ABSTRACT
The global economy is increasingly more reliant on data, with businesses adopting data-enabled decision-making practices in the form of analytics or machine learning. Views of data as an asset and the steady emergence of data markets depend on the capability of quantifying the value of data. We argue that the data-as-an-asset approach and focusing on assigning a price tag for data is complicated, due to the properties of data, the multiple value chains that it can generate, as well as legal and ethical implications. We introduce a data valuation process that recognises and integrates the contextual nature of data value, together with data quality and data utility assessments. The value of data is reported in a multi-faceted scorecard, which allows for an exploration of data value at different levels of aggregation. We explore how cities can benefit from the multitude of data they harvest in the process of digitalisation, and we argue that these benefits can be enhanced if cities were to have a more concrete understanding of the value of their data. We discuss their multiple roles with respect to big data processing, as producers, consumers, regulators, and educators for their citizens, and conclude with a list of data-centred actions that cities should implement as part of their smart city agenda.
