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W3C Workshop on Smart Cities #241

Closed ashimura closed 2 years ago

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Based on the discussion during the TPAC breakout on Smart Cities, I've generated an initial proposal for the expected W3C Workshop on Smart Cities as follows.

And also updated the descriptions based on the Template of the workshop Proposal (Team-only).

Now a draft Call-for-Participation page is also available.

Topic and rationale of workshop

General background

These days Smart Cities topic is getting more and more popular and there are expectations for smarter and easier integration of various technologies from multiple vendors related to IoT devices and Web services specifically with the current COVID-19 situation.

On the other hand, use cases on Smart Cities have been discussed within the Web of Thing (WoT) IG as part of the WoT standardizaton based on the proposal during the Second WoT Workshop in Munich.

However, Smart Cities topic include various technologies and WoT is just one of those technologies. Therefore we would like to create a dedicated W3C Interest Group:

We've already generated an initial draft Charter for the expected Smart Cities Interest Group. However, we still need to identify actual stakeholders of the Smart Cities technology and collect even more use cases along with concrete system implementation experiences from all over the world, because Smart Cities topic depends on the cities' locations, cultures, etc., and include various sub-systems from many different vendors.

Therefore we'd like to hold a dedicated W3C workshop on the possible standardization for Smart Cities.

Goals

The Web has become a platform for various industries and services including payments and commerce, publishing, media distribution, video conferencing and connected cars, and it's becoming a promising platform for IoT interoperability as mentioned in the Web of Things Press Release in April 2020. Also there is an expectation for the Web of Things standards to be applied to integration of huge numbers of sub-systems for Smart City services.

Therefore we've been generating a draft Charter for the expected Smart Cities Interest Group to (1) introduce the W3C as a place to have discussions on interoperability for Smart City services and (2) document use cases and requirements that W3C specifications need to meet to support Smart City services.

Now we would like to improve the description of the draft Charter by holding a dedicated W3C workshop to see what can be done with the existing Web standards and what is still missing that would help people to implement Smart Cities.

The goals of the workshop should include:

Possible topics

In addition to the technical topics like the above, the following topics are tightly related to Smart City services in general and very important not only from the viewpoint of IoT technologies but also the viewpoint of Smart City as the city-wide service infrastructure, e.g., free broadband connection everywhere:

Therefore those topics should be discussed for all the sessions during the workshop to incorporate design-for-all thinking throughout all aspects of the Smart City infrastructure, e.g., to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities in every activity and at every stage of life and to resolve internationalization issues including both technical ones and legal/policy ones.

Specifically, "Privacy for Smart Cities" should be a dedicated topic of the workshop to discuss the potential challenges on the question of "Can the Smart Cities operate in manner that respects end users and citizens?". For that purpose, we would like to get participants in the workshop from not only technologies but also legal and civil society participants.

Example of possible use cases

The possible use cases for Smart Cities should include integration of many devices and sub-systems developed by different vendors, and also should be considered from various stakeholders' viewpoints.

Some examples are listed below:

Use cases within a smart city:

Use cases on related to multiple smart cities:

Use Cases in the surrounding areas of a smart city:

Proposed dates and location

This would be a remote workshop. No physical location.

Aiming at the end of June 2021.

Host

none

Organizing Committee

Profile of attendees

Various stakeholders of Smart Cities including:

Expected number of attendees

Unclear, but no physical room limits. Speakers, up to 10 per session. Perhaps 20 to 50 attendees for the discussion, plus the speakers for that session. Some people might attend only one of the sessions.

Budget

Zero for travel, room hire, refreshments; virtual workshop.

Depending on the discussion by the Program Committee, there is a possibility of providing captions of prerecorded videos, up to 10 per session, 10 minutes per talk.

Possible estimation of the cost (e.g., with 3 sessions; 300 minutes at max; around USD1.25 per minute = USD375) is:

Captioning of discussion sessions, 3 hours per session = 9 hours at USD477 for three hours = USD 1,431

Transcription services

Horizontal review

done with the pending accessibility conversation and a possible additional loop on security

Sponsors

None yet. Will seek sponsorship for cost reduction for the possible captioning service, but request W3M commit to the captioning costs to allow the workshop to move forward.

Workplan

samuelweiler commented 3 years ago

I want to see more specifics in this workshop proposal, particularly highlighting how "Smart Cities" will differ from other IoT cases. The cited section is pretty vague. Please explain why this new forum is needed, noting that there have been many conferences about IoT and even about IoT security and privacy, e.g. https://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2018/workshop-iotsp.html. http://iotsecurity.cs.duke.edu/.

I do see, though, that 4.4.1 talks about geolocation without exploring how it will be used. I would rather see us start with the applications - what do we want to build - and then build them in a privacy-preserving way from the ground up. Starting by collecting the data is dangerous and undermines the chance of getting to a privacy-protecting solution. "Let's go collect this data - I'm sure it will be useful someday" is a bad idea when the data is as sensitive as location.

himorin commented 3 years ago

In this (early) phase of draft workshop agenda, no significant comment nor suggestion on this draft from i18n.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

@samuelweiler and @himorin thanks a lot! I'll work with the Program Committee guys to improve the description.

swickr commented 3 years ago

... start with the applications - what do we want to build - and then build them in a privacy-preserving way from the ground up. Starting by collecting the data is dangerous and undermines the chance of getting to a privacy-protecting solution. "Let's go collect this data - I'm sure it will be useful someday" is a bad idea when the data is as sensitive as location.

I align with @samuelweiler on this point, and more precisely "what applications do we agree are reasonable to build and what privacy and security protections must we include in the base environment to support those applications?"

ashimura commented 3 years ago

@samuelweiler and @swickr I've updated the workshop description accordingly, i.e., by adding "Clarify reasonable applications for Smart Cities we agree to build and what privacy and security protections we must include in the base environment to support those applications" to the Goals section.

@jeffjaffe also gave some useful comments offline, and I've updated the workshop description based on his comments as well.

r12a commented 3 years ago

You mentioned "Internationalization and compatibility with region-specific technology". But I think there are also legal and policy issues related to regions.

samuelweiler commented 3 years ago

As discussed on today's Strategy call, refining the focus - maybe around use cases - seems likely to lead to a more compelling and useful discussion. @wseltzer urged consideration of where we can gather a community.

While I don't think this workshop is ready to go forward, my concerns (at this point) are about scope, not security- or privacy-specific things. (e.g. "Horizontal technologies to be considered" (emphasis added) still seems very vague, but the whole thing is vague.). I'll remove the -needs-resolution labels for now. I'm not marking the reviews as "complete" because I expect I'll have more comments on a refined proposal.

Also, what is "Rural hybridization"? Is there a more common term?

wseltzer commented 3 years ago

@samuelweiler it appears the @w3cbot re-adds issue labels it finds in the horiz issue tracker. Does it make sense for you to close those to remove the labels?

samuelweiler commented 3 years ago

Yes. Done.

brewerj commented 3 years ago

@ashimura , Hi Kaz, catching up here. I see the draft link to the draft/proposed IG Charter but not a separate link to a draft workshop proposal. Am I missing that or is the workshop proposal essentially the text that's in the top half of this issue?

The difficulty with commenting on accessibility for the Smart Cities topic is that accessibility touches on most everything that one needs to plan for in designing a city of the future. Education, employment, healthcare, transportation, public venues (indoor and out), IT, etc. (For instance, not just IoT, but citywide free broadband to close the digital divide with regard to economic differences that frequently impact people with disabilities more directly.)

I find this following confusing in the draft/proposed IG Charter, which states...

Accessibility and internationalization, to support diverse populations and tourism.

...as it sounds like more of an after-thought or add-on, rather than a fundamental design consideration for all of the systems in a city. Accessibility also tends to be something that needs to get called out specifically if it is not to be overlooked in practice as it so often is. But you don't want to have to mention it in every section; that would sound redundant.

Without seeing your actual draft workshop proposal, I'm not sure what to recommend, so, commenting instead on the draft IG charter, I suggest separating accessibility and internationalism into two separate lines, removing the mention of tourism (at least for accessibility), and for accessibility instead saying something like

"incorporating design-for-all thinking throughout all aspects of smart city infrastructure, to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities in every activity and at every stage of life."

Let me know how you think that approach would work, or if a conversation would be helpful. Thanks!

RealJoshue108 commented 3 years ago

@ashimura I agree with @brewerj that the prioritization of accessibility needs to be addressed, and then more specific areas can be looked at. As Judy points about - accessibility is a horizontal, among many verticals. You could say that practically all Smart city 'features' have an accessibility component.

Having said that, we need to work out the specific areas that should be prioritized and covered during the workshop. To accomplish this, it may help to take any of the areas that you are considering discussing, and then we can feed back on some accessibility related considerations for those areas, and related topics and areas for discussion.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks, @r12a !

I've updated the "Horizontal technologies to be considered" section with "Internationalization and compatibility with region-specific issues including both technical ones and legal/policy ones" based on your comment.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot for your comments, @brewerj and @RealJoshue108 !

@brewerj as you guessed, currently the top half of this issue is the draft workshop proposal. I'd like to apply your suggestions to the proposal text and the draft IG Charter.

@RealJoshue108 I'll update the proposal text to cover your points too.

brewerj commented 3 years ago

@ashimura Please ping me in email when you have updated text for review, so I don't miss a GH notification. Thanks!

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot, @brewerj !

As I sent an email as well, I've fixed the draft Charter for the proposed Smart Cities IG and now the text for accessibility says: [[ Accessibility, to incorporate design-for-all thinking throughout all aspects of smart city infrastructure, and ensure accessibility for people with disabilities in every activity and at every stage of life; ]]

I completely agree this viewpoint is very important for Smart Cities.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot for your comments, @samuelweiler !

I've modified the description based on your comments.

samuelweiler commented 3 years ago

@ashimura Thank you for the updates. Ultimately, I don't think the changes fully address the comments I've raised before.

Specifically:

Overall, this still looks over-broad, and I still wonder how "Smart Cities" will differ from other IoT cases. I do not recommend moving forward with this workshop in the current form. (I'm not sure whether to apply -needs-resolution labels or not. This opinion seems much broader than security or privacy, and it also feels like more of a judgement call than most of the issues that get -needs-resolution tags.)

If W3M does go forward, please ask Comm to make an editorial pass on this. e.g. inviting "government agents" will probably turn many participants away.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot for your comments @samuelweiler !

I've updated the description again based on your comments above, specifically :)

I'm not sure if we should/need to exclude "government agents" from the "Profile of attendees" because we do want to invite them if possible, and would like to hear from the Program Committee as well.

mnot commented 3 years ago

Just to expand upon @samuelweiler's concerns -- I think one of the things that differentiates smart cities is that they are collecting people's data at scale on behalf of a government (plus whoever they contract with).

In many jurisdictions, law about government data collection is predicated on collection being targeted and minimal; it isn't built for such sweeping mechanisms. Furthermore, government data is often intentionally "siloed" so that it can't be repurposed (see e.g., Australia's proposed law to allow limited data sharing between government departments that is getting strong pushback from civil society); arguably, smart cities are designed to violate both of these constraints (San Diego's efforts being a good example here).

We can't claim to be only creating technology here, because smart cities are AIUI predicated on making people more legible to governments.

In this light, the primary challenge for smart cities might just be "can they operate in manner that respects end users / citizens -- at all?" If they can, the requirements for making them safe are likely to place significant constraints on the technology that we develop, and we need to know those up-front.

The current charter minimises privacy into a tick-box item. I'd suggest that it alone be the topic of a workshop, and that the W3C engage not only technologies, but legal and civil society participants. Otherwise, we're going to yet again be in a situation where the technology gets in front of any thought about how it's used.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thank you very much for your great comments, @mnot !

I've updated the proposal description based on your comments. Could you please see the last part of the "Possible topics" section above?

jeffjaffe commented 3 years ago

@mnot you raise terrific points.

Since you suggest that privacy for Smart Cities be a topic of a separate workshop; it is unclear to me what you are proposing for this workshop. So I am interested in understanding whether Kaz' updates address what you think is needed for this workshop.

darobin commented 3 years ago

I would like to further @mnot's remarks. A core problem with Smart Cities (and other data-intensive areas) is that we have no model for managing data at scale and for a clear societal understanding of privacy and legibility. Current approaches to privacy are predominantly individualistic and this utterly fails to scale.

So long as we do not solve collective data governance, we won't have a viable way to architect a Smart City. We can have a workshop about it, but I don't see how it could fail to hit the same walls Sidewalk (very justifiably) did.

My recommendation is to treat collective data governance as a blocker for this type of discussion, and to only move forward on topics that depend on it once we feel it is addressed with sufficient momentum.

I would certainly see significant value in a workshop on collective data governance — possibly one that would target paving the way to Smart Cities as its outcome. A good overview of the issues can be read in Democratic Data: A Relational Theory For Data Governance. There is existing work trying to make that work, notably in the area of data trusts. It's been a while since I looked, but I believe that the city of Barcelona has made some interesting contribution to precisely this issue.

jeffjaffe commented 3 years ago

Robin, I think you are making good points, but I don't feel good about the idea of a blocker.

First, this proposal is talking about a Workshop. There is no WG here. The point of a Workshop is to discuss things. Wouldn't a Workshop be a great place to tee up exactly your issues? Perhaps we need more people on the Program Committee who can bring the perspective of issues with collective data governance.

Second, there are lots of Smart Cities projects that are happening outside of W3C. If we don't focus on it, the discussions will take place in communities that are insensitive to issues of managing data at scale while protecting privacy. Isn't it better if the discussions take place within our community?

mnot commented 3 years ago

@jeffjaffe I had a quick look around and found several resources in addition to the one @darobin mentioned:

I'd suggest that a substantial part of a workshop (e.g., minimum half-day session, likely more) be devoted to this topic, and that the PC has at least two people from this community. The Team should do outreach to the authors of these papers and other folks in the field to gather their input. Workshop discussion should focus on a) general overview of the issues, education in both directions, and b) development of a process / norms for assuring adequate review on any eventual work.

Note that this is going to take significant effort -- just announcing a workshop through the usual channels is not going to engage the people who could contribute. It would be worthwhile if Team and interested folks could spend some time going to their communities and engaging, rather than expecting them to come to us.

The idea would be that if W3C is going to start work in this area, we should have a continuing (not just one-time) engagement with the various communities (data protection, general legal, policy, etc.) that intersect with it. The workshop would be a kickoff for that (and it doesn't need to be separate from this one; that was more a comment about how much material that you'd likely need to cover to make it effective), but over time we'd want these people to become W3C community members.

If we don't focus on it, the discussions will take place in communities that are insensitive to issues of managing data at scale while protecting privacy. Isn't it better if the discussions take place within our community?

That's the thing. As @darobin points out, this is a fundamentally different sort of privacy, and one that our community doesn't have a lot of depth in. What makes sense for a browser may not translate to a city with ubiquitous sensors.

brewerj commented 3 years ago

Hi Kaz @ashimura ,

Sorry if my previous comment was not clear enough. I had commented on the IG charter only because your workshop proposal directly mentions the IG charter.

But my primary concern two weeks ago was about the workshop proposal.

You could use the sentence I suggested as a start:

"incorporating design-for-all thinking throughout all aspects of smart city infrastructure, to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities in every activity and at every stage of life."

But I don't see any such updates to the workshop proposal text above. Perhaps the sentence I'm suggesting above could be added in the goals section of the workshop proposal.

I think accessibility should also be listed among potential topics, and among example use cases, and among categories of attendees.

The purpose of mentioning it in several places in the workshop proposal would be to underscore the many different aspects of smart cities where accessibility is relevant (transportation, education, work, health care, entertainment, etc), so that the workshop can draw appropriate stakeholders for those topics as well as the other topics that you've listed. In other words, it cuts across all topics, and simply mentioning the word accessibility, or simply mentioning that there should be horizontal review from an accessibility perspective, is unlikely to engage relevant participation and outcomes among workshop attendees.

We can continue discussion of specific wording when we meet -- thanks.

brewerj commented 3 years ago

Hi Kaz @ashimura thank you for the good discussion on this, and your changes in the updated workshop proposal that integrate more about accessibility throughout, and reorganize the topics and use cases. I think that this conveys the relevance of accessibility much better.

I have removed the "accessibility needs resolution" flag, as my more major concerns have been addressed. However I'd like to continue to work with you, including to ensure that there is a good representation of diverse accessibility use cases across each of the sub-topics.

I also think that this topic is important for W3C as smart cities are a uselfut integrated technology test-bed. Towards that goal, I recommend that the proposal gets further copy-editing review, especially the first few sections of the Workshop main page, which focus quite a bit on the Interest Group, then seem to be going back and forth about the workshop goal. Amy van der Hiel offered to help with Comm team time.

wseltzer commented 3 years ago

@darobin @mnot Data governance of the connected environment could be a workshop of its own. Want to help us organize one of those at a different time?

mnot commented 3 years ago

Hi Wendy,

Thanks, but I can't prioritise this at the moment; comments on GitHub repos will have to suffice :)

I'd suggest reaching out to the folks who are active in this field.

mmccool commented 3 years ago

To clarify, the purpose of this workshop is to connect with and engage users of W3C standards in Smart Cities (including city governments and citizen advocacy groups) and get input from stakeholders on what standards are needed in this space in order to provide smart city services while addressing concerns about security, privacy, accessibility, etc.. So the purpose of the workshop is to actually discuss exactly the kinds of issues that are being raised in the discussion above, and to scope and drive standards work in appropriate ways, and with the support and input of relevant stakeholders.

The reason the charter sounds vague is because we want the stakeholders to drive the agenda. The reason we want the workshop (instead of just jumping ahead and trying to create the IG) is to refine the charter to address priorities identified by the stakeholders.

PS I'm not super fond of the "rural hybridization" term, but what it refers to are "smart city" concepts that extend outside the city, things like distributed energy management, remote work, etc. There are in fact a number of small communities I could cite that have invested heavily in, for instance, internet access infrastructure, as a way to promote local development.

PPS Geolocation and geospatial data is clearly an important aspect of smart city development. To be clear, the citation of the WoT proposal is not about WoT being central to this (it's not; there are plenty of non-IoT aspects to Smart Cities, and the workshop may in fact decide to prioritize these other aspects) but just to the fact that we researched this and discussed it with stakeholders in the WoT group and wrote up our findings. But geolocation also clearly relates to other work within the W3C, i.e. the Spatial Data on the Web activities. Other standards that are relevant include semantic web standards, including the SSN ontology, RDF, JSON-LD, etc.

lvdbrink commented 3 years ago

The Spatial data on the Web interest group have been working on a Note The Responsible Use of Geospatial Data. A workshop discussion on geolocation and privacy would be very timely!

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot for your comments, @mnot , @mmccool and @lvdbrink !

@mnot , as I mentioned in my email separately, we'll outreach to get some more experts on privacy management and data governance based on your advice for the Program Committee of the workshop, the workshop presenters and the participants in the expected IG so that we'll surely discuss the important points you mentioned.

Given that assumption, you agreed we can move ahead, and we'll make an official workshop announcement shortly.

Thank you very much for your thoughtful comments, all!!!

mnot commented 3 years ago

One thing I'd highly recommend is reading Laura DeNardis' The Internet in Everything, and perhaps even reaching out to her. It very vividly illustrates the problematic issues around IoT -- whether commercial or state-sponsored.

ashimura commented 3 years ago

Thanks a lot @mnot ! I've just got an E-book of "The Internet in Everything", and will read it :)

wseltzer commented 3 years ago

Workshop CfP announced: https://www.w3.org/2021/06/smartcities-workshop/

RealJoshue108 commented 3 years ago

@mnot and @ashimura Thanks for the steer - I also just picked up a copy.

mnot commented 2 years ago

If there's any followup, it'd be good to loop in Ben Green: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/smart-enough-city

ashimura commented 2 years ago

Thanks, @mnot !

samuelweiler commented 2 years ago

workshop report

mnot commented 2 years ago

Another relevant resource: Sage Cammers-Goodwin, 'Revisiting Smartness in the Smart City' in 'The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Technology' (Online August 2021, Oxford).

https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190851187.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190851187-e-41