Transcript

A cidade aos olhos do cidadão | Rui Aguiar | TEDxAveiro

Good afternoon, my name is Rui Guiar, I 'm a telecommunications professor and I work at the University of Aveiro. People generally say I'm a telecommunications specialist, an opinion that's occasionally questioned by my students, but quietly, because neither I, like the professors of the same ilk or engineer Cássio dos Santos, nor the students, have his profile these days. Okay, so let me talk a little. What you'd expect me to talk about is fundamentally technology. When I go anywhere else, that's generally what I talk about. Let me try to do what many other people do and go a little outside my comfort zone, and not talk about technology itself and the fantastic challenges we're facing with the new mobile phones of the future, all the tremendous capabilities we have, but about what we can or cannot do with technology. And why some things are or aren't done today. We're basically talking about changes that are as significant as what happened in terms of mobile phone use. I think this is common today. Let me just ask a very simple question here: do you all have a mobile phone? Surely you've all picked one up... On a computer, they've already crossed the line between information and information processing, crossing a boundary with the communications aspect. Smartphones do this naturally, and let me just ask a very simple question: who in this room has a smartphone? I apologize, I don't see many people upstairs, so I have to dedicate more time to this. Okay, a large majority... So, and... of the people here, perhaps there are many young people, who has already made a post today about Tdex, so there's an obvious group of experts on the subject. What I'm going to try to talk to you about is a little bit about what information is, or how we can look at information in terms of the city. And I'm not going to talk about things like scenarios where the next step is to put sensors in all our devices, in refrigerators, in stoves (although they don't cook, for me), in cities, noise sensors, traffic sensors, pollution sensors, ultraviolet radiation hazard sensors—I'm not going to talk about any of that. All of that generally involves a reasonably high cost in installing those sensors, and we're in Portugal. We're going to talk about things that can be done today at a much lower cost. Speaking of cost, I saw that Mário Campo Largo comes from the European Union. I don't know if you noticed, but he did the whole thing with a very expensive device. I think I'm going to use something low-cost to see if I can do the same thing. What I'm going to talk about isn't anything out of this world, and maybe if all goes well, you'll leave this lecture thinking, "But this isn't anything very different." If all goes well, in a week or two you'll say, "He said this could be done, why isn't it being done?" And if I achieve that, I'll be satisfied with this lecture. I'm not going to do anything very formal; we're in Aveiro, and I think there's a large percentage of people from Aveiro in this room. What I'm going to try to do is a set of charts and something using the city itself with a concept of information aggregation, and I'm going to use Google Earth, which I think many of you have already used in Street View mode, where you walk through the streets, right? To use this as the place where I'm capturing the information. I just entered the city of Aveiro, didn't I? Upon entering the city of Aveiro, I came from the south exit and immediately had information available. You can see it here. I don't know if I'm ahead of you, but anyway, you can see here some absolutely basic information about the city. I mean, if I asked you to search for all this information, you would find tourist information, statistical information, even some traffic information. The only difference I 'm talking about is that now I have an integrated environment where this information is automatically available. I continue walking, I'm passing in front of the Isca on the left, I have the university here, and some more photographs appear here, basically photographs of my colleagues who are enrolled at the university. I continue walking straight ahead. All this I can obtain nowadays. I'm passing by the hospital and now there are one or two things that are not so easy to obtain. Ahead in the park we have an electric charging station. Now, since I would be driving a hybrid, I would receive the information that this is relevant to you. Here is this information that you can use if you need to be charged. One thing I don't know if you noticed, but in that image was the information... ...of how many points were being used at that moment, and I can already use that, and I can find that out because I can access what the energy consumption is at that moment, and based on that, extrapolate by dividing by the average. Well, this is being used, as I said, I can already obtain this. Let's move a little further ahead, we're making the turn, we have the hospital, or we will have the hospital, as soon as we make the turn, and now we're arriving... Carla, for the video, please excuse me, I always forget this, man, it's like this, man. We're all from Aveiro. Okay, does anyone believe that if they were passing by there at this moment we would see this? I do n't know if it's possible here in Reggia, is that possible? Let's put an image of what's happening on this street today so that people who aren't from Aveiro can see and understand what the problem is. Well, I think I got a little carried away. I'm a technologist, I have a strong tendency to say "we can do it," "we can do it," "yes, we can." No, that's already been used, or "we can do it," and therefore I fear you were misleading me. Let me change it a little... My presentation isn't about what we can do, but about what we could do. I'll continue to focus on the idea of ​​ low cost, of not making major changes across the entire city, but on our scale, trying to see what we could obtain from the city, or what information could already be aggregated, let's say, at our fingertips. If you could restart the video in this way, with this concept, I would appreciate it. Okay, that's ideal. So now, when I get closer, I already see the roadwork information, I can even see which directions are perfectly fine. Nowadays, I have route information and I also have information on why the work is taking place. Continuing, if everything went optimally, I would even be able to see the current images, but I accept that I could see this. I have the park in front of me, I can see the information here now in a different way. For example, if you look back, you will continue to see photographs of people, just as you were seeing in the case of the University, but there is a very big difference. What I showed you in the case of the University were the people who were enrolled; what I am showing you here are... People who are in the park right now, that is, I can know which of my friends are in the park at any given moment, I can know which parks and tennis courts are being used, I can know if I can go play tennis at this moment or not, and decide that because, by chance, I have time or I'm angry and need to expend some energy. I also have information there about the park and the works that are underway; after all, this information is at the City Hall. This exists, I mean, I can't do this at the moment, but the only thing I needed was this information, this information, and I could even associate all the issues of the public discussion with this information and check what has or has not been modified. Continuing in front of the park, I have the conservatory. Looking at the conservatory, if you notice, it has the current events, and I even have something there that says schedules, right? As a father, I have some small flaws, very small, even minor qualities. I never know my son's schedule. There's nothing that prevents me from seeing that schedule and immediately clicking on the option to see my son's schedule because the system knows it's me, knows that my son is enrolled, and knows what his schedule is. It's not that if you notice this, it 's disappeared. It was my son's schedule, but if you notice, my son does n't have classes today. I actually knew that part, so I'm not as bad as all that. Anyway, continuing on, we're doing this route, I think you recognize it. And we've just entered the avenue that leads to the Cathedral, and we're in traffic. We can see if the video went a little further ahead. I'm sure it would stop a little bit to start seeing signs identifying what's happening on the pavement. Damaged pavement, I don't know, so slow PR. Damaged pavement. Seeing that damaged pavement symbol, I could even tell you where the potholes are in the city. I'm not going to continue with this much longer. You see, for example, the symbol for the pothole where I was, precisely the other potholes I passed. Now I'm going to pass by the first restaurant. Unlike the people in the Tedex interview, I forgot to ask for sponsorship, so I can't mention the name. But this restaurant has a very cool set of information. Obviously, it has my friends who like the restaurant, and obviously, it has the daily menu that they put there for those who know what it is. The restaurant will display the phrase on the daily menu, but then there's other information that the restaurant doesn't publish. For example, there's the average waiting time at that restaurant, and something even more interesting: the waiting time if I want to be served at that moment. This information isn't provided by the restaurant, but I could obtain it, and I'll talk a little about that later. Finally, to finish our tour, I have ahead of me the church and the museum. I won't talk about the items that are there, but in both cases, the information is structured in two ways: either I have long- term information, like the building itself, the collection of the buildings, or the Mass times in one case, or the Permanent Collection in the other. But then I also have historical information, for example, how many people are in the museum at that moment, whether it's very full, for example, that today is, I think, Museum Night, and therefore it will be open tonight, or for example, who is the priest who will officiate Mass today, and whether I should go there or not makes a difference. Well, this will be so difficult to do, I... I'm not inventing anything groundbreaking in this conversation; I'm simply putting all this information in the city, in the same place, with a simple environment. Is the difference between what I said before the Avenue and the works, and what I said afterward, really that significant? Looking at it this way, I'd say there are only three major differences in what I did before and after. The first difference, which is very noticeable, is that I changed the discourse from what normally happens to what happens now. I became able to intervene in real time. The second point was that all entities started exporting information: the conservatory started making its schedules available online, the restaurant started posting its information, and the museum started reporting on what was happening in terms of the people inside. And the third point is that everyone started doing this—entities, companies, and individuals themselves started saying where they were at any given moment. It's difficult to achieve this, I do n't know. First, it would require that the entities wanted to do it, that they could effectively see advantages in publishing their information, for example, about the works. There's a lot that can be said in this regard, but this would be a significant advantage, a shift in the paradigm of participation. Citizens ceased to be those being served by services, but rather entities that felt genuinely committed and involved in the city's management process. The second advantage, of course, is that companies would have to see economic advantages in this. That's the second point. And the third point that arises in the middle of this discussion is whether, meanwhile, I really need these conditions to move forward. Notice, they laughed at the issue of potholes. That was the only thing I mentioned at that time. There's already a whole network of potholes in Aveiro that's based on these things that are here before. This was done based on that thing I mentioned earlier on my smartphone. There was a group of about half a people who simply installed an application on their smartphones and carried it around all the time. Then there's something called Big Data techniques that allowed us to identify where the potholes are in Aveiro, and we can do much more. And this is the main point: citizen participation. The first step is for citizens to believe that this information exists and be willing to contribute to it. And This is what can significantly change what a city is or isn't in terms of information visibility, engagement, and the creation of a large community. Let me just say a few words, a small one, because I know I've spent my time... let me just say one almost final word. I have to thank many people in my research group because, although this has been presented in this way, it's really the result of a lot of work by many people. In particular, I'd like to thank João Paulo Barraca and Carla, who's back there, full of nerves, playing the video and moving forward, right? And I said it was almost the end, and I'd like to finish with a final word, and it's not a word of optimism like many have here; it's a word I'd prefer to be one of reflection. Technology already allows us to do a lot in the city; even with small investments, we can significantly change the city we have now. The question I ask each of you is: if I told you, imagine I could give you the information you want... And if I asked you, "And what is it? What kind of city do you want?" If you know the answer, maybe the technologists will know how to make this work. Thank you very much. C