Wanted: a new law

The world population is expected to soar to more than 9 billion people by 2050. Roughly 70% of the global population will live in cities, which today consumes 70% of global energy supplies. An interesting symposium in the US threw up some interesting options for Energy Collective. Can planners identify potential relationships between systems and/or networks and design solutions that leverage these synergies? These approaches encourage creative use and reuse of resources for multiple purposes instead of single-use applications. Decision-making and time will have to be viewed differently. Data analytics give us the opportunity to time-shift decisions. In the Smart Grid world, we recognize that energy storage allows us to “time-shift” generation. We can also time-shift electricity consumption through demand response and dynamic pricing programs that encourage or reward use at off-peak times. A smart city working with data to predict traffic patterns could enable automated and realtime traffic congestion management. And the most insightful information derived from analytics is worthless if humans fail to take action on that information. How about a new law that helps us frame expectations around data? Data can be created by machines or by humans. Data will travel across networks to destinations, and may be transformed (anonymized), analyzed (correlated with other data), or stored in multiple locations. The author notes how Moore’s Law deals with processing power (approximately doubles every 24 months) and Metcalfe’s Law that the value of a network grows as the square of the number of users grows. And goes on to ask if a similar law that frames our expectations about data volumes and the privacy and security of that data, can help. Any thoughts?