ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a methodological approach for critically examining a data model. Data models look deceptively simple. A data model is an ontology, a formal description of the entities of a domain. The chapter deals with some preliminary observations given the analysis of the massive quantity of data collected is ongoing and concludes with some final remarks on the importance of empirically studying data models, and calls for critical data studies scholars to make data models a focus of analysis. The approach taken to examining how a city is translated into code and data, and how these then reshape the city was a discourse analysis of the Prime2 data model and platform, with Dublin as the city. The Prime2 data model is part of the Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi's) spatial data infrastructure, but the will and the act of modelling has its own provenance, discourse and language.