BeSpatial / BeSmart'19

Benchmark Guide criteria used to assess the Canada smart city submissions to Infrastructure Canada (https://www.opennorth.ca/open-smart-cities-guide). KPIs are being developed based on this guide.

Stay Fire Smart is the annual door-to-door campaign of the Fire Prevention division of Central York Fire Services (CYFS) to raise awareness around the importance of home escape planning and maintenance of working smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. It began in 2013 with a goal of reaching all residences of Newmarket and Aurora within a five year window. CYFS delivers a quick survey of the residents to gauge their readiness for a fire, provides each household with information, and offers smoke alarm inspections and escape plan training to help be prepared in the event of a fire in the home.

In 2016, the City of Brampton's GIS & Open Data team (now Location Intelligence & Data Visualization) began to review the GIS Program to understand its current level of enterprise maturity, and how to measure the progress of the program's continuous improvements in maturity and capability. They realized, that in order to stay current and break away from a status quo of delivering static maps, and conducting simple analysis and visualization, they would need to transform their program into one that delivers Location Intelligence services as a business capability.This meant taking a ‘real’ look at their program, measuring how it performs and identifying where focus and a sustained effort is required. To do this they leveraged a maturity model that not only assessed their current state but also enabled them to identify where they wanted to get to. This was accomplished by developing a living data informed roadmap. The model and methodologies used to assess City of Brampton’s maturity and develop their living strategic document are continuously being improved through regular peer collaboration.

Open, Open, Open. To support digital government and services, open source software is increasingly being adopted by the Ontario Public Service (OPS). Within the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the OPS community, there is interest in Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) to deliver digital solutions. This presentation introduces FOSS4G concepts, speaks about current provincial government policies, offers insights regarding software adoption and dispersion, and identifies influences affecting solutions stack decisions.

The TH!NKBike is a bicycle-powered data collection tool developed by IBI Group as part of its "Pocket R&D" and Smart City initiative.Essentially a pedal-assist bicycle outfitted with an array of sensors, this tool is able to capture data related to surface quality, GPS trace, imagery, altitude, velocity and points of interest along recreational trails. The lightweight, cost effective, easy to use and modular nature of the open source hardware platform (an Arduino microcontroller) allows for an array of different use types and customizations.The back end of this tool uses ArcGIS, Python and R to automate the mapping and analysis of the collected data.This tool has been fully developed, with a working prototype and graphically formatted report. This tool is not strictly conceptual in nature - it will prove very useful on active transportation projects for an array of municipal clients, allowing for ease of data capture and analysis. That being said, the tool is still actively being developed - with future iterations incorporating additional sensors, automation and machine learning classification algorithms. The intention is to leverage the power of accessible open source hardware with emerging trends in spatial analysis and big data analytics.

We introduce the SMART App. A Mobile App we created at the University of Waterloo with the goal of using Augmented Reality (AR) technology to increase public engagement in Sustainable Urban Development initiatives. Over the last years we have seen a Government trend toward promoting urban planning initiatives that include sustainability as a major aspect along with economic and social development. However, there is still a lack of appropriate strategies to communicate and socialize these initiatives with the public. For instance, Sidewalk Labs has been working in the Waterfront project in Toronto, an initiative that promises to use cutting edge technologies while promoting a sustainable development vision. Even though the Waterfront project has received Government support at multiple levels, it has also faced criticism due to the lack of transparency with the general public. The SMART Mobile App combines multiple Geospatial technologies to provide an attractive communication tool for government agencies, real estate investors, and citizens to know more about any land development project. It includes three key modules, the first offers an Augmented Reality visualization that shows how the planned land development project will look and how it will modify the current landscape. The second module includes a feedback from that allows citizens to give quality feedback regarding their priorities and opinions about the project. Finally, the third module provides a real-time dashboard to monitor user engagement and approval rates.The SMART app is designed to be easily ported to multiple planning scenarios and cities across Canada and Globally.