Urban Data Observatory for Algeciras’ Urban Agenda

The City Council of Algeciras, as part of drafting its Urban Agenda, partnered with Khora to design and develop an Urban Data Observatory. A key tool to adopt a data driven decision-making mindset.

THE CHALLENGE

The Urban Agenda identifies the need for cartography that facilitates urban management and defines a city model aligned with the municipality’s vision and goals. Until now, municipalities have implemented Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), which in many cases have been limited to acting as repositories of territorial layers. These infrastructures often failed to resolve specific issues, and at other times, public administrations, due to resource constraints, were unable to leverage the stored data effectively. In this context, the Spanish Urban Agenda introduces a series of descriptive and evaluation indicators, focusing on the minimum necessary urban analysis to evaluate and manage a compact, complex, and sustainable city model.

THE SOLUTION

The main goal of the solution was to translate data into tangible information connected to urban needs and visions. At Khora, we conceived the Observatory as a practical tool that focuses on specific problems and avoids process redundancies. The following steps outline the design and implementation process of the Urban Data Observatory:

• Identification of required data sources for the Urban Agenda.
• Proposal and agreement on a set of indicators, in addition to those outlined in the AUE (Spanish Urban Agenda), tailored to meet the needs of Algeciras.
• Analysis of the complexity of obtaining each data source.
• Search for existing municipal databases and analysis of complementary external sources necessary to design accurate urban indicators for the AUE.
• Interdepartmental coordination, assigning responsibilities for generating, maintaining, and providing the required databases within each department.
• Consensus on appropriate scales and calculation periodicity (from a sustainability perspective). A reflective exercise was conducted with the City Council and its departments to establish a logical and sustainable methodology and timeline.
• Production of a set of urban indicators to monitor and evaluate the city model, tailored to both the general needs of the AUE and the specific needs of the municipality. This involved reaching consensus on objective benchmarks to accurately assess the state of the urban model.
• Awareness and training of public administration staff on the importance and potential of using a shared (and redundant) GIS tool.

The proposal stands out because it goes beyond merely creating a data repository; it aligns a city model with a series of indicators and proportions to focus on its objectives. For this reason, we have designed the Urban Data Observatory as a space with strategic vision, commitment, and inter-institutional responsibility.