A federally backed non-profit launching Wednesday wants to encourage property owners to buy from Canadian smart-city firms and to help improve urban infrastructure through a new data trust.

Toronto-based Innovate Cities is led by former OPTrust CEO Hugh O’Reilly, with former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian overseeing its handling of personal information. 

The launch comes a year after Alphabet subsidiary Sidewalk Labs abandoned plans for the Quayside neighbourhood in Toronto, the most high-profile smart-city development in the country. Innovate Cities aims to “create a more level playing field between the brand-name tech providers and the Canadian innovators that are emerging,” said O’Reilly.

The organization began operations in August 2019, and the FedDev Ontario awarded it up to $11.1 million in funding the same month. Members include Toronto-based data platforms ThoughtWire and Sightline Innovation and Ottawa-based Relogix, which makes workplace-analytics tools.  

Innovate Cities’ technology platform will allow property owners and large tenants to manage a safe return for employees coming back to the office post-pandemic, providing guidance on spacing, sanitation, scheduling and other key decisions. If it’s hooked up to a building’s HVAC system, the platform can also be used to improve energy efficiency and inform retrofits. 

The system is based on ThoughtWire’s AI and integrates products from other Canadian firms, like Relogix’s peel-and-stick sensors and Waterloo, Ont.-based MappedIn’s plotting tools. “We want to be stacking technology, and we want to be highlighting Canadian [technology],” said O’Reilly, who took over as Innovate Cities executive director in June 2020. The organization, which has a staff of seven, plans to continue adding tools from new companies. It hopes to run four demonstration projects with property owners this year, paying for the cost of installing the equipment and a year of licence fees.  

Innovate Cities will also launch a non-profit data trust, a repository of information that participating tech firms and property owners gather from their operations and users. The organization will follow Cavoukian’s “privacy by design” principles, which call for protections to be proactive and visible. With the new data trust, “you have both privacy and data utility, because of the strength of the data protection we will be doing,” she said.

Building operators, innovative companies, municipalities and researchers will be able to access the aggregated information for either a fee or a percentage of revenue from technology that it helps inspire. The goal is to make the data trust self-sustaining, allowing it to “act like a utility,” said O’Reilly. “It’ll democratize the ability of innovators to get access to that data so that they can develop better products.” As an example, he cited the possibility of making a street safer by turning its lights on earlier if suggested by patterns found in the trust’s information pool. 

Sidewalk Labs initially hired Cavoukian as an advisor on its Quayside project, but she resigned in October 2018, citing concerns that not all personal data generated within the neighbourhood would be de-identified at source; the company said it was committed to doing so, but could not control third parties’ practices. Information will be “strongly de-identified” before it enters the Innovate Cities data trust, the organization said. 

Cavoukian will report directly to the board, whose members will also serve as the information pool’s trustees. They include Keith Jansa, executive director of the CIO Strategy Council, a federally sanctioned group developing rules for data usage and AI; Jay-Ann Gilfoy, CEO of Vancity Community Investment Bank, on whose board O’Reilly sits; and ThoughtWire CEO Mike Monteith.

Innovate Cities is also working with the Toronto Region Board of Trade on a technology marketplace where property owners and building operators will be able to source proven products and services from Canadian firms. “We’re not interested in owning the intellectual property of our innovators,” said O’Reilly. 

He did not specifically cite Sidewalk, but as The Logic reported in April, the New York-based firm has sought to patent devices and systems it proposed to deploy at Quayside. It had pledged to share an undetermined share of revenue from IP linked to the neighbourhood with Waterfront Toronto, the tri-governmental agency overseeing the project. 

Innovate Cities’ data trust and other services can serve as an international model, according to Cavoukian. “If we don’t do this, and now, we will lose our privacy in terms of the smart cities that are going to be erupting everywhere,” she said.