‘Smart cities’ contemplate turning big data into big money

Monetizing data generated by new urban technology projects was the topic of an hourlong panel Tuesday at the Smart Cities Connect conference in Denver, where representatives of three local governments and one Sprint executive discussed whether cities can — and should — turn their new data streams into new sources of revenue by selling them to third-party developers in the private sector…

Johnson compared cities’ potential to sell data to a recent agreement between Germany and Bolivia for the German battery industry to access the South American nation’s lithium reserves.

“You all and others are sitting on a huge deposit,” he said. “There are data brokers out there. It’s a great time to take advantage of that.”
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