Virtual Workshops on City Data Models: Session 1

ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee Working Group 11 on Smart Cities, is investigating the development of a set of international standards for city data models. To create truly smart cities, data must be shared across various departments and stakeholders; which can only be accomplished through the use of a common data model. A common data model enables city software applications to share information, plan, coordinate, execute city tasks, and support decision making within and across city services, by providing a precise, unambiguous representation of information and knowledge that is commonly shared across city services. Doing this requires a clear understanding of the terms used in defining the data, as well as how they relate to one another. As such, cities must go beyond a syntactic integration (e.g. common data types and protocols) but also a semantic integration: a consistent, shared understanding of the meaning of information. This workshop will focus on identifying possible city level concepts for inclusion in a set of standards. Presentations are sought that identify vocabularies and ontologies that represent concepts that are shared across city services.

Program Committee: 

Mark S. Fox, University of Toronto 
Peter Parslow, Ordinance Survey 
Heng Qian, Shandong Computer Science Center 

Virtual Session 1

Title: “What cities need: Convergence on a minimal set of data models for smart cities & communities”
Speaker: Martin Brynskov, PhD, Chair of the Board of Directors, Open & Agile Smart Cities (OASC), Aarhus University, Denmark
Abstract: Martin Brynskov is chair of the global Open & Agile Smart Cities initiative (OASC), which encompasses more than 140 cities from 30 countries. OASC is a non-profit association based in Brussels, Belgium, and it aims to develop so-called Minimal Interoperability Mechanisms (MIMs) for cities and communities. Dr. Brynskov is vice-chair of the UN ITU-T Focus Group on Data Processing and Management to support IoT and Smart Cities & Communities (FG-DPM) and chair of the Working Group on Use Cases, Requirements and Applications/Services. Dr. Brynskov is also associate professor, PhD, in Interaction Technologies at Aarhus University in Denmark, director of the Centre for Digital Transformation of Cities and Communities (DITCOM), founder and co-director of the Digital Living Research Commons, director of the Digital Design Lab, and fellow at the Center for Advanced Visualization and Interaction (CAVI). Dr. Brynskov is coordinator of the European IoT Large Scale Pilot on Smart Cities "SynchroniCity", and the IoT Smart City Experimentation-as-a-Service facility "OrganiCity". Furthermore, he is chair of the Danish Standards Committee on IoT and Smart Cities, founder of the Danish Smart City Network, and a global expert, speaker and advisor on IoT and smart cities with a human-centric focus.

A PDF version of Martin Brynskov's presentation is available for download: Brynskov-ISO-Data-Models-September-2019-compressed.pdf

Title: “Data Models for Design Review and Architectural History”
Speaker: Paul B. Cote, Consultant for Boston and Cambridge
Abstract: This presentation will describe a data model for buildings that includes representation for the three-dimensional form of individual buildings and clusters of buildings, along with attributes that tie these representations together with administrative information, such as tax assessment records and historical documents collected by the City Historical Commission.  The model tracks stages of the building life-cycle, including: conceptual design, proposal, various stages of review and revision, approval, permitting, construction, use, renovation, and demolition. We will also briefly discuss the problems encountered and problems remaining to be solved after several cycles of updates and implementation in the municipal GIS organizations of Boston and Cambridge in Massachusetts, USA. 

Title: “Information View for ITS Reference Architectures”
Speaker: Kenneth Vaughn, Owner of Trevilon LLC
Abstract: Presentation of the ITS Data Modeling efforts and discussion of what actions are needed to ensure that industry-specific data models can be integrated to produce a consistent IoT data model?