The underlying premise of smart technology is that with enough data you can predict anything. Our smart buildings and cities are filled with sensors to gather as much information as possible in order to provide analysis that can fix problems, improve environments, and even avoid issues before they happen. The only real debate around this topic is not so much about whether smart technology is able to improve people’s lives but what improvement looks like and who makes that decision. Unsurprisingly, that debate is at its hottest in places that generate the most data, and today, those places are unquestionably China’s smart cities. Currently, China has around 800 smart city programs underway, which represents more than half of the world’s total smart city projects. Each city has invested huge amounts of money to develop a sensor infrastructure that will gather enough data to enact a wide variety of improvements for its citizens. In Hangzhou, for […]