By Mathis Bitton and Elizabeth Haas

Collective decision-making is hardly a perfect science. Broken processes, data overload, information asymmetry, and other inequities only compound the challenges that come from large, disparate factions with different goals trying to work together. And the tools that often help with decision-making—data analysis, scenario planning, decision trees, and so on—can falter in the face of the scale and complexity of the biggest problems that groups and leaders face.

In 2016, Hamburg partnered with MIT Media Lab, the creator of an AI platform called CityScope. The platform allows urban planners to collect and digest the needs and preferences of swaths of residents, simulate hundreds of building scenarios, identify hidden opportunities, and find common ground among conflicting factions. By demonstrating how CityScope is working in Hamburg, we hope to show leaders across governments, nonprofits, universities, and corporations how they can harness data and AI to democratize and improve their decision-making processes and outcomes.