S+T+ARTS Regional Centers | Repairing the Present

Big Data and the City | Challenge nº3

How might we picture and redesign future urban mobility in the age of big data?

Consortium Partner: SONY CSL & MAXXI

EU Green Deal:GD4 Sustainable and smart mobility

Problem Statement

Mobility is the circulatory system that makes cities alive, productive, and welcoming. The present challenge will explore new ways of experiencing and navigating the city and aim to conceive new scenarios for post-pandemic sustainable cities by exploiting the disruptive potential of big data and ICT technologies for the improvement of citizens’ living conditions.

Keywords

Smart Mobility, Scenarios, Big Data, AI

Challenge Context

How can both scientists and artists improve modern urban environments and create a sustainable living, facilitating innovative practices for common rules, sustainability, and ecological transition through technological innovation?

Modern urban environments are complex techno-social systems made by many smaller interacting components or larger entities that we call ‘’cities’’. New ITC technologies allow for unprecedented and pervasive monitoring of many of these components. Nowadays, many technologies are available to monitor and optimise daily citizen movements: GPS tracks from mobile phones, smart cameras, and traffic sensors. Moreover, new ways of moving are emerging: e.g., bike-sharing, scooters, multimodal transports. The ensemble of all these innovations is changing our urban experience both in a positive (faster and greener commuting) and negative (privacy issues, loss of the ability to navigate the city autonomously) way. The challenge addresses the impact of future urban mobility on everyday life, looking for new perspectives that both citizens and experts in the field are not yet aware of. In doing this, the challenge will explore innovative scenarios for urban mobility exploiting current or foreseeable technologies to improve urban living conditions.

Fellowship Characteristics: network, opportunities, and expectations

The successful candidate/s will have the unique residency opportunity at MAXXI Museum in Rome, constantly interacting with local experts and researchers from Sony CSL at “Enrico Fermi” research centre. The aim of this collaboration will be to define an innovative artwork on the verge of science and art.

The candidate will exploit all technological and scientific know-how of experts to better understand the functioning, challenges, and risks of Big Data applications for Smart-Mobility. We expect a continuous interaction in the definition and development of the artwork, trying to involve all the different actors in each stage of its development.

The final artwork/artistic prototype will merge the artistic view with new technologies (AI, Machine Learning, Big Data). This process will lead to new meaningful representations of current urban mobility and imagine possible future scenarios, helping transform the cities into a more economically sustainable environment. At each development stage, the installation will receive feedback from relevant local actors and stakeholders through a series of dedicated workshops. The final result will be disseminated through a series of meetings with the public and stakeholders.