JPI Urban Europe Integrated Data Visualisation and Decision Making Solutions to Forecast and Manage Complex Urban Challenges

Urban decision makers are nowadays faced with both unprecedented challenges as well as new opportunities as the environment around them grows ever more complex. Out of the readily available "sea of information", unfortunately, some sources potentially important to decision-making have so far remained largely untapped. The UrbanData2Decide project therefore aims to extract and process information from two rich sources, namely public social media and open data libraries. This information, combined with advice from expert panels, will support local governments towards a holistic, sustainable and well-founded decision-making process which takes into account the views and perspectives of all relevant stakeholders.

The project targets both topics of the call and its impact will contribute to the mentioned objectives on various levels. To realise this potential a set of well-thought-out steps will be taken in the course of the project. Since the participants in the project are based in different regions they will be able to bring ideas and knowledge from their individual experiences and lessons learned. Extensive stakeholder studies and information exchange will help create new networks with existing actors and stimulate cross-learning and sharing of best practices at the local (cities), national and European level.

Within the project, a multi-dimensional model for urban governance decision support will be constructed, combining social and open data and expert knowledge. In developing a real-time monitoring and decision making solution, the project will improve the governance of urban complexity in various scenarios and on different time scales, reaching from immediate impact in the case of event-based scenarios (e.g. emergency and conflict management), long-term impact in the case of continuous challenges (e.g. integration policies) to future impact as it allows users to monitor trends and developments and to forecast risks. In this way, the project will at the same time contribute to the adaptability and resilience of cities and urban areas, allowing them to conduct foresight measures by identifying and adapting proactively to emerging challenges.

From a user's and stakeholder's perspective, the value of the project can be summarized by the following:

Urban policy makers will have: Access to new and enriched sources of information; Real-time monitoring capabilities of urban complexities; access to novel forecasting and predictive capabilities; Cross-sectorial and trans-national knowledge transfer; Democratic support; Increase in transparency and accountability; Access to citizen views.
External experts and advisors will have: Greater inclusion/influence in decision making process; Transparency and accountability between them and policy makers; Continued involvement and participation; Access to tools for forecasting exercises.
The scientific community will: Generate insights in social and open media potentials for urban governance; Strengthen research at the crossroads of social media studies and urban complexities; Increase awareness of open data potential and promote more data openness.
Citizens will benefit from: Active voice and inherent role in new forms of governance; Fact-based decisions; Strengthening of democratic character; Increased involvement of younger generation in urban policy issues.

The project and the realisation of the impacts as outlined above will benefit from its broad and diverse project consortium that unites some of Europe's leading institutions in their respective fields. Through their involvement in various other projects all of the partners have gained extensive experience in interdisciplinary research. This will be especially valuable since the objectives of the project cover an interdisciplinary scope and address both topics of the call.