With its wide range of ICT research, the University of Twente is well prepared for the ambition of The Netherlands to be a digital society frontrunner.
The Netherlands, with all of its universities together, wants to be a pioneer in ‘human-centered information technology’, thus shaping digital society. The association of universities in The Netherlands, VSNU, expressed this ambition last September. The symposium ‘Citizenship in a digital society’ of this week, proved that University of Twente can take the driver’s seat in these developments. Prof Maarten van Steen is scientific director of UT’s CTIT research institute: “Our ICT reseach was recently elected best of The Netherlands, principally because of its wide range, multidisciplinarity and connections to society.” New technology will only ‘surround’ us in a natural way if we take adoption as one of the first design criteria. This applies to the Internet of Things, that’s still in the very beginning. This also applies to Smart Cities, sustainable cities in which ICT supports quality of life by improving mobility and regulating energy consumption. At the same time, the question rises whether every citizen can keep up with the developments. And what is the effect of digital society on our privacy? All of these were highlighted in the symposium, by both CTIT scientists and renowned key note speakers.
Internet of Things
For CTIT’s Nirvana Meratnia, it is clear that Internet of Things is not about single devices, connectivity as such, apps or sensors. It is about the whole of connections between living creatures, ‘things’, businesses, data, thus creating added value, reasoning and new services. Meratnia showed that in preventing calamities, IoT could have played a role. Varying from thousands of suitcases missing at Schiphol Airpot to the damage of the Merwedebrug or the Duisburg Love Parade disaster. People are, themselves, part of IoT: in crowd monitoring applications, for example.
Nirvana’s colleague Mitra Baratchi wants to know if you can ‘fingerprint’ certain spaces, like arrival halls at airports or conference rooms. What are the characteristics in terms of people moving around, when do we see ‘peaks’ for example? Using this fingerprint, abnormal patterns can be detected as well. Baratchi does her first experiments within the Living Smart Campus project at the UT campus, fingerprinting several coffee corners using WiFi tracking: the signals of smartphones trying to connect to a WiFi network. She showed that the fingerprints clearly vary. One of the questions is, how to measure this without personal data of the people monitored.
Grey areas in data protection
What is personal data anyway? Privacy expert Gerrit-Jan Zwenne, who is a lawyer and part-time Professor at Leiden University, showed that legislation shows grey areas, even in the updated version of the data protection law to be formally introduce in the whole of Europe in 2018. Is the unique MAC-address of your smartphone really personal information? Probably not when your device is used to monitor anonymous traffic flow, but this changes when the police wants to know if one specific user was on the road at a moment in time. Zwenne is also involved in cases on ‘the right to be forgotten’. At some point, legislation does not work at all, for example the cookie law that is far too strict and only leads to huge irritation. At other points, businesses or researchers using Big Data, don’t tend to be selective at all. Using a minimum of data for a certain research question - ‘select before you collect’ - will surely help avoiding privacy issues.
In the work Prof Siobhán Clarke, of Trinity College Dublin, presented, cross connections with CTIT research can be seen. For example in the design of ‘smart grids’: information technology regulating energy consumption in future cities. Supply and demand will radically change: solar and wind energy are not available all the time, maybe not at the time people get home and all start charging their electric car. Demand side management is also a research topic at UT.
Another project Clarke presented was about autonomous and communicating cars on the road. Her research shows that this radically affects congestion, and thus pollution and risk of accidents. With just one in five cars being ‘smart’, the effect on e.g. lane changing is very obvious. Using technology, people’s behaviour can be changed, thus finding solutions to major societal problems.
Enschede
In what way the city of Enschede, UT’s hometown, is shaping the future of a ‘smart city’? Hans Koenders, CIO of the municipality, showed several initiatives, like a smart app for mobility rewarding sustainable behaviour. Enschede also has an innovative online platform for people who have problems entering the labour market. Using personal activation online, successes have been booked in guiding them towards paid jobs. Together with UT and Saxion University of Applied Sciences, the city of Enschede will start new initiatives in privacy-preserved crowd monitoring using WiFi tracking and IoT.
Deepening gap
The downside of a digital society is that there will be a group missing the boat. Prof Jan van Dijk has done research on this ‘gap’ for years and it still seems to deepen more. This is even to an extent that democracy is in danger, according to Van Dijk: populist movements now often have amplification effects online. Having access to the infrastructure, is clearly not enough, knowing how to push the right buttons isn’t either. True participation also involves knowing how to judge content, and being able to consider your own online strategies. These are typically 21ste century skills, according to Van Dijk.
His colleague Karen Mossberger of Arizona State University, sees an even bigger gap in USA than in The Netherlands. Broadband access isn’t as common as you would think. This leads to the so-called ‘homework gap’: schools use more and more digital tools, but pupils don’t have access at home. Mossberger showed that in deprived neighbourhoods in Chicago, more broadband access can lead to revitalisation of the neighbourhood and stimulating communities. The social benefits of online presence can even be far bigger for ‘disadvantaged’ groups; in opens the way to health applications, applying for jobs online, education and easier access to authorities. At the same time, new users tend to have just mobile access and, in that way, won’t make use of the full potential.
Digital happiness?
Will digital society make us happier? Will privacy be the new currency? These were exciting question to have a discussion about, with both the speakers and the audience. The symposium, furthermore, proved the wide range of IT research by giving the floor to young PhD students presenting their ideas in three minutes pitches and with posters.
