Former CURA visiting scholar Kristina Wolf recently published the paper “Building enduring smart city data platforms to provide urban management support: lessons learnt from UK Urban Observatories and the US Smart Columbus Operating System” in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Cities. Former CURA post-doctoral fellow Jonathan Stiles and myself are also co-authors. The paper is a case study of the Smart City Operating System (SCOS), part of a Smart City project awarded by the US Department of Transportation in 2016 in Columbus Ohio. SCOS was developed as a robust smart city data management platform. However, despite a well-designed organization, methodology, and processes, the platform did not sufficiently capture city users, and was no longer used soon after demonstration funding ended in 2021. The study compares the SCOS with urban data observatories in the UK, concluding their more restrained scope, university support and stable funding environment made them more successful.

Wolf, K., Stiles, J., Miller, H.J., Dawson, R.J., Mills, J.P., Blythe, P. and Morley, J. (2025) “Building enduring smart city data platforms to provide urban management support: Lessons learnt from UK Urban Observatories and the US Smart Columbus Operating System,” Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 7:1512847.