Brains to Brawn?: A Political Interruption of Big Data in Smart-City Rio de Janeiro

• In Event: Precision and Uncertainty in a World of Data - I

Abstract

On the last day of 2010, Rio de Janeiro grew a brain, of sorts: its City Hall had commissioned multinational technology giant IBM to launch the Centro de Operações do Rio, or the Rio Operations Center. Set up for rapid response to disasters and breakdowns such as flooding, mudslides, and power outages, the Center is in effect a control room powered by computer algorithms that process past and current data to anticipate real-world events. Such initiatives exemplify how digital information forms part of an infrastructural nexus based on engineering control over the city, making it more responsive to disruption. The Operations Center quickly became one of the most prominent smart-city projects in news media and academic discussions over the interweaving of urban space and information technology. However, contrary to techno-futurist promises of a fully automated urban control dashboard as heralded at the Center’s inauguration, it was Grupo Pensa, a small multidisciplinary think-tank housed within the Center, that produced neural network models for addressing urban problems by accessing the immense data sets produced there. But in 2018, due to fiscal austerity measures that cut the Center’s budget by a quarter, Pensa was dissolved, and the Center’s administration subsumed to the Secretary of Public Order, under the direction of a colonel who had founded Rio’s notorious Special Operations Battalion (BOPE). This account of the Center’s rise and folding into security apparatus reflects a broader political turn, or perhaps return, from technocratic managerialism to authoritarian militarism in Brazil.

Author

• Alessandro Angelini, Johns Hopkins University