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As technology advances with lightning speed, it’s emerging that there’s a whole host of data being collected relating to our built environment, and that more oversight needs to be given to that information to ensure the people using and living in those buildings are protected.
As a recent panel discussion hosted by MRI software brought to light, data management as it relates to Australia’s buildings is an unregulated field, with the responsibility of oversight left largely up to private entities.
Jess Caire, Queensland deputy director of the Property Council of Australia, noted a huge part of the issue is that rapid innovation often leaves regulation in catch-up mode.
“I think from a policy point of view it is really difficult because legislation moves so slowly and technology moves so quickly,” Ms Caire commented.
“That’s one of the biggest things we are faced with as AI becomes part of our day-to-day life. I think AI is good. But we need to be mindful of the data. We’ve seen a few really high profile breaches. How do we make sure that we’re capturing data that we need, not unnecessary data, and what do we do with the data that we have?”
Margot Black, general manager of corporate sustainability at Investa, agreed entities need to be hyper-aware of this question, and on the front foot when ensuring the information they capture is well protected.
“The technology’s been created to help us run our buildings or our developments or other things more efficiently. But then you’re finding all this other stuff, which is really interesting, but it’s not for us to know,” she said.
“We know a lot more about what’s happening in our buildings than we probably should,” she further explained, noting that Investa had recently implemented a system to ensure the information it’s storing is relevant and ethical.
“We put a data system in our governance to say, ‘that’s nice to have, but we’re not going to use that. This is all we need to know and we are just gonna block that bit out because it’s not our business’” she said.
Ms Black highlighted the Australian-based Sustainable Digitisation Project recently released a framework to help guide firms’ use of data when it comes to the built landscape. The organisation also outlined some of the risks if data isn’t handled properly.
That could include the manipulation of built environment technology systems to control or harm people or assets; the exclusion of discrimination of people; loss of personal freedoms such as of choice, autonomy, expression, and association; and even physical safety concerns, to name a few.
Ms Black and panel host Nadeane John, MRI’s product manager of strategic planning, both predicted that while data security of the built environment is in the hands of private entities at the moment, governments would be moving to regulate the sector as it advanced.
They both hoped it wouldn’t take a serious incident to move the needle, however.
“[Mandating data security] is probably something we’ll see. It’s hard; I guess the government policy has to catch up,” Ms John said.
Ms Caire agreed: “It’s a case of understanding what’s happening and what is being captured. Because quite often there’s a disconnect between what’s happening in the private sector and what the government potentially knows”.
And she reminded the audience that while it’s easy to think of this issue in somewhat removed terms, when we bring it back to the personal, the importance of data security feels much more urgent.
“I have teenage children, it frightens me about what they put into a system and without even really any thought process around it and then the information that comes back to them,” she said, particularly in relation to the huge uptick in the use of AI.
“So my hope is that we keep questioning things rather than just relying on it – that we see it as an enabler, not as the thing that solves our problems”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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