For the past months, BROKERS project has inverviewed people we or our interviewees have identified as brokers. An example of elaborate brokering practices is the work led by a digital and design anthropologist Rachel Charlotte Smith at Aarhus University in Denmark. Her work in focus sits at the intersection of energy futures and everyday practices, and it offers a grounded view into what it takes to build ambitious digital projects.
Associate professor Smith and her collague Rikke Hagensby Jensen are currently collaborating with a European initiative aiming to create a digital twin of a city working toward a net-zero future by 2030. The project called Building Positive Energy Districts, focuses on modeling the district of Brabrand in Aarhus, Denmark. On paper, the digital twin project sounds straightforward: bring together data, model the system to simulate futures and engage decision makers and citizens in decision making over sustainable futures. This ambition includes integrating so-called “soft data,” such as how people feel about their neighborhoods, including mobility, wind, noise or access to green environments. Yet even with that inclusion, Smith finds the approach too narrow and has worked towards integrating lived and everyday experiences into the digital representations.
The design process Smith leads therefore runs in parallel, developing an alternative data platform or digital twin model that focuses on everyday practices and lived perceptions, co-created with citizens and stakeholders in the area. This process is less about mirroring what kind of data a system needs and more about making visible how energy, mobility and wellbeing are experienced and understood on the ground. With BIPED and the Austrian Institute of Technology, this work has resulted in a survey on ‘soft data’ with 1300 citizens in the area that is being integrated into the digital models, as well as 150 students from Aarhus University exploring local practices through ethnographic and codesign approaches to create novel digital prototypes.
Wasteful modeling
When asked about brokering, Smith outlines familiar but persistent challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration. Different disciplines carry different assumptions about what constitutes data, what problem is being solved, and how ambitious a project should be – both in terms of local impact and longterm transformation. In interdisciplinary collaborations work packages remain siloed, translation between fields is limited, and as she put it, “nothing new can happen.” In that context, data-driven approaches often take over. Not because they are better, but because they are easier to stabilise within project structures.
There is a recurring and wasteful pattern: significant resources go into building data resources, whether we call it a model or a digital twin, only for the project to end and momentum to dissipate. The model exists, but its relationship to the phenomenon it represents remains thin. Model builders may construct detailed simulations of areas they have never meaningfully engaged with, relying on data that remains thin, abstract, or broken.
To avoid this, brokering practices are vital. This involves negotiations with model builders and data specialists about what data is, what counts, who benefits and what the model is expected to do. Conversations with data specialists tend to converge on what can be quantified, quietly narrowing the scope of what is considered relevant. Brokering means not rejecting these efforts but working alongside them. If brokering is successful, it can demonstrate that digital data alone is not a strong tool for engaging people; it tends to keep things at a distance. The parallel platform that Smith and colleagues are developing is intended to be a way to demonstrate an alternative, one that prioritises practices, perceptions, and situated knowledge.
From pipleline to paradigm brokering
Brokers project is creating separations between different contexts of brokering. What we call pipeline brokering focuses on concrete tasks and deliverables. On a more ambitious end, paradigm brokering questions the underlying assumptions and structures shaping the project. The challenge is that most project work happens in the pipeline, where things are tangible and measurable. This is a comfortable and safe place to be, but it loses sight of the broader questions.
The approach to brokering that Smith is offering is pragmatic. She looks for entry points within the pipeline, using them to introduce concerns that are more paradigmatic. This means that the pipeline should not be dismissed, as it is where much of the actual work gets done. But there is also a persistent effort to hold open space for more fundamental questions, even when they do not easily fit into the projectlogic.
Smith is also exploring with her colleagues possibilities for more radical alternative futures through another project, Participatory AI for Al for Sustainable Alternative Futures (PAIA), where they experiment with visual and digital mappings, and experiences of sustainable future, across Denmark and Namibia. The aim is to create inclusive and pluriversal societal transformation in Global North/South contexts. This kind of work is much more effective than a simple critique of data-driven approaches. There is a willingness to engage, to question, and to experiment with alternatives.
Rachel Charlotte Smith is Associate Professor at Aarhus University and leads the research centre DIGTCOM
Her work with BIPED was done with colleague and Co-PI Associate Professor Rikke Hagensby Jensen
They work at the Dept. for Digital Design and Information Studies, Aarhus University
Links:
BIPED Building Positive Energy Districts:
DIGTCOM Center for Digital and Green Transformation of Cities and Communities:
PAIA Project: