These questions were handed in on Post-it notes in response to morning keynote to the New Mobility and Cities NSF Sustainable Urban Systems workshop at Ohio State in July 2019. Dr. Shekhar then wrote answers to the questions below.

Question: What limits should be put on access to public utility data (energy, water)?

Response: Limits may be based on concerns of water security or energy security as our adversaries are known to attack electricity grids before recent conflicts. Many utility networks have critical elements. Compromising these critical elements can lead to large scale problems for modern society. Completely open systems (e.g., Internet) are subject to abuses (e.g., viruses, phishing attacks on Internet). We do not want such attacks on utility networks.

Question: Who owns spatial data?

Response: It depends. Some spatial data is open. USGS made Landsat open ten years ago. Openstreetmap has made road-maps open. However, other spatial data are sensitive and the entities collecting those are reluctant to share.

Question: How do we incentivize sharing data and offer standard platforms/meta-data formats to allow this?

Response: is a civil society concern. It should be balanced with concerns of other stake-holders such as security and prosperity. Key is to find common ground between all stakeholders including security, prosperity and civil society via discussions. Such common ground has been found around OGC Simple Features standard (later an ISO standard) promising increased business, lower cost and civil benefits.

Question: I did not see the general public in the co-production process you noted? What do you see their role to be?

Response: General public has been engaged in citizen science effort for collecting and interpreting data (e.g., GalaxyZoo, Volunteered Geographic Information, Open Street Maps, Ushahidi, etc.). Some are also involving public in selecting questions and evaluating research results.

Question: Spatial computing: is there a risk of over explaining with spatial explanations?

Response: A risk relates to the quality of spatial data, which may be out of date, biases, incomplete or inaccurate. Another risk is misuse of spatial data such as Gerrymandering.

Question: Data collection is expensive. How do we ensure that urban data collection systems are distributed with social and geographic equity?

Response: Some spatial data (e.g., satellite imagery) covers all geographies where people live. For other spatial dataset, we should note that equity is a civil society concern. It should be balanced with concerns of other stake-holders including security, and prosperity to find common ground. Such common ground has been found around emergency response to share location for E-911 and CMAS/PLAN (e.g., Amber alerts). We need to have more discussions to find additional common grounds.

Question: What happens if you have a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) in the US?

Response: It is likely to begin addressing the rising concerns about geo-privacy of location traces. It will also encourage companies to be wiser in collection of location data relevant to specific use cases of value. For example, if Google/Waze wishes to estimate traffic speed on roads, they may work with a small sample on busy roads.

Question: I would like to learn more about DOE mapping of everyone building in US → Are these data over time? Available?

Response: Oak Ridge National Laboratory is examining this possibility to improve the LandScan data set describing population at a finer spatial resolution. They have examined population distribution over time (e.g., every hour of a typical work day) for critical areas (e.g., Washington D.C.).

Question: With current resolution and bandwidth of satellite platforms, how can we look @ building energy efficiency?

Response: Poorly insulated buildings are likely to show a thermal signature (different from those of well-insulated building) on very cold nights. One may fly UAVs (or airplanes) to collect thermal bands in cold nights, since there are few satellites (thermal) data sets for night time.

Question: Private firms are using spatial computing for gaining consumer insights. What are the market features that we should/can anticipate?

Response: Positioning and location-based service will grow indoors (e.g., airports, hospitals, malls, tall buildings, …). Remote sensing will be used to monitor crops, surface water, turfgrass in golf courses, buildings, vehicles, etc. for different business use-cases.

Question: What are the unintended consequences of spatial computing?

Response: Our spatial cognition and skills will shift. Fewer people will be able to navigate on their own without assistance from navigation apps. But, we will have a better sense of our changing planet to mobilize collective actions to address difficult problems (e.g., environmental degradation) facing our changing planet.

Question: How do we (safely) unlock private data now in hand of firms and individuals hands?

Response: Key is to find common ground between all stake-holders including security, prosperity and civil society via discussions. Such common ground has been found around emergency response to share location for E-911 and CMAS/PLAN (e.g., Amber alerts). It was also found in mid-1990s in development and adoption of OGC simple features standard. Many felt that data sharing will grow the commercial market, reduce cost to government and users and spur broader interest in Geo-spatial data and technology. We need to have more discussions to find additional common ground.