Abstract
We use a sociotechnical perspective to expand upon prior characterizations of deploying end-to-end urban sensor networks that focus primarily on the technical aspects of such systems. Via exploratory, semi-structured interviews with those deploying a number of urban sensor networks in a single American city, we identify ways that human decision-making and collaborative processes influence how these infrastructures are built. We synthesize these findings into a framework in which sociotechnical factors show up across the phases of data collection, management, analysis, and impacts within smart city projects. Each phase can display variability in immediacy, automation, geographic scope, and ownership. Finally, we use our situated work to discuss a generalizable tension within smart city projects between cross-domain data integration and fragmentation and provide implications for CSCW research, the design of smart city data platforms, and municipal policy.
Reference
Lucy Van Kleunen, Brian Muller, and Stephen Voida. 2021. “Wiring a City”: A Sociotechnical Perspective on Deploying Urban Sensor Networks. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 5, CSCW1, Article 178 (April 2021), 22 pages. doi:10.1145/3449252
@article{10.1145/3449252,
author = {Van Kleunen, Lucy and Muller, Brian and Voida, Stephen},
title = {"Wiring a City": A Sociotechnical Perspective on Deploying Urban Sensor Networks},
year = {2021},
issue_date = {April 2021},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {5},
number = {CSCW1},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3449252},
doi = {10.1145/3449252},
abstract = {We use a sociotechnical perspective to expand upon prior characterizations of deploying end-to-end urban sensor networks that focus primarily on the technical aspects of such systems. Via exploratory, semi-structured interviews with those deploying a number of urban sensor networks in a single American city, we identify ways that human decision-making and collaborative processes influence how these infrastructures are built. We synthesize these findings into a framework in which sociotechnical factors show up across the phases of data collection, management, analysis, and impacts within smart city projects. Each phase can display variability in immediacy, automation, geographic scope, and ownership. Finally, we use our situated work to discuss a generalizable tension within smart city projects between cross-domain data integration and fragmentation and provide implications for CSCW research, the design of smart city data platforms, and municipal policy.},
journal = {Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.},
month = apr,
articleno = {178},
keywords = {smart cities, sociotechnical system, civic data, urban sensor networks}
numpages = {22},
}
Research Team/Authors
Lucy Van Kleunen
PhD Student, TMI MemberComputer Science
CU Boulder
Brian Muller
Faculty AdvisorEnvironmental Design
CU Boulder
Stephen Voida
Faculty Advisor, TMI DirectorInformation Science
CU Boulder