This article explores ways to leverage city data in smart cities and how data virtualisation can help overcome some of the barriers and create new opportunities for data usage. By combining data sources, data virtualisation can help overcome technical and regulatory challenges, and create new value. The topic was approached from three perspectives: the exploitation of city data, the potential for data virtualisation to utilise city data, and the detection of gaps for future use of city data. Finnish cities are interested in utilisation of the rich data they have within the city and new data that is gathered by different actors. However, there is a gap between the potential and the current situation. When city data is generated continuously from different functions, the scattered data storages can be utilised efficiently with data virtualisation. The city itself, commercial operators, governments and individuals all benefit about the deeper understanding of city functions. Sharing data from different systems and sectors creates opportunities for measuring also other but financial benefits. In the case of city bicycles studied in the city of Kuopio, expanded usage of the bicycles was seen as benefiting citizens' wellbeing and health.
K E Y W O R D S city data, data value chain, data virtualisation, open data, smart city
| INTRODUCTIONAs new technologies turn cities into smart cities, they will become rich sources of data. Cisco has estimated that a typical Smart City of one million inhabitants generates 180 million gigabytes of data per day [1]. This data can create new opportunities, such as enabling new kinds of service provision, creating new products for businesses and allowing better city management. Managing all generated data requires new approaches and data virtualisation solutions are one of these for using the data more efficiently in novel ways. In particular, this article explores how data virtualisation can be used in overcoming barriers of data use, what relevant needs cities have, what kind of data is available, what kind of potential use cases are available for data virtualisation in cities and how a practical data virtualisation solution can be developed.A 'smart city' is a city that uses technological solutions to improve the management and efficiency of the urban environment [2]. Typically, smart cities are considered being advanced in six fields of actions, namely 'smart government', 'smart economy', 'smart environment', 'smart living', 'smart mobility ' and 'smart people' [3]. Several cities have launched smart city related programmes and activities supporting development in these fields, for example, the Finnish cities of Helsinki [4,5], Tampere [6] and Turku [7]. Findings from 329 US cities show that funding from state governments, availability of technical assistance and city branding have positive effects on smart technology adoption [8]. Yigitcanlar et al. [9] identify that the literature reveals three types of drivers of smart cities, namely community, technology and policy. In additio...