A new study covering eighty European cities and their efforts to exploit data to monitor and improve city infrastructure shows an increasing use of data in cities. Improving city operations, enhancing environmental sustainability, informing decision-making and a wish to spur innovation and new services are mentioned by cities as main reasons for setting up urban data platforms.
Urban data platforms (UDPs) enable digital technologies to integrate data flows via open standards within and across city systems used by both the public and private sector. For example, platforms can share raw data streams or show 3-D visualizations of how underground piping, bus lines, thermal grids, environmental data and a wide range of other information is connected.
