The Rockefeller Foundation recently launched a major international initiative called “100 Resilient Cities.” The motivation behind this global project stems from the recognition that cities are facing increasing stresses driven by the unprecedented pace urbanization. More than 75% of people expected to live in cities by 2050. The Foundation is thus rightly concerned: “As natural and man-made shocks and stresses grow in frequency, impact and scale, with the ability to ripple across systems and geographies, cities are largely unprepared to respond to, withstand, and bounce back from disasters” (1).
Resilience is the capacity to self-organize, and smart self-organization requires social capital and robust feedback loops. I’ve discussed these issues and related linkages at lengths in the posts listed below and so shan’t repeat myself here.
- How to Create Resilience Through Big Data [link]
- On Technology and Building Resilient Societies [link]
- Using Social Media to Predict Disaster Resilience [link]
- Social Media = Social Capital = Disaster Resilience? [link]
- Does Social Capital Drive Disaster Resilience? [link]
- Failing Gracefully in Complex Systems: A Note on Resilience [link]
Instead, I want to make a case for community-driven “tactical resilience” aided (not controlled) by data science. I came across the term “tactical urbanism” whilst at the “The City Resilient” conference co-organized by PopTech & Rockefeller in June. Tactical urbanism refers to small and temporary projects that demonstrate what could be. We also need people-centered tactical resilience initiatives to show small-scale resilience in action and demonstrate what these could mean at scale. Data science can play an important role in formulating and implementing tactical resilience interventions and in demonstrating their resulting impact at various scales.
Ultimately, if tactical resilience projects do not increase local capacity for smart and scalable self-organization, then they may not render cities more resilient. “Smart Cities” should mean “Resilient Neighborhoods” but the former concept takes a mostly top-down approach focused on the physical layer while the latter recognizes the importance of social capital and self-organization at the neighborhood level. “Indeed, neighborhoods have an impact on a surprisingly wide variety of outcomes, including child health, high-school graduation, teen births, adult mortality, social disorder and even IQ scores” (1).
So just like IBM is driving the data science behind their Smart Cities initiatives, I believe Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities grantees would benefit from similar data science support and expertise but at the tactical and neighborhood level. This explains why my team and I plan to launch a Data Science for Resilience Program at the Qatar Foundation’s Computing Research Institute (QCRI). This program will focus on providing data science support to promising “tactical resilience” projects related to Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative.
The initial springboard for these conversations will be the PopTech & Rockefeller Fellows Program on “Community Resilience Through Big Data and Technology”. I’m really honored and excited to have been selected as one of the PopTech and Rockefeller Fellows to explore the intersections of Big Data, Technology and Resilience. As mentioned to the organizers, one of my objectives during this two-week brainstorming session is to produce a joint set of “tactical resilience” project proposals with well articulated research questions. My plan is to select the strongest questions and make them the basis for our initial data science for resilience research at QCRI.