"Wiring a City": A Sociotechnical Perspective on Deploying Urban Sensor Networks

Abstract

We use a sociotechnical perspective to expand upon prior characterizations of deploying end-to-end urban sensor networks that focus primarily on the technical aspects of such systems. Via exploratory, semi-structured interviews with those deploying a number of urban sensor networks in a single American city, we identify ways that human decision-making and collaborative processes influence how these infrastructures are built. We synthesize these findings into a framework in which sociotechnical factors show up across the phases of data collection, management, analysis, and impacts within smart city projects. Each phase can display variability in immediacy, automation, geographic scope, and ownership. Finally, we use our situated work to discuss a generalizable tension within smart city projects between cross-domain data integration and fragmentation and provide implications for CSCW research, the design of smart city data platforms, and municipal policy.