IoT could help your city sue polluters for bad air

One of the reasons I’m such a proponent of getting more data from more things and analyzing it is because if we do it right, we can understand what things cost at a granular level. The business world clearly believes this. We see, for example, congestion pricing for parking spots in cities and insurance rates

Granular pollution data could lead cities to charge polluters for their emissions, for example, or granular performance data for machines could show the liability of a company that forgoes maintenance in favor of savings. Essentially, the internet of things allows customers, regulators, and users to calculate things that were once incalculable and deemed “the cost of doing business.”

With granular data, people can make the calculations to determine if those costs outweigh the benefits. It turns externalities into liabilities that can be measured on a balance sheet or charged to a perpetrator.