Smart City Expo World Congress will be held between November 16-18 in Barcelona, following the recently undertaken CC4DR event in Amsterdam. The cities of Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bordeaux, London, Milan, Berlin, Brussels, Sofia, Tirana, Utrecht and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) started the process of reinforcing collective ambitions for digital rights and set the strategy of the coalition. One of the actions coming out of the meeting is a Digital Rights Governance Framework, which is due to be completed in December 10 following the first ever political meeting since the establishment of  Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (CC4DR) in 2018.

Smart City Expo World Congress (Barcelona, November 16-18) is the leading international event for the smart city sector, a key meeting point for experts and leaders of the world’s most innovative cities, companies, research centers and international organizations. Over 10,000 professional visitors will attend the congress, with over 400 exhibitors, along with over 350 international speakers that will share their experience and vision on how to build a more sustainable and livable urban future.

This year’s event will blend the physical venue with the digital space contributing to create an enhanced hybrid, cross-platform experience offering endless opportunities. The digital program will be broadcasted by Tomorrow.City.

The Deputy Mayor for digitalisation and innovation of Sofia Municipality Gencho Kerezov will be attending the round table as well as part of the general overview of the CC4DR’s activities and progress. The Deputy mayors’ table will be further discussing the update and overview of the Digital Rights Governance Framework & Helpdesk, following the previous session in Amsterdam.

The Global Observatory of Urban Artificial Intelligence (GOUAI) is a joint initiative launched by the CC4DR member cities of Barcelona, Amsterdam and London together with CIDOB and will be presented during the first day of the congress.

The policy aims to monitor AI guidelines, produce and update policy standards for ethical AI with evidence-based knowledge, identify barriers to the deployment of trusted AI and set city contributions to broader technological trends.

The strategy consists of twenty measures to be carried out between now and 2023, to move towards a smart governance model which is more effective and efficient in resolving challenges in the management of municipal public policies.

The GOUAI’s goals:

− Monitoring the Artificial Intelligence regulation, development and deployment in the Coalition’s member cities;

− Producing and updating policy standards for ethical AI regulations and application in cities;

− Identifying obstacles hindering the deployment of fair, transparent and accountable AI use in urban areas, and

− Contextualising contributions from cities to global AI and technological trends.

Outputs:

− A report on the ethical governance of algorithms in cities, which will analyse mechanisms implemented by city governments to deploy ethical models of Artificial Intelligence – eg. Algorithmic registers, human overview mechanisms, etc. The study will propose an analytical framework to assess such policies based on a set of criteria – ie. fairness, explainability and transparency.

− A thematic report on the use of facial recognition in public space. The study will propose a set of criteria to assess the ethical and responsible nature of such systems.

− An online Atlas of good practices in urban AI, which will include factsheets on specific cases of application of ethical AI solutions to sectorial urban policies (mobility, waste management, water and sanitation, tourism…).