If people find it easier to get data from the city of Seattle going forward, they can in part thank the 天美影视传媒.
A team of UW faculty members and doctoral students spent the past six months working with the city on a new open data policy unveiled last week by Mayor Ed Murray. The policy requires all city departments to make their data as accessible as possible to the public while upholding privacy and security considerations.
The UW team conducted focus groups to hear about the public鈥檚 wishes and concerns, assessed the city鈥檚 existing datasets and vendor agreements for security vulnerabilities, and held in-depth interviews with officials in eight city departments to identify their data processes.
鈥淚t was pretty intense,鈥� said , head of the UW鈥檚 Urban Infrastructure Lab and one of the project鈥檚 leaders. 鈥淲e wanted to take a really comprehensive approach, because we knew that the city wanted to take an innovative and large step forward in terms of tackling this issue.鈥�
Murray signed an executive order Feb. 26 directing all city departments to comply with the new policy, which he said is intended to help 鈥減roblem-solvers outside of government鈥� find solutions to civic challenges.
鈥淭his executive order encourages more transparency between the city and outside partners, and ensures we develop tools that provide critical insights for the public on what鈥檚 happening in our city,鈥� he said in a .
But making data readily accessible to the public is more complicated than people might think, Whittington said. Municipalities collect a broad range of data on everything from city infrastructure to budgets and service delivery, she noted, including potentially sensitive data about people who live and work in the city.
鈥淲hen contemplating whether or not a particular dataset would harm privacy if it鈥檚 released for open data use, that鈥檚 both a technical exercise as well as an exercise in ethics and policymaking,鈥� said Whittington, a UW assistant professor of urban design and planning.
According to the city, more than 400 datasets have been made open since the launch of its open data program in 2010. That data powers tools on the city鈥檚 website such as the police department鈥檚 and the transportation department鈥檚 . The city hopes to have 554 datasets in total available to the public by the end of this year.
The UW鈥檚 work is part of its partnership with the city under the , a national initiative pairing cities with research universities that have expertise in engineering, robotics and computer science to work together on 鈥渟mart city鈥� solutions.
The Urban Infrastructure Lab and the UW collaborated on the city project, which also involved the Sunlight Foundation. The university鈥檚 MetroLab work is being spearheaded through the new initiative, which brings together UW researchers, Seattle officials and citizens to work on an array of urban issues.
The UW is currently partnering with the city on two other . One involves installing sensors around Seattle to provide real-time data on air pollution, precipitation and other environmental indicators, with the goal of helping the city operate more efficiently and prepare for potential problems such as urban flooding. Under the other project, UW electrical engineering researchers will gather data from more than 100 temperature sensors around the city to investigate how changing temperatures are impacting electricity demand.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of interest and momentum behind this work with the city,鈥� said , associate director聽 of the UW鈥檚 . 鈥淢etroLab provides a mechanism to share ideas and input, and scale up projects that work so they can be applied in other cities.鈥�
Funding for the MetroLab Network was provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.