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Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development

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Data-driven Approach for Smart
Urban Planning Tool Development
Kyaw Hein1 and Farah Binte Ahmad Rosman2
1
Nanyang Technological University, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, kyawhein001@e.ntu.edu.sg
2
Nanyang Technological Univeristy, NSS Human Resources, farahar@ntu.edu.sg
U
rban planning and development will con-
tinue to challenge many developed and de-
veloping cities in the world. Future urban
development should be viewed as a creation of a
critical ecosystem which relies heavily on the so-
cial, economic and environmental interaction. The
aim of this paper is to propose the development
of an urban planning tool with the exploitation
of the big-data available in today’s society. It is
to help relevant authorities and policymakers to
ensure urban mobility planning, urban renovation
and rejuvenation, infrastructure improvement, en-
vironmental protection, disaster mitigation and im-
prove traffic management. The key advantage of
big-data analytic over the traditional statistical ap-
proach to understanding the behavior of the urban
development is that individual characteristics that
are involved in shaping the urban ecosystem can
be characterized more accurately. Indeed, the key
driver of the big-data in urban planning is the data
acquisition and analysis. With better accessibility
and availability of the data, cities can be devel-
oped into a safer, sustainable and environmentally
friendly place for the people to live in.
1 Introduction
With the development and heavy reliance on artificial
intelligent technologies, it is becoming more obvious
that data is more crucial than what was perceived a
decade ago. In industry and commercial applications,
it is becoming a common practice to collect the digital
data starting from social media footprints of the con-
sumers to the traffic patterns of the vehicles. Big-data
and smart cities are the terms that always appear
together. It is the perfect combination to address many
of the challenges - transportation, healthcare, and
utilities - that are currently facing in developed cities.
Some of the major key issues and trends in the recent
urban environment are rapid population growth,
insufficient necessities, environmental degradation
and rise of the megacities. UN predicts that above
500 cities in the world will accommodate more than
1 million people per city in 2030 [1]. With these
looming number, some of the major key challenges in
urban development are in managing the urban growth
rate while ensuring that the urban areas are the key
driver for future development. In fact, these challenges
are not far away from home. Over the years, the
socio-economic and demographic landscape of Singa-
pore is changing drastically. Currently, the population
density of Singapore is about 7500 people/km2 and
houses 5.4 million within the 715km radius. Vehicle
population of Singapore has grown from 700,000
in 2002 to more than 970,000 within a decade. To
accommodate such a massive transportation network
in Singapore, currently, 12% of the total area is used
to pave the roads. In contrast, only about 14% of
the land area of Singapore is used for housing and
development [2]. Thus, the key challenges with
society such as Singapore are to optimally address the
issues of land constraints while keeping in mind the
trade-off between the land use for transportation and
other essential needs which are detrimental for the
development of the country.
In order to carry out efficient urban planning, the
features and characteristics of the urban ecosystem
should be fully understood. In the past, observation
and some amount of data were used to establish the
important features that determined the potential ac-
tions for the urban development. For example, traffic
congestion data alone will be used to determine the
type of transport infrastructure improvement. How-
ever, as the cities develop, the interactions within the
 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development

urban ecosystem become more complicated and inter- implement smart urban planning solutions, it is rudi-
linked. Simple decision tools without insufficient data mentary to understand crowd mobility, transportation
might result in suboptimal or even diminishing results. data, and other relevant information so as to build a
Hence, data-driven approaches are gaining popularity quick insight in identifying the underlying problems.
in identifying such sophisticated interaction in the ur-
ban setting for future urban development initiatives. Table 1: Type of Data Collection for Urban Planning Tool De-
Since there is a potential for the misuse of the data and velopment [6]
the privacy of people are a great concern, it is required
for the development of the unified international regula- Key Sectors of
Type of Data
tory framework for the development of data-driven AI Smart City
technologies. In order to achieve this unified goal, col- Vehicular congestion period
lective efforts are required to expedite in coordinated Frequency of usage
policymaking efforts [3] in addressing future implica- Accidents
Transport and
tions. Data management standards and protocols will Commuting features
Traffic Management
ensure the interoperability across different sectors and Video-based data collection
safeguard the collected data. Traffic data processing
Signal management
Land usage
2 Vision on Data-driven Smart Population Congestion mapping
Distribution Demographic distribution
Urban Planning Tool (SUPT) Mapping Population mapping
Gender distribution
Today, many of the urban development initiatives Resource availability
fail to realize the interconnectedness in the urban Utilities Distribution Resoruce reliability
interaction. They tend to solve the issue from a Network Utilities infrastructure
stand-alone point of view. For example, traffic or Utilities usage
transportation improvement is seldom considered
Frequency of visit
together with other important aspects of the urban
Health Care Type of treatments
ecosystem such as utilities/resource distribution or
Management Type of incidents
disaster mitigation security assessment. As shown
Emergency response time
in Figure 1, at the start of 2018, the majority of the
Historical data
data-driven smart city projects focuses on improving
Simulation study
the traffic or utilities management. However, less Disaster Mitigation
Security assessment
attention is being paid to the holistic view of these and Security
CCTV
plans for urban development. It can be strongly
Surveillance data
argued that holistic view and collective assessment
of these projects are required as the interaction of
one initiative with another initiative are unclear or in
other words, uncharacterized. Thus, the key vision of 3.1 Transport and Traffic Management
this proposal is to develop
The transportation network in the world is improving
“holistic data-driven smart urban planning tool greatly at a fast pace. The development of autonomous
for the future urban settings where there are high vehicles, advanced traffic light signal control system,
interdependencies in the ecosystem to ensure the optimal crowdsourcing technique and global navigation satel-
cause of action and improvement.” lite system (location awareness) enable the consumers
to navigate smartly from one point to another. Indeed,
these applications generate a large amount of data that
3 Key Sectors of Smart City in will not only be useful for the consumers but also for
relevant public sectors to improve the service provision.
Data-driven Smart Urban Plan-
ning Tool Furthermore, the interconnected between trans-
portation technologies is also important to manage the
The key features of the SUPT are the collection and crowd management in the urban setting. Inevitably,
exploitation of the data from many sectors of the ur- the transport network will continue to grow with
ban environment to have a better characterization of improvement in the living standards and to cater to
the ecosystem that will be beneficial in developing the newly developed areas and improve the accessibility
data-driven urban planning tool. Figure 2 identifies of the transport network.
the sectors that are crucial for the urban planning of
the future and detailed elaboration of the type of data Technical insights for autonomous driving for future
required are provided in Table 1 [5]. For example, to cities are highlighted in [7]. It also signifies the im-

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 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development

Smart City Projects

45

40

35

30
Percentage (%)

25

20

15

10

0
Environmental Electric Vehicle
Traffic Management Utilities Management Smart Lighting Public Safety Other
Monitoring Charging
Smart City Projects 39 22 21 18 17 1 6

Figure 1: Data-driven Smart Urban Planning Framework [4]

scheduling based on the historical data, the transporta-

tion of goods can be optimized to improve in the supply
chain process.

3.2 Utilities Distribution Network

Figure 2: Key Sectors of the Smart City in Data-driven Urban
Planning Tool Development
portance of transport infrastructure improvement as
well as data management and cloud solutions in urban
development. Historical data from the transportation
system can be exploited to carry out the optimization
of the routes, decrease traffic congestion and reduce
traffic accidents. From the analysis gathered from the
historical data of the accidents, the traffic authorities
can identify the cause of the accident and carry out
rectification work to prevent them from happening.
Furthermore, with the optimal route planning and
Utilities distribution network, in general, includes ne-
cessities such as water, waste, electricity, gas and com-
munication network. Privatization of the utilities has
brought about drastic changes in the ways where ser-
vices are provided in the cities. For the past decades,
utilities distribution networks are slowly shifting from
the highly centralized government-owned industries to
highly decentralized private-owned companies. These
private-owned companies tend to follow their business
model rather than the social, economic and environ-
mental objectives of the city. Hence, as a regulatory
authority, the state can gear towards meeting the ob-
jectives of city by enforcing or recommending certain
changes to their utilities network with the help of the
data [8]. The time-stamped data from these utilities
service providers, the future utilities’ consumption of
the city can be forecasted with high accuracy. Further-
more, with the help of the analysis from the data, the
utility companies will be able to design optimal genera-
tion scheduling, the optimal location for infrastructure
expansion, efficient protection and operation planning
of these utilities.
3.3 Disaster Mitigation and Security
Smart city security features include public trans-
portation security, infrastructure security, disaster

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 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development
response security. The use of big-data helps relevant
authorities to predict the possible occurrence of the
natural disaster and hence allowing the cities to better
prepared. Infrastructures can be put in place with
the help of mitigation plans in mind to ensure the
survivability of the people during the disasters. In [9],
it addresses different stages of the disaster and the
role of the data in each of these stages to improve the
overall disaster response.
Furthermore, the data-driven approach can be taken
to improve the security and safety of the people. The
data analytics can be used to identify the high-crime
location and hence the proper urban planning can be
carried out to include crime deterrent measures in such
locations.
3.4 Healthcare Management
In order to carry out efficient urban planning, the
healthcare management must be considered. The avail-
able healthcare centers and emergency medical re-
sponse services should be strategically located to im-
prove the accessibility and availability for the people.
As for the emergency medical services, data such as
response time, the frequency of incidents and type of
incidents should be analyzed to design the efficient
dispatch scheme to improve the response time. With
this data, the healthcare resources can be optimally
distributed.
3.5 Population Distribution
While carrying out the urban planning, it is crucial to
understand the population distribution and density
of the city. If it is too sparse, the productivity and
efficiency of the area will suffer whereas if the area
is too dense, it might start to become uncomfortable
for people to live in. With the increasing popu-
lation, the amenities per capita will decrease and
hence resulting in higher competition for the resources.
In [10], data-driven algorithms are employed to
carry out efficient refugee integration. The algorithms
are tested out on different historical data from the
United States and Switzerland. The proposed data-
driven approach promised 40% to 70% increase in the
refugee’s employment outcome as compared to the
traditional approaches. It proves that population dis-
tribution planning with the data-driven approach is a
viable solution.
4 Data-driven Smart Urban Plan-
ning Tool Framework
The following section will propose the data-driven
SUPT development framework and it can be catego-
rized into 7 stages. The visual representation of the
framework is illustrated in Figure 3.
1. Data Acquisition – This is the initial stage of the
framework where relevant data from different sec-
tors of the urban ecosystem are gathered.
2. Feature Extraction of Different Sectors in Urban
Ecosystem – Once sufficient data are gathered and
analyzed for the key sectors in the smart city, in-
dividual features of the urban ecosystem will be
concluded. It could be the population density,
resource distribution, traffic congestion or any fea-
tures that are listed in Table 1.
3. Social Drive and Public Opinions in Planning and
Development – At this stage, some feedbacks and
survey will be pushed out to the public and their
concern on the urban development will be gath-
ered to identify the primary concern of the resi-
dents.
4. Establishing Urban Ecosystem Correlations – Once
features of the different sectors in the urban
ecosystem has been extracted in Step 2, the col-
lected data and features will be analyzed as a col-
lective data to establish the correlation between
different sectors in the smart city. The key idea
behind this step is to analyze how the changes
in one of the sectors will impact the rest of the
sectors.
5. Model Creation – Once the correlations between
different sectors in the smart cities are well under-
stood, the model or an urban planning tool can
be created. With the help of this tool, the optimal
action can be carried out with the current urban
ecosystem to improve the living condition of the
residents.
6. Validation – The proposed action from the model
should be verified through simulations or cause
and effect analysis. If the potential outcome of the
proposed action is satisfactory, then the corrective
action has been validated.
7. Implementation – Once the urban development
action has been validated, the physical implemen-
tation or changes to the urban ecosystem can be
carried out.
Once the changes have been implemented, the itera-
tion will be repeated. The idea is to continue monitor-
ing the interaction of the different sectors in the smart
cities and the model will be updated accordingly. Since
this data-driven approach accounts for different types
of data from multiple sectors, it can be used as a uni-
versal tool for different types of urban planning such as
disaster assistance planning, resource allocation plan-
ning, health management planning, and etcetera.
5 Case Study
In this section, some attempts to data-driven urban
development planning projects are illustrated to
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 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development

Social Drive and Public

Opinions in Planning
and Development Validation is unsatisfactory
Validation and Verification
Simulation Verification
Potential Cause and Effect Analysis

Validationissatisfactory
Establishing Urban
Model Creation Validation
Ecosystem Correlations

Data-driven Smart Urban

Planning Tool which accounts for
Urban renovation and growth planning
Transportation planning
Utility planning
Disaster assistance planning
Implementation
Resource allocation planning
Feature Extraction of Health Management Planning

Different Sectors in
Urban Ecosystem

Key Sectors of Smart City

Transport and Traffic Management

Disaster Mitigation and Security Implementation
Data Acquisition Population Distribution Physical Changes to the Urban Ecosystem
Urban Ecosystem Interaction
Utilities Distribution Network
Healthcare Management

Figure 3: Data-driven Smart Urban Planning Framework

demonstrate the effectiveness of such approaches in
today’s society.
Moscow’s smart city initiative which focuses on re-
juvenation and revitalization of the city and traffic
mobility improvement initiative by Uber are illustrated
in the following sections. However, it is worthwhile to
mention that although such approaches are effective
in addressing the immediate concerns of the specific
issues, they have to yet to consider various aspects of
the urban ecosystem. With the data available in the
future, such an initiative can be further developed to
build a more comprehensive tool in the future with the
proposed framework in Figure 3.
5.1 Moscow’s Smart City Initiative
The key part of Moscow’s smart city initiative urban
development project is to improve the living standards
of 12 million people living within the city [11]-[12].
The key motivation behind this project is to ensure the
livability, workability, and sustainability of the Moscow.
The project which started in 2014 is empowered by
big-data and data modeling from databases such as
population density, vehicle and pedestrian traffic pat-
tern, and the efficiency of existing public transportation.
Some improvement that has been done so far involved
are accommodating more usable footpaths, improved
traffic flow and rewiring of the electricity grid. With
the investment of US $1.6 billion, the city has reno-
vated 233 streets which resulted in increased traffic
speed by 10% while accident rate decrease by 40%
and pedestrian traffic is improved by 70% within the
first 3 years. New bicycle paths have been added and
thousands of smart traffic lights and energy efficient
streetlights are scheduled to install.
5.2 Uber’s Data Driven Initiative – Move-
ment
Uber is offering to provide anonymized data that are
collected from the millions of trips from their customers
in selected cities; Delhi, Brisbane, Perth, and other 9
cities; to the respective local authorities to assist them
in addressing the traffic-related challenges. This ini-
tiative is directed towards the traffic and mobility im-
provement in the urban setting. With the data, analysis
can be done on the traffic flow at the different time of
the day, traffic data and traveling frequency. The data
collected over the years can be used to address the chal-
lenges such as urban congestion, pollution and many
other improvements that could be done. Furthermore,
since the anonymized data is made available for free,
and hence organization and educational institution can

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 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development
use the data to develop more meaningful measures for
the urban improvement [13].
6 Co-creation and Partnership
To ensure the effectiveness of the data-driven approach
for the smart cities, the collective efforts between all the
different parties starting from the government authori-
ties to the individual efforts are required. Government
authorities around the world will have to embrace com-
mon cybersecurity measures and standards to manage
and collect the data. Private sector companies should
engage in collaborations with other companies and
institutions to incorporate AI into their business prac-
tices and establish good common practices. As for
research institutions, it should continue to develop, at-
tract talents and work with its researches and partners
to ensure that they are focused on research excellence.
Research institutions can continue to develop ways to
collaborate with existing bodies to expand ideas. As
for the individual users, they will have to pay more
attention to the cybersecurity matters and data privacy
issues. At any given instances, the relevant authorities
must develop data protection strategy and emergency
plans to ensure that the smart cities which are heavily
reliant on the big-data are safe and secure.
7 Legal Implication
Decision-making with the help of artificial intelligence
(AI) technologies will create risks and consequences
which are unpredictable. The major concern with
regards to the AI technologies is the accountability
of their decision-making process. Until today, the
accountability of the AI technologies lies in the human
users who will make the final decisions based on their
experience and the common sense [14]. However,
as with the development of more sophisticated or
autonomous AI technologies,the human has higher
confidence in them and the decision making aspect is
being delegated to the AI. In these scenarios, the ac-
countability and responsibility from the poor decision
making from these technologies are ambiguous. It has
experienced the very first fatal accident which involved
the self-driving car empowered by the AI technology.
Indeed, such ambiguity calls for the regulation and
legislation.
The current state of regulations regarding the use
of AI technologies has yet to be concrete. Regulatory
authorities around the world are beginning to address
potential issues that might arise from it. Major
technological players in the world are determined to
establish strategies in hopes to commercialize new
products. Well-balanced regulations will improve the
safety and the reliability of these solutions whereas the
more stringent regulations might deter the innovation
and development. For example in Russia, Article
137 of the Civil Code stated that "injuries inflicted
on the personality or property of an individual shall
be subjected to full compensation by the person who
inflicted the damage". Currently, the rule stated above
is imposed on the animal who is also capable of
autonomous actions and the liability is assigned to
the owner of the animal. However, imposing such
rules on the artificial intelligence technologies might
introduce unexpected deterrence to the advancement
of the technology due to the fear of liability for the
inventors[15].
In South Korea, legal conditions for the development
of the intelligent robot technologies is governed under
the “Intelligent Robot Development and Dissemination
Promotion Law”. It aims to improve the quality of
life and develop the economy through the creation
and promotion of sustainable development for the
smart robot industry in South Korea [15]. Such legal
conditions are effective in regulating the AI technology
development to improve the safety requirement
and at the same time, encourage the research and
development in the industry.
In [16], transparency is proposed as the interim
solution for the AI technologies when the regulation
and legislation are yet to be finalized. The same
article summarized that AI technologies which
provide benefits to the society at the expense of the
individual loss are legally compensable as long as the
fundamental rights of the human are not breached in
the process. It also further claimed that AI technology
will be unacceptable for the users if the system is
unable to prove a logical explanations on how the
technology make particular decisions in the process.
With regards to the development of SUPT, there
are 3 major areas of legal implications that should be
considered.
1. Identifiable risks and legal responsibility - Careful
assessment of the risks involved in the decision-
making processes and develop a mechanism for
assigning legal responsibilities for the decisions.
2. Transparency - The decision-making processes
from the technologies should be transparent to
the user and decision making procedures and the
criteria involved in the decision-making process
should be made known to the users.
3. Data Privacy - The data collected for the develop-
ment of the SUPT should be anonymized, legally
acceptable and bring overall benefits to the society.
In conclusion, the rules and regulations regarding
AI technologies are yet to be well-established. It is
a global issue that requires a global solution, and all
the countries should come together to establish inter-
national laws regarding the development of future AI
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 Data-driven Approach for Smart Urban Planning Tool Development

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