Searching in the Smart City? — An Information Access Challenge

Abstract

How can users use search to make sense of Smart City offers? On the one hand, of course much information is available on the Web and is supposedly easily accessible to search. On the other hand, Smart Cities aim for data-driven urban transformation, and build a variety of new systems and data sources. Yet it is not yet fully clear which (new) approaches are needed to make these accessible to search. In the attempt to break up silos and make information more open, new types of silos or inaccessible systems can come up. It is of course rather easy to find restaurants or the list of city services. But that cannot be all we want from our cities. We need support in dealing with the higher complexity of information and services, and ideally more integrated ways of accessing them.