Boston Announces Beta Launch of Open Data Platform

The City of Boston has launched Open Data to Open Knowledge, which is in beta form and hosted on a platform called Analyze Boston. The City plans on releasing the official platform this spring. In collaboration with the Boston Public Library, the platform will host datasets that will be available to the public for research inquiries and projects. The accessible platform is a part of an effort by the City to make Boston more of a ‘smart city,’ an effort that is supported by $165 million of national funding towards finding solutions to modern city problems. The issues are largely geared towards improving infrastructural and city issues by using data and IoT.

BU has been significantly involved in developing technology and techniques to move the process along in Boston. In 2015, the university created the Initiative on Cities, which works with mayors and local governments to improve city living and urban issues. The Initiative’s most recent survey, the 2016 Menino Survey of Mayors, found that mayors across the country saw poverty and minority issues as one of the top issues. The Initiative aims to bridge the gap between academic research and real-life application and practice.

In addition to working closely with the Initiative on Cities, the Hariri Institute for Computing has developed additional projects that address urban issues through computational research, such as the SCOPE (Smart-city Cloud-based Open Platform and Ecosystem) project. SCOPE aims to create a cloud platform that “exposes the digital pulse of the city for innovators to develop smart-city services.” This project is closely tied to the Massachusetts Open Cloud (MOC) project, also housed at the Institute. Funded by the National Science Foundation Partnerships for Innovation, MOC researchers have been able to create a platform, the Open Cloud eXchange (OCX), that will act as a marketplace for innovation in apps. In this marketplace, apps will be created to help make software for smart-city services like transportation and mobility, public safety, social mechanisms, and basic city services such as snow removal and traffic details.

The Institute’s Director of Research Development and SAIL (Software & Application Innovation Lab) and Computer Science professor, Andrei Lapets, is bringing smart city research into the classroom by offering the newly designed Urban Mechanics course. Closely tied with the SCOPE project, students in the class work on various projects that delve into city data sets to create solutions for urban issues. Past projects have included studying the correlation between streetlights and crime, crime rates and property values near hospitals, as well as neighborhood wealth and resource distribution. The class tackles challenges in the urban environment and gives students the opportunity to create smart-city solutions.

The Institute also facilitated the “Data and the Local Community” panel as part of the BU Data Science (BUDS) Day 2017. The event brought together data scientists, including the City’s Chief Data Officer, Andrew Therriault, who spoke on his goal of using data to focus on “some of the city’s most challenging problems, from homelessness and addiction to food-borne illness and traffic safety.” BUDS Day also featured Jim Kurose, Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation, as well as several public officials for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the Boston Public Health Commission.