View

Name Items
Model Smart City Concept Model
Diagram of the Items view showing concepts and relationships. A city will contain lots of ITEMs, which might be referred to in data from many organisations. Where a city can agree a common identifier for an ITEM, many organisations can provide information about it.

Most obviously, an ITEM might be an OBJECT such as a lamppost, a building, or a road, but an ITEM might also be

* an ORGANIZATION, such as a local council, or an energy supplier
* a PERSON, such as a resident or user of a service.
* a COMMUNITY, such as commuters, or low income families

The model contains sub-concepts of ITEM for these. The relationships that are defined for ITEM are therefore also true for these sub-concepts.

The AGENT concept can be used where it is not possible to know if data refers to a PERSON or an ORGANIZATION.

A city will also need to refer to non-physical things such as a service, a contract, a decision, or a case. These non-physical things are also ITEMs, and the model uses the sub-concept ABSTRACT to group them together. A number of further sub-concepts within ABSTRACT are defined in the model.

ITEMs might be associated with PLACEs; most obviously, to describe where an ITEM is. Although ABSTRACT ITEMs don't have a physical existence, they can still be related to PLACE, perhaps to describe their coverage.

PLACE is used to describe a geographic position or area. Some PLACEs will be described precisely with coordinates, and boundaries, while others will be less precise, perhaps just with a locality name.

Both ITEMs and PLACEs can have a series of STATEs over time. Typically, a STATE describes the condition of an ITEM or PLACE.

A STATE might be described subjectively, from the point of view of an observer, for example, 'the building condition is poor'. A STATE might also be described quantitively, for example, the temperature of a room, or perhaps as a statistic, for example "a community's deprivation index".

A Smart City will base its decisions on a shared understanding of the STATE of ITEMS, either in real-time, or by implementing PLANs to being about changes to STATEs.
Link to the Abstract concept. Link to the Item concept. Link to the Person concept. Link to the Organization concept. Link to the Agent concept. Link to the Community concept. Link to the Object concept. Link to the Place concept. Link to the State concept.