Tomorrow’s cities – the lamp-posts watching every move

Street lights are among a range of new network-connected city furniture

Imagine an app aimed at showing thieves the best places for stealing.

It’s actually not hard to do – simply pull together publicly available data on disposable income, crime levels and problems reported in a district.

It may reveal that the optimum place to go pilfering is in an area of high income, low reported crime and broken streetlights.

The app not only exists but it won first prize in the “safety” category at an Amsterdam hackathon a few years back.

Makkie Klauwe (it means “easy pickings” in Amsterdam slang) was created by Bram Fritz, a student who wanted to “provoke discussion on the role of open data in our society”.

Luckily for the citizens and police of Amsterdam the app never went into public use – but it is proof, if proof were needed, that data can be…