A great example of a city that’s using data to improve its quality of life is Copenhagen. The city has set the ambitious goal of becoming the first carbon-neutral city in the world by 2025. And to help it get there, it has enlisted Hitachi Consulting to build an innovative City Data Exchange—a big data digital infrastructure designed to help the city reach its goal of becoming carbon neutral, stimulate business, and improve its citizens’ quality of life.

A joint effort among Copenhagen, the Danish Capitol Region, Hitachi Consulting, and a consortium of partners, this “first-of-its-kind” exchange goes beyond today’s open data platforms by combining private and public data in a citywide marketplace that allows users to buy and sell data. Built on the Microsoft Azure platform, the exchange will enable key players in the community—including enterprises, start-ups, academia, and the public sector—to share rich data to help Copenhagen tackle its most pressing challenges.

Scheduled to go live on Feb. 29, the City Data Exchange will make available a wide range of government information including demographics, crime statistics, energy consumption, traffic and air-quality sensor data. In addition, it will integrate data held by the private sector. For example, phone companies track data showing the telephone and texting patterns of people in different parts of the city at different times of the day. Similarly, credit card companies keep data about the buying habits of citizens in different parts of the city within specific time periods. And trucking companies keep track of the routes they take and when they use them.

Combining public- and private-sector data, property development managers can make better plans. Retailers can make more informed decisions about how to staff their stores and city transportation planners can better plan for new transit routes. As more data is added to the exchange, the uses will grow, allowing citizens and businesses to create innovative solutions and Copenhagen to prosper in multiple ways.

To demonstrate some of the smart solutions that can be built using this kind of data, Hitachi Consulting created two applications aimed at reducing energy usage. The first, a web-based app called Energy Insight, integrates data from Danish energy providers to help companies and citizens compare their energy consumption and carbon footprint to users with similar characteristics. Over time, retail discounts and other incentives will be offered to those with the best scores.

The second app, Journey Insight, enables users to track the commute time, calories burned, money spent, and carbon footprint of their transportation patterns via their smart phones. The app then recommends transportation alternatives that help residents reduce emissions, save time or money, and improve fitness.  The app will also allow users to compare their patterns of transportation to others.

Hitachi Consulting’s long-term plan is to bring big data marketplaces to other cities around the globe—so that they and their businesses, will also have the information they need to tackle their most pressing problems.  As CLEAN, a group of Copenhagen green businesses working on the project with Hitachi Consulting, has put it, “big data is the new gold.”  Indeed, businesses are sitting on a gold mine. We just need to give them a way to tap into it.

To learn more, please see the City Data Exchange webpage.

Rob Farris, Vice President, Hitachi Social Innovation Business Unit

Rob Farris is a Vice President based in Dallas Texas with the Hitachi Social Innovation Business Unit focused on Hitachi’s Smart City solutions.  He is currently the Global Solution Leader for our City Data Exchange solution which is being implemented in Copenhagen, Denmark.  He has more than 28 years of information technology and consulting experience with Hitachi Consulting, Navigator Systems and Andersen Consulting, Bankers Trust and American Power Conversion. Rob has specialized in implementing Business Intelligence and Big Data solutions, most recently related to Environmental Sustainability, Energy Efficiency and Smart Cities.  He has many years of experience leading large IT programs, specifically defining and implementing the team organization, architectures, technologies, methodologies and internal processes. A graduate of Purdue University with a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Management with a minor in Computer Science, Mr. Farris has worked in many industries with clients such as AT&T, TD Bank, NBCUniversal, DFW Airport, EDS, Southwest Airlines, Air Canada, TXU, and BNSF, and Hitachi.

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