with Smart Cities. So, while these technologies and solutions are being slowly implemented, there is no regular framework which exists to address the negative implications. With that, I'd like to ‑‑
>> RAMINO GUERILO: Hi, good morning everyone. My name is Ramino Guerilo from data protection. Thank you for the participation. I would like to talk about the smart Cities in Santiago, a concept without human rights approach. The issues related with Smart Cities in Chile are mainly related with energy and environment for one way, public security, open government, understanding the citizen as a part of the change of the cities inside the participatory process held as a way to telemanaging solutions and telemonitoring. But the practical of course about transportation systems, new forms of biometric payment, traffic management and automatic fines, among others.
But the practical application of the Smart Cities in Santiago and Concencion has been linked mainly to the public safety and traffic. Like patterns of behavior, movement, and habits. Some example of that are two programs ‑‑ one program in Chile, currently our government is buying facial recognition software to be used in a stadium and other situations such as protest marches. We think what they will do with this technology. This software is for public safety, can match several information like the ID card, maintained by civil registry or police, and another example of the use of Smart Cities in Santiago would be the surveillance through cameras.
But more than cameras, with a system in a hot air balloon. In our country, we fragment the legislation of video surveillance, there are monitoring systems operating in this way by private companies. These hot air balloons, our military technology, a powerful system in the middle of the city in the name of public safety. NGOs claim the invasion of Human Rights by this system in a digital action that finally allow it. They record decision, if you read that, and I would like to say that the Court decision said the condition for the hot air balloons was strictly related with data protection standard. However, for us, Smart City is a concept and Smart Cities in Chile are a kind of introductional group which brings together different public bodies, Universities, NGOs, and is ‑‑ but when we're talking about a Smart City, we're talking about technologies in the city, but with which purposes? It's possible, for instance, that telecommunication company could cache data of geo localization of mobile phones, for example, or other devices with purposes of including vehicle traffic management without notifying people.
Smart Cities had a promise. Smart Cities, the promise of efficient cities, efficient resources, sustainable development. The promise of Smart Cities is use the technology advance to improve the quality of life of the people, but where is the human right assessment or where is the privacy assessment? The implementation of the Smart Cities and cities in many case are wireless sensor that collect all the possible data to assist this desire of quality of life of the citizen. Gathering information in data can be smart Cities maybe convert or can be Big Brother city.
In Chile, the digital agenda who change with every government, there's no continuity about the same political address about Smart Cities are, and we think that Smart Cities are a long‑term concept. But in practice, Smart Cities is a documented to change with every administration.
But, trying to address these issues in a positive point of view, Smart Cities are a good example of the need of control and fulfillment of data protection law. It's necessary a strong framework in that issue. Why? Because if our connectivities are powered by surveillance and Internet of Things and big data so data protection must be in this kind of thing and around the cities. In Chile, including Smart Cities as political aspect but with at least five different cities related in Chile and this doesn't stop. To finish, some remarkable ideas.
In this context of city of technology, is necessary data protection system that guarantee the protection of Human Rights, not only privacy, also free movement that is not existing in Chile. But we know the data protection framework not enough. Smart City cannot be a slogan of our modern governments or just be like that. There are principles, also principles of data protection that I would like to highlight.
The first one is transparency between the specific goals of being smart. What is the real purpose of the Smart City, when is security, when is monitoring, when is surveillance? Transparency about the source of data protection is key. Closely related with that is the management of the city. Who is behind? What is the impact of technology? What are the benefits? Why this technology or not another?
What is the problem? What do they want to solve as society? What will you want to solve in our cities? Accountability of the administration regarding to the implementation of the technology is also the key. Citizens can be the focus of information gathering. The collection of data in Smart Cities is something to hide. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about Smart Cities as a data processing issue. When the government talks of Smart Cities, they don't talk about data gathering and the first purpose or even a second purpose. The narrative of surveillance in public space become important in this regard. We must understand the risks of our freedom and demand not only Smart Cities, just better cities for the Human Rights.
>> VICTOR RAGAS: Hello. My name is Victor Ragas. I am director at the University of Guadalajara and director of the Smart Cities which is at the University P. I am here to tell you about the challenges and use case that we have for Mexico. So, notice case of Mexico, the Smart Cities not started like that. It started like an economic goal. So Mexico has a long arbitration being based on manufacturing economy‑based, so sector was very important. Close to 2004, 2005, there was an achievement from the Ministry of economy looking to have a more value for these manufacturing and then we started to open a cluster for industry of aerospace, so aerospace was very important and now we have one city in 2008, which is very prominent because necessity attract a lot of big companies so it's not the same thing to have one piece or assemble one car than just doing the value for assembling airplanes. But that was still manufacturing.
So, from the government, they started to look about how to give another change for Mexico and spread the model in all the country, and the next step was to go to an economy of knowledge. So knowledge economy is the next step where you're not doing assembly or tangibles in physical way. It's just like software, like developing digital animations and other products and in that case, there was a challenge in all the country to develop the first city that should be not the Smart City but the digital city. So in that context, the whereabouts of 20 cities in the country that were just putting a project and it was like creating a technology to host all this talent and all these possible companies to come. Like, for example, Disney, Pixar, and all that are working on the digital economy.
And Guadalajara was different because we decided to transform the downtown of the city. So what happens in all the cities is that usually you have the downtown, and then you put the industries around the downtown so the people immigrate from the downtown to outer circles of the city and in that case the downtown starts to be more slower in economy and interaction with the people.
So the people remains in the downtown living becomes to be older and then the economy moves outside of the city and the city starts to grow. So what we have in Guadalajara is that case. Today we have a metropolitan area of 4.6 million people and a lot of places around the metropolitan area saw growth and the downtown was just forgotten flay way.
Guadalajara is one of the most cities in Mexico and also in Latin America, so in 14th century when it was founded the downtown was a ripe area for security, and economy, was a lot of traditions also emerged from that. So Guadalajara proposed to renew this downtown and put a cluster of companies for industries, and that was a project that went in 2012 and it was something from the federal government and the president, and that was just the starting point for the first city in Mexico looking to have some shift in the economy.
But inside that, we needed to get some credit to say, okay, we're going to do that model for Mexico and it's going to be okay. It's going to be with the best that we can find. So the initiative was from the Ministry of Economy but then also the industry chambers in Mexico, especially for Ministry of Technology because they were closely related. In that case, say let's get some consulting from big institutes.
So we got MIT and with MIT it was just among a lot of other possible consultants to develop the plan for the technological city or the smart city, so we started with the smart cities. Then we have been looking for a business model and in that case, it was Accenture, which is London based, and it was the model to follow some business creations that we can rely on.
And then we look also for the very important social transformation, the social part, and in that case, we look for the case in Barcelona City where it was also a place which was similar to Guadalajara, forgotten and transformed, but then started from the social side. So create a city was not take people out of the downtown and put in some kind of ghetto and create branding with the companies. It was how to make the people who is there and how to make them shift in the economy and how to track more investment in the city. So in that case, we take from metropolis working. In 2012, we ended with something very important for the cities which is a matter plan. It's a master plan for 18 years.
The challenge was we were finishing, which is very common in south American companies, with one party in the federal government and with a transition with a new party, a new president and new minister of economy, new governor of the states and new person to drive the municipality. So we had to combine and reconnect the project. For that was created a civil organization, a non‑party organization to keep driving the project and the industry also within an ecosystem of the Universities, which is very prominent in Guadalajara. We have about 150,000 students at the University. It's a large system, not only with public University but also very important private Universities and other technology that belongs also to the public area.
The Universities are something that are autonomous from the government so it's another point of use. Sometimes we agree. Sometimes we don't agree. And then just happening with that with the master plan and just starting projects, we connected worldwide with the Institute of Engineers, people think that Atropoli is from the U.S., but it's a large association from around the world with more than 203,000 members. Different point of view and we submitted to Guadalajara and it was the first pilot of this institute.
To start looking the process of building Smart City and this transformation from digital economy needed to be published in some way for other countries that wanted to start but they didn't need to reinvent the wheel again. So knowledge in this case is very important to shared experiences. And with N we started to work Guadalajara City with other cities in the country and other connected to develop the Smart City project. People think that Smart City transformation is something you're going to do in one or two years but in fact it takes time because it's not the government or the industry or technological solution, but it's all the society, the citizens, which are the core gnat Smart City who need to accept and validate the different technologies and are going to evolve and once you start saying that you are running a Smart City, this is something that is doing some expense and you don't finish because once you fix something, another challenge will be emerging.
So, this is for Guadalajara, one of the important projects. In Mexico, there are many cities looking to claim how to be a Smart City. Some cities are just opening, for example, in the center of Mexico in Puebla, they have a big company, which is Audi and they are just taking a town from zero and creating that like in a Smart City. The approach that we have here in Guadalajara is to renew the downtown, bring it alive again and reconnect to the city and just create a model that can be viral and reconnect. The government today is very focused on social innovation which is an important factor for the city and there is a lot of entrepreneurial people that are just working. We work with big companies like IBM, Intel, Cisco, Hewlett Packard enterprise which they have a long history here and thousands of workers inside, so something related. But we are not expecting to have one solution from one company and we're not expecting to have the solution and not being able to drive the solution or modify or know how it works so in that case, the Universities are the base which created talents and to be with these companies who empower solutions, something working here could be working in either cities and the goals and exchange for the benefit of other people.
With Atropoli, we are leveraging some initiative at the very national level. We have city in Italy which is about 300,000 people living there, different economy and different challenge than Guadalajara but we share a lot of things in both cities. We have then Wuxi in China, which is bigger than Guadalajara, about 6 million people in the in the metropolitan area. And then we have Kansas City in the U.S., another challenge and experience that we are connecting. And we have also Morocco Casablanca in Morocco. Just doing a transformation for the Smart Cities is not something local but is something that should be connected through the world. So. That's from my side.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Okay. I think this is okay. Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation. My name is Olga Cavalli, I'm from Argentina. I have some fellows in the audience and the president of the Internet Society the Argentina chapter, I'm a member of the ISOC board also. I appreciate the exchange of information given by our colleagues here in relation with complete examples of implementation of Smart Cities and improving the infrastructure of our Smart Cities within the region. I would like to bring to you a more global perspective, especially focused on the work that I'm doing in study group 20 of ITUT in the ITU.
First, I would like to also to remind you about the recently issued United Nations sustainable development goals. There are two of them that are very important for the Smart Cities. The first one, I would say ‑‑ well, you can go and review all of them but I would like to stress two of them. Goal nine, build resilient infrastructure and foster innovation. And then the other one is goal 11, which I think is relevant for what we are talking about today. Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. And some numbers that are really very impacting. Half of humanity, 3.5 billion people live in cities today.
By 2030, which seems very far away in the future, but it's not that much if you have to plan a city, almost 60 percent of the world's population will live in urban areas. 90 percent of urban expansion in next decade will take place in the developing world that impacts us directly. 828 million people live in slums today and the number is rising. The world cities occupy just 3 percent of the earth's land but account for 60 to 80 percent of energy consumption and 75 percent of carbon emissions. Rapid organization is extorting pressure of fresh water live in the environment of public health and the highest density of cities can bring efficiency also with technology innovation while reducing resource and energy consumption.
So, this is what is happening today. It is part past United Nations developing goal so we would expect part of these statements from United Nations to be included in local and b regional policies in relation with Smart Cities, which is what gathers us this morning. Also remember that four of the 15 largest cities in the world are in Latin America, Mexico, Sao Paulo, Rio, and Buenos Aires are some of the largest cities and should be looking at this challenge for improving infrastructure. In our region, urban population is about 585 million expected by 2030, and there are several standardization efforts of all the technology that is developed around Smart Cities and communities.
I would like to talk about one of them where I participate. It's study group 20 of ITUT. ITUT is one of the three divisions of the international telecommunications union, which is a body of the United Nations, and they have built ‑‑ they started a new study group in October 2015. Which is called study group 20 focusing on Internet of Things and Smart Cities and communities. The study group is divided in two parts. One is about Internet of Things and the other is about Smart Cities and communities. I personally am rapporteur of question 6 about infrastructure and Smart Cities for communities of
What the study group is focusing on, ecosystem of Smart Cities and communities, applications, services, use cases, standards directly related to it, open data, integrated sensing and management for sustainable cities and communities. How can you participate in a study group of ITUT? Well, you have to be a member state or you have to be an organization that belongs to the ITU. Personally, I myself represent an organization which is the CCIT, the (Speaking Spanish), which is a not for profit organization that is excellency center of training for the ITU. So, finally, and giving more space for questions and comments with the audience and with colleagues, I would say what we have noticed in the working group so far that there are several challenges and opportunities.
So we should also not forget the internet access and the IPB6 transition that is part of the big problem of the infrastructure. It could be good to use all these technologies for traffic control. It is important to balance the regional and national needs. We should not create a new divide in between cities that are connected and cities that are not connected. Cities that are smart and cities that are not smart. There are privacy issues, security issues, and all this should be done now we are in the IGF in a multistakeholder approach and I will stop here. Thank you.
>> So, I have a mic. No, it's there. I can manage right here. Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I think in this presentation, I'm going to sort of wrap up what we already heard, and it's really convenient that I came to the end because I see many common understanding. Obviously, my perspective is more was described before coming from the technical/research private sort of perspective. I'm working for the center of expertise of sight at The Hague University of applied sciences and also teaching, doing research. And in fact, obviously Smart Cities have raised a lot of concerns and we're going to look at that later, but also I think there is a lot of optimism about it and it is more focused on what Olga just mentioned now, the opportunities for development.
So, if we look at the conceptual framework and is not going to be black and white, but what I think is important to acknowledge is that this is Smart Cities are global, political, and as well technological projects. That's acknowledged by all the challenges.
However, there are some differences in the way they arised. In the developed north the Smart Cities tend to be to meet an environment's social or political targets or needs. Modern, in the Global South, Smart Cities enable modernization and development responding to problems that arise from population, pressure, climate change, immigration that has been mentioned also by my prior colleagues, and rural and obviously urban transition as well. And obviously, this is not an exhaustive list.
So, we can acknowledge that in the Global South they have been created from scratch, top down rather than retrofitted. So, looking at that perspective therapist, we can sort of look in the more holistic way of the waves of development of the Smart Cities and what I have found in my own research on this is that basically, there has been a first stage in which large global IT companies were trying to sell large scale solutions to cities that weren't convinced that they needed them. So that was the first phase that has already passed, somehow, around ten to 15 years ago.
The second phase, unfortunately, clashed with the international financial crisis in 2008, and then therefore tech companies offering investment to get started but cities still did not buy in and it was a problem of budget, mostly. These applications were too expensive and pricey for the normal budget of different cities. So there were mostly budgetary constraints there.
The current pace, and obviously I'm not generalizing but I think perhaps applies to many of the cases we have already heard of, they're looking into solving specific problems with technology and new business models, choosing to work with special start‑ups models and I think it is precisely this that is rising at the moment. I've seen it. We with the Dutch delegation of the IGF had breakfast day zero and we had actually the secretary of Guadalajara innovation commission, sort of. She explained again what you explained to us today, and it was quite clear that there were some start‑up business people who were sitting there as well. And they were mentioning that actually it was creating opportunities for business, but for in the small scale, which is also important to acknowledge.
Because that's also development, and that's going to, obviously, reflect on job opportunities. For instance, the person who came explained to us that they were actually hiring local IT people, locals that were being trained in order to respond to the Smart City solution. So I think that's rather a good approach and I think this is obviously being reflected in these so‑called new business models such as start‑up models are arising. So, in this case, seeing the beginning of offering tangible solutions, more flexibles, and also looking for these specific business models to fit their needs or the needs of the city.
However, what I want to ‑‑ I've been already discussing in my research and also trying to address as a current way forward, let's put it like that, is the convergence. I'm looking at the moment of top down and bottom up approaches. Top down has been mentioned already by my colleagues here. All these concerns that come from resilience theories or specific practical situations or problems that have been arising in concern to privacy or cybersecurity ‑‑ or privacy by design, security by design. However, there are also bottom up approaches and these are looking at open innovation, co‑creation, cities and engagement, sustainability, inclusiveness. In the making and implementation of a Smart City.
So the question that I actually bring to all of you that have been implemented already these Smart City solutions in your countries is, it's possible to engage. Is there any chance to engage and harness these two approaches? The top down and the bottom up? And what could be eventually the impact in implementation of these solutions?
I will leave it there because I think we're still -- some time to go or? Finally, I want to mention perhaps the current ‑‑ more informative for you to know, there are many current national forums in which we are discussing Smart City solutions and obviously, Olga already mentioned the ITU forum but there is also the United Nations specialized agency for implementation and communication technologies, that's the one you mentioned, and united for Smart Cities, and in Holland, we are hosting Smart Cities and community Coalition that is aiming to be a really international Coalition dealing with the Smart Cities. Maybe some of the representatives of the governments here already working in this Coalition. And finally, the most well‑known is obviously the Smart Cities acts for Congress that usually takes place in Barcelona and was just a month ago taking place this year. So that's obviously to wrap up.
But I think there is also a regulatory framework for IoT and that's also what I'm looking in my research recently. IoT is not likely to be straight forward because there are different scales of deployment and different communication models. So at least need to acknowledge four common communication models described in the internet architecture board, and these were also mentioned somehow by my colleagues.
Data sharing device to get way, device to Cloud, device to device, so those are the current architectures. Around these, recently, we have had the research done by Oxford Internet Institute, professor Ian Brown that is describing different scales of deployment and he touched upon these specific concern that's comes out from the architecture of IoT and these are mostly concerning individuals, obviously, concerning privacy, a rise there, and in terms of the community level including connected cars, held devices, smartphones, so on and so forth.
And finally, society, and I think this is quite an important implementation. Society, many systems like Smart City, smart grids, smart electronic, gas, water meters. So these are sort of three level that's can escalate the development of IoT regulation.
Just to give you a final example, the city of Rotterdam, current local government has been implementing waste management system in the Netherlands and it has been quite successful and it has been mostly based in the third way I described, that's mostly based on start‑ups and consultation with the citizens of the city of Rotterdam, so perhaps that's just to add a little bit more, an additional example coming from Europe but still worming to understand and pay attention. Thank you.
>> RAQUEL RENNO: Thank you. Thank you all. Before I open mic for questions from the audience, I just want to thank Paz Pena couldn't be here and was coordinating this banner with me and also participated a lot in developing the concept of this session. And another thing, it came to my knowledge that there was some kind of social media text making kind of jokes about people who couldn't speak English or make their questions or their participation in Spanish, which I think that is intolerable. And it's against Human Rights, and we've been discussing in IGF the need for diversity and access, so if you want to make your questions in Spanish, you'll be welcome. And well, now is the time for you to propose questions.
>> SANTIAGO: Thank you for the presentation. I am Santiago R3 and I have a question, a couple of questions, regarding the implementation of Smart Cities in Guadalajara, I would like you to go deeper in, what kind of data do you capture, what kind of services do you use data, and also if you could explain us how does the protection of Human Rights, it's inserted in the program? Thank you.
>> Okay. So, something that happens with this Smart Cities is that you need to play the role with the government, with the academy, and with the industry. And when you go to the government, from my point of view, of the academic, and we say, okay, we have a great project that we developed at the University, and we have some cooperation with some industry. So, we're trying to tie it to open standards, durability, et cetera. And then the government say, okay, but the city is very serious. We don't want to have a playing area where something fails and then the cost will be higher. So what we created is the concept of a network of living laps that are held at the Universities as neutral spaces and then inside of these living labs, we're developing all the sensors and what is needed to react the activators and putting all the technologies inside.
So, in order to go through the city, we need to show that it works, that it works fine. And then there's a process for public policies and then it goes through the city. So to date, there are stations, this is from a long time ago, to monitor air quality, for example. There is for traffic, some sensors moving in that. The biggest challenge now for the government and, it's not only that of the government, from the different points of view, academy, industry, and non‑governmental associations, is to connect all the data. Because this is a way to transform a normal city to a Smart City.
When you have from the office of transport that they have all this information and it's closed and the people, the civil persons are not able to look into that information, then there is not a possibility to connect entrepreneurial activities to develop a mobile application that can bring better service based on that information.
So the main transformation at this moment is to connect all this data that is already in the different governmental offices or is just developed and incubated at the living labs with the Universities, and it's just in a way to be connected through the downtown.
So, for the master plan that we have for the city, there is what we call the digital hub in the downtown of the city, which is in place because there is a lot of work to bring you. And this digital hub is the place where we're going to send the living labs through the downtown to a real living environment. We use the Universities because they are huge. For example, the campus where I am is about 20,000 population with students and professors inside, so it's like a microcity. And it's a more controlled environment that is just getting with the privacy issues or who's going to pay the bill for communication, on everything. So, in this case, when this side on the downtown of Guadalajara will be ready, then all the divisions from the communication and civil service, we have the part of connecting and testing other parts of the city.
For instance, one of the challenges in Mexico is to have high speed connectivity to the internet, and there is also a project that is just reconnecting the downtown, organizing that that this initiative from the federal government. But, the local government is embracing that because they understand that just having a lot of connectivity with talent producing some solutions based on technology will bring something better for the people. But in some ways, also the way for the Smart City is to be very holistic so it means they're going to connect information today for the healthcare system that we have in the city just to know, for example, where the people have some problems with the lungs, for example, and just connect that with the data that we are just getting from the air quality systems, identify the areas, and just start taking actions.
So, one part that we're developing all together is based on the metrics of our city, and I think it's the base for all of our cities to have some metrics that just consider everything and how these indicators of the city are just getting some balance in one area or not, to bring the solutions. And this is a work where we just say, okay, it's not only the government, but there is a possibility to bring solution from civil organization, from Universities r or from a company or a start‑up that emerged in this case.
But this is more or less how Guadalajara is behaving.
>> RAQUEL RENNO: Any other questions or comments?
>> IAN FISH: Thank you, Ian Fish, question especially for Catherine. You gave a very persuasive argument that the marriage of top down and bottom up approaches would work but in many feels of endeavor, this is very difficult to do. One I'm particularly familiar with is risk management and trying to Marie a top‑down risk management strategic approach with a bottom‑up different types of risks is always problematic. Are there similar problems in trying to do it practically or academically, from an academic perspective, in Smart City thinking?
>> CATHERINE VAN HOOGSTRATEN: I think the different concerns that has been raised, especially for instance, in relation to big data or privacy, do have a grounded sort of reality. But what I'm looking is mostly, and maybe I have to change shout description of the bottom‑up, but it's mostly about e‑governance and maybe that makes more clear. And I think when I'm proposing because it's just a proposal and obviously there is no testing of this yet unless we see in the real cases, and that's precisely my interest in engaging with the local governments, is to what extent and in which specific cases ‑‑ because it obviously cannot be applied to everything, but in which specific cases this may work?
I have been following some cases before obviously raising these sort of hypothesis or thesis and I have been looking in Brazil, where, for instance, civic engagement concerning to elections have been positive. Also cases in Columbia ‑‑ yeah. So, therefore, then, it might be that for specific branches, this could be eventually a solution. Not an overarching solution but at least an approach in which it is possible to not always have the private companies sort of providing their technology but also having the citizens engage strongly in implementation of the Smart City. Having a voice.
I think there has been also several studies done in terms of, once again, e‑governance, and it creates a sense of ownership, and that's what Smart Cities should be. It should create a sense of ownership in the citizens. And that's why the proposal of both top down and bottom up, might respond to that need of engagement, of ownership. So that was the point I wanted to make.
>> If I may ‑‑ I would like to share with you. And I agree with Catherine that that channel should exist. It may be not the only one or the solution for all the problems of a complex city, big city, but the channel of citizen participation and proposing ideas should six city of Buenos Aires opened a contest ‑‑ you know, Argentina is a very entrepreneurial country because we live always in a crisis. We live from crisis to crisis like many other countries in our beautiful region, so people is very keen to entrepreneurial and bring ideas. So they open a contest for people proposing solutions, including Internet of Things technology for transportation access to buildings and parking lots and environment, how to handle waste and ‑‑ my English is horrible today. So, it was quite successful. Some of them were implemented, and those that could win the concept get the project developed and to see funds to free period. So I think that's both. But the responsibility of the city government is irreplaceable, so they should manage the whole thing. That's my comment.
>> JACK: Okay. Thanks very much. This is really, very, I think interesting ‑‑ one thing I cannot help ‑‑ oh, sorry, my name is Jack, I'm ‑‑ I live in Malaysia. One thing I cannot help but think, the question that pops up in my head is who are the intended beneficiaries for the Smart Cities? Because I think when you think about scales and which you think about people in a city scale, it tends to obliterate differences. You're thinking, we need to make this city more efficient, but at the end of the day, who is the imagined intended beneficiary? Is it the middle and top tier? And in which case, what happens, then, so the people who are already tended to be included or not very attractive to a good city? So people who are homeless, for example? How can then we think about development of Smart Cities starting from the bottom tier so how can we make cities much more holding of people who are excluded currently and in doing so, bring in the Human Rights piece. So I think someone was thinking about the Human Rights framework, I think it would be really, really great to think about how this could be implemented from the get go.
And the other thing that I also cannot help think about is the privacy implications because we're talking about movements, behavior, so on. And in a lot of developing countries in my context, at least, privacy is not something we care about a will the. So there also seems to be one level of awareness and even whatever models we're talking about bottom up or top down but if you don't have that piece of consideration around privacy being critical, that won't enter into the consideration and this is such a huge impact so how do we think about implementing all these pieces?
>> Studying many IGF, at least the plan that I study in Santiago and Rio doesn't think about the public transportation needs. For example, women, because there are data that show that women are in a part‑time job in a proportion of two to one compared to men. It generates special needs for transportation. It also implicates a lower income, so there some plan to make it cheaper, discounts, have smaller buses to more a neighborhood area because these women are taking care of the kids doing home job? And also the elders. The way elders were not contemplated in these plans, too, because they also need to have buses that go through neighborhoods that are not in the main flow areas.
They are not going to work. So, basically, studying the plan, although those plans start with technology for the people slogan, I haven't seen it cross studied with the real people. It was basically a plan to make the car flow going, we have this problem with public transportation in Latin America. Very generic. We built cities for cars and I haven't seen a plan who are challenging that and also it's a city that basically is people going to December because they have to work and this is just some portion of the population. Not everyone is doing that so I think this is very complicated. This is what I got from the studies I've been doing. I don't know if somebody else wants to address other examples.
>> I would like to add, I completely agree with you. How to say, the positive way to address Smart City concept is the data protection, is the need of control of our data. And the fulfillment of the data protection law. I used to work in the Ministry of Transportation in Chile before to take part in the Civil Society, and the Smart City was more than a slogan. It was a way to do things with a multistakeholder issue with different actors, but without Human Rights approach. And the Smart Cities are for citizen, are for the people, at the end of the day. And in my completely opinion, we talk about openness, we talk about transparency, but when we talk about a Smart City, we don't talk about these issues with transparency about how the companies are processing our data to make better cities.
So, we want to change this approach to the Smart City to the concept more close to the Human Rights concept because we believe that their technology are amazing, and we want to better city. We want to better mobility. We want to better management of the traffic. We want cities more safely, but the government or the companies can know and fringe other from the other side. So the Smart City, whether a complex concept who has to consider the Human Rights approach about data protection principles. Because the Smart Cities are powered by data from the citizens.
>> Okay. The goal when we started to learn about the Smart Cities is to have in the middle the citizens and just try to find the best quality of life that we can bring for them in the city. And that's when we talk about technology, not about technology, but what we are going to do to make better for the people that are living in that city and what we're going to see in this global world, the people is going to start choosing the city when they can live better and when they have better opportunities for all the senses. Human Rights, job, economy, how they are behaving in the city, how they can connect. And we're looking like an era like it was for America when we started. The first cities started because there were some mines where they can extract some value and then we started to see when the mine was closed because there were no more minerals with some value to extract, then the towns were like phantom places. That's what's going to happen with the cities getting economy very fast but they are not keeping care of the natural environment. They are not keeping care with how they are interacting with the people.
At the end, these cities are going to be alone but we know from the future by 2050 by UNESCO, we're going to be 80 percent of the population of the world living in cities so the challenge now is which will be the best cities to live in the world and that's what takes today Smart Cities as the hot topic, does the government understand that? Does the citizens, the people in the environment understand? That's why this concept of ownership of a city is very important. So when we start to develop the cities, the smart cities, we want people from social sciences, I learned that there are also levels of development.
The first is, the government knows that there is a problem and they create something they call the panopticon model. This model is as centralized as the government. They want the technology to benefit the people because they are not able to decide on their own and I'm going to put the solution and control everything and I don't let other people to correct with other kind of technology other than we have.
The next level is when the people become civic hackers and they bring the technology and they start to work together with the government with the solutions. Okay, this is not working here. The garbage system is taking a lot of time and creating a lot of traffic in this area. So they go to the government and say, okay, to let us bring a solution and it happens. So there is another level from empowerment from the people of the city that says, we can make better and it's not only the task of the government.
The last level is when you have some ownership and you say, I'm paying taxes but we're not able with those taxes only to solve that problem, we're able to invest citizens to make it better. Which is happening in cities like Amsterdam, for example, which is a very high level. The people discuss a lot with the government and there is a lot of interaction and in this case, technology is just the vehicle for that. Between the people, and we have been looking at cities that were just in a very controlled way just disassembled because the people were organized and starting to discuss about that so it will help but it's not only ‑‑ it's just getting the empowerment of the people an getting a concern if we don't deal with the city, the city is going to be alone in a few years, this kind of concurrency in the world.
>> I just want to add, I absolutely agree with these words and also what Olga mentioned as sustainable development and I think both harnessing top up and down are only aiming to that to achieve these but also to crowd source public participation. There is so much in the citizens, so much information, but the good one, what they want, what they need, what exactly is sort of Democracy should be applicable in their cities. There is so much, as I said, value in the thinking and needs of the citizens that can only be processed through Smart City solutions. There obviously has been other implementations as generally in governments who has been already working for years. But you think with the case study of Smart Cities, then it even allows for more participation. As long as it's working in this way, I think it's going to have a positive impact. And as long as data protection, at the end, companies have to comply with the law. Nobody is saying they do not need to comply with the law in order to have Smart City solutions and they have to, and that has to pass the government to see what extent they're complying with. Even in the participation of the citizens, they can also inform and provide information for, okay, there is a specific amount or type of data that I ‑‑ that is already available and we are against that, for instance.
So, there is ‑‑ I just see these as Smart City solutions as a channel to basically provide more interaction between government and citizens. So I just wanted to add that.
>> I think we have another question.
>> I had a question for Jessica and Amber who are both doing research in the global south on these issues, based on your knowledge, what kind of evidence, information is lacking in discourse in order to move it forward in terms of what the problems are but possibly as well some solutions, where do you think there's opportunity for further research on this topic?
>> AMBER SINHA: On the one hand, I think some of the solutions you mentioned with regard to civic hacking and creating safe spaces for citizens to engage with the city, I think those are all great initiatives. But the concern that I have had with that is most of these solutions that have been proposed are of the nature which involves creating a space, and there is an onus on the citizen to have certain capacity to engage in that space, which is sorely lacking, especially in the developing world.
On the other hand, what would be, I think far more useful is the default to move towards data decision driven making towards urban planning within the Smart Cities framework, then mechanisms which take into account those who are underrepresented. Most of these data sets have very strong structural inequities so I think that will be something which will be far more useful in my opinion to have solutions which address that problem and somehow unbiased algorithms which bring in people who are underrepresented within the framework so they're accounted for in that decision making processes.
And we hear very little about solutions which could address that problem. That is one thing I wanted to mention because I think this is a great panel. A lot of discussions about we in Civil Society have about Smart Cities, we seem to start with likeminded people and it creates an echo chamber so it's really great to hear detailed perspectives and some very convincing arguments. But, this is something which has bothered me for a while now about the nature of solutions proposed. And I think what is happening is there is too much onus on people who don't have capacity, as of now.
>> ROMINA: The question was for me? I'm Romina. Jessica is my colleague here. But we spend a lot of time together, so people usually confuse. (laughter). About our research, we are ‑‑ my approach to this issue is because I work in the regulator of transportation minister in Chile and during this time, I made my master thesis in about how the data processing was used in the processing of traffic fines. So, in that way, we propose standard based, of course, in data protection principles because the opportunity of the Smart Cities is persistently an opportunity for countries to get ‑‑ to get better legislation, to improve the frameworks of data protection, because as Catherine said, the companies know that they have to fulfill the law.
But, the problem is in Latin America, we have very lax standards of data protection. So the standards of the company are very low. So, at the ending, fulfilling the law is not the solution. Because if we wait on parliament or ‑‑ I don't know, if to get a better law, the technology is running day by day. So there's a responsibility in the government and the companies when they ‑‑ when they start to talk about the Smart City issue so get better standards to Human Rights. If they are not in the specific framework, I think that should be an obligation to apply them. So, the research is based in control, transparency, and security. But not just transparency like openness of information. You know, transparency in how the companies ‑‑ how the government gathering and processing the data of citizen in the Smart Cities.
This is very important if we can address and we can continue to develop the Smart Cities.
>> Any other questions? No questions. You have ‑‑ Okay.
>> IAN FISH: I would just like to come back to the ownership issue. I really ‑‑ it's Ian Fish again from UK. It's a lot of the idea and obviously creates ownership, but coming back to some of what jack said or at least I understood it and what Amber said as well, is there not a danger that its ownership is the digitally included and the digitally excluded will actually be pushed further away?
>> Anyone wants to comment on that?
>> Can I comment? I'm not sure if I got your question. What I see ‑‑ and I think we can see that today, those of us that travel a lot, you can see a difference in some cities how they're managed, especially traffic. I think we may start to see something that I mentioned, a new city divide. It's the cities that you would love to go, and cities that, oh, my God, I have to go there. And it's not because the people. It's because how manage around the city or you need three hours to get to the airport plus the three hours you have to be at the airport before, so half a day devoted to the airport. Something like that. It happens today in some cities so I'm not sure if I'm answering your question. I think we will start to see that but with the incorporation of technology into the management of a city that will be more noticeable in some cities than others.
So, we may have to see what you were mentioning before. I would love to live there, and I would not like to live somewhere else.
>> We have time for one last question. Is there any? Okay. May I ask a question? Since you are in the University, and you also involved with implementation of project on Smart Cities, for example, I have checked that there is a master course in Spain about Smart Cities. And I went through the program, and it was basically IT disciplines and then lots of public policies. So all these ethical and Human Rights issues, they were not in the program. They were not being discussed. This is just one example. Since you're in the University, how do you address these things and also, you work with global companies. You, you know, study global examples, but you have to implement and create a plan for, you know, your context. So, how do you manage to do that in this University environment?
>> So, that's a very good question. So, the challenge for the Smart Cities is that we have the technology today as the main vehicle, but we say that there is something that should be all the time in place, which is not computer science, it's common sense. Sometimes we want to make something very complex with technology because it makes some gymnastics for our brain and it looks fine, but sometimes we need to stop and say, does that make common sense to implement that? And that's something that should be all the time present.
But, however, technologies is accelerating some processes, for example. Just going to spend time here in Guadalajara to spend time to renew a permission for your vehicle every year and wait two hours, so if you have a web portal in the internet that makes that in two minutes, then you get something better for the city because it makes easier some things and it's better. So, with Atropoli, which is very international, we created something that is MOOCs, which is massive open online platforms, and we are using the chosen platform for than we are creating four MOOCs. One for metrics, another for Smart Cities, another is very technological, but we're also looking for the University to open a master in Smart Cities. We're thinking for the people that have some technical knowledge just to know that this is a holistic vision and you need to understand, the people on the healthcare urban, the people on the urban development area, the people from the public policies, that's a challenge.
To connect all those people. And then besides, for example, the people which is dealing with the open environment usual lip are architects are civil engineers, they have a very low knowledge of society and how they can bring something better for that so at the end, it's to connect them, to learn what technology can bring us benefit and then just empower them. And the vision in the Middle East, there should be technology from one company, a closet technology, there should be something open so we can we'll more things over that technology. They should be interoperable, something that should be there to connect with other solutions, and the challenge for the cities is the scale. So usually, we're discussing about IoT but when you go look for IoT in the internet, that your coffee machine will be waiting for you when you wake up already with the coffee, an that's a nice picture that they put. I don't know if that's smart.
But, for the cities, it's not that. It's that you have a million lights in the street that should manage how they want to behave with energy because energy is something that have a cost, and an impact. For example, in Mexico, 60 percent of the energy is just based on fuel. On oil solution. So, that's not efficient. We don't have these plants producing that energy near the city, but somewhere we're going to pay the invoice at the end. So the vision should be just very, very holistic. And that's a challenge, and that's an opportunity.
And besides that, this is a point to connect with other countries because every city has different geographic issue, so they have challenge with that in Smart City. There is not one solution that can worth everything.
There is one solution that can be adapted and maybe it should be working but if the people don't create some ownership, they don't embrace a solution, it's not going to work that's something we're working, and it's very hard even in the University to have talk with people from different areas of knowledge takes time because you need to connect the vocabulary and understand how they work. That's one opportunity, I think, for Latin America.
>> Okay. We have one minute. Any of you want to add something or?
>> And given that we are in the region now, I also want to stress the fact that the Pacific Alliance Trade Agreement is coming up. Peru, Mexico, Columbia, Chile are part of it. And I think we have looked at the specific cases. We have looked most closely, we have in the case of Mexico, Guadalajara but I think in the general, in the international framework or the regional, more specifically, these kind of trade agreements will be fostering digital innovation opportunities and I think this will come with, for instance, these type of new economies of innovation of sophistication that are not necessarily based on usage of natural resources which is also aiming for sustainability and also aiming for Smart City solutions. So important to keep in mind the new upcoming agreements that may be providing some strength to the implementation of Smart Cities, as well as the business development of intangible assets. As you mentioned, for instance, software patents, copyrights. So I'm also looking forward to the development of the Pacific Alliance Free Trade Agreement to see what will be the impact of solutions.
>> In this forum, we have so much young people. I would like to use the innovation from a bottom‑up perspective, if you have an idea, if you think that you can make a difference, just bring it to some of the organizations or governments or Universities that you have around. Go to your ISOC chapter or University or to your boss maybe if you work in the government and bring the ideas. Maybe if you cannot change the full city, or yes, you can change something in the whole city but maybe you could do a difference in part of it and that could be replicated not only in that city, but in other cities of the region. Remember, our region is unique. It's very beautiful. It's diverse. But our problems are also unique. We have a very imbalanced distribution of the infrastructure, we have imbalanced distribution of wealth. So that is the problem of Latin America. You don't find that so blunt in other regions of the world. So let's share experiences and let's also use the bottom up approach to solve, make our cities more beautiful. Thank you.
>> So, I think that ‑‑ Okay. So, something that happens is that the internet today is something very organic. There is no country or one company or one owner that is controlling everything over the internet. There was some examples where the internet was cut off in some places and reconnected very fast in other places so in that case, this kind of cooperation is key between different point of views and standards which are very important to make everything connect and about more interoperable and Smart Cities is something that should emerge in that case. So for Latin America, the great opportunity is to start cooperation. Because there is not how to deal with the government or academic and industry and civil organizations but there is a lot of experiences and successful cases that are happening in Latin America, and that's an area of opportunity to connect not only for these countries but worldwide also to see how it works. And it's not about one city. It's about the planets. We are not managing well the resources that we are using. These economies that we have today are just creating a big drain on the environment we need to work together to do that.
That's a challenge but I think Latin America has a great opportunity because we are in some places in a fields we can start to open and to see how we can do it better.
>> Okay. Anything else?
>> AMBER SINHA: I think in closing, one of the things I would like to mention, some very encouraging things about having a safe and sustainable model and resilient that were mentioned, I think one of the things that Victor mentioned about having open models is you're free to build so those are very welcome thoughts. I think the larger fear that a lot of us looking at Smart Cities in the global have is that it shouldn't end up being this opaque exclusionary model in which a large part of people are not able to participate in any way, and the decisions that are taken based on data within the Smart City framework cannot be question. So that opacity is again something which we need to hook at very carefully because some of these models by their very nature are extremely obtuse.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. It's already 1:35 so we have to close it. And well, thank you for coming. I hope it was helpful
(applause)
(Session was concluded at 1:35 p.m. CST)