Tracey P. Lauriault - Assistant Professor, Critical Media and Big Data - Talk, GeoSpatial: Open Smart Cities

Lauriault’s work on open data, big data, open smart cities, is international, transdisciplinary and multi-sectoral. She is one of the founders of critical data studies and of open data in Canada and founded Open Smart Cities with OpenNorth a data and technology governance approach to shape how Canadian cities roll out their ‘smart’ programs. She has expertise in data infrastructures, spatial media and smart cities, and is especially interested in the assemblage of social and technological processes such as artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), standards, and technologies such as platforms and the internet of things (IoT) that intermediate data and large social and technological systems and infrastructures and how these structure, automate and govern so much of daily life. She is particularly fascinated by and applies systems thinking to map out the processes by which deep technological infrastructures and vast machines operate. Her scholarship is critical and engaged, and as a data and technological citizen, she works with the makers, governors and stakeholders of data, processes and infrastructures, to better understand them, to ensure that these do not cause harm and to govern in an ethical, accountable and transparent way so as to balance economic development, social progress and environmental responsibility.