January 2021 - Parks & Recreation - 39

Park and recreation administrators
are starting to ask, " What data are we
collecting on our patrons, what are we
doing with it, and how secure is it? "

prove nutrition for our kids, we are
not seeing the whole picture. We are
health and wellness advocates. I believe that is what parks and rec is all
about, " says Escobedo.
Park and recreation departments
will do more to address social and
racial equality and disparities in providing services to the public in the
coming year. Inevitably, this also will
accelerate a transformation of the
park and recreation workforce with
the hiring of health, equity, traumainformed and community engagement specialists.

PREDICTION:
At least 10 agencies will
publicly acknowledge the impacts
of how disparities in the provision
of park and recreation services
have been aﬀected by systemic
social inequities, racial injustice
and environmental inequalities.
Demonstrated positive actions to
correct these historic inequities
will be part of the measure of reversing these trends.

Technology's Impact and Big
Questions about Data Privacy
During the Consumer Electronics
Show 2020, a company introduced
an autonomous security system
complete with ground-mounted
motion and vibration sensors and
autonomous drones that periodically fly the monitored property.
The drones read the landscape and
provide livestream video of the
area surveilled. The system " learns
and reacts to its surroundings, "
says the company. Could this type
of security monitoring soon be
coming to parks?
There is no question that technology massively affects how parks
and recreation does business, interfaces with the public, maintains
parks and manages data. Park and

recreation systems are embracing
new technologies, such as robotic
cleaning systems, self-maintained
toilets, line-painting vehicles, autonomous mowing equipment and
semi-autonomous drones for a variety of tasks. As cities are becoming
smarter, so are parks. Patrons expect quality Wi-Fi access in parks,
and appreciate access to charging
stations and downloadable content
such as augmented-reality walks,
games and exhibits.
One aspect of a greater embrace
of technology that will crash into
our consciousness in the coming
year is data privacy. Park and recreation agencies collect a surprising amount of data from patrons,
including financial data from credit
cards for programs and user fees;
biometric data from fingerprints,
photos and facial recognition software; and personally identifiable
medical data from temperature
scans, personal profiles and medical
histories provided for sports and outdoor adventure programs. Taken by
itself, such data capture may not
raise much concern, but this highly
personal data now can be linked to
a patron's location through a variety
of embedded apps on a cellphone,
apps that may not even let you know
they are collecting your location at
all times, much less asking for your
permission to collect such data.

In an interview with CNN Business in April 2020 (tinyurl.com/
y5ll927n), Josh Anton, founder
and CEO of X-Mode, a data location company, said that his company presently tracks 25 million
cellphones through software development kits (SDKs), which are
embedded in about 400 apps, some
as innocuous as a storm tracking
app, a Craigslist app, and even a
'leveling' app that enables you to
use your cellphone to install level
shelves in your home.
The dots already are connecting
to parks and recreation. A large
urban park and recreation agency
in the Midwest working with a university researcher was interested in
where and when people were using
various amenities in their parks. The
researcher found that app data from
cellphones could be easily obtained
to show where people are and how
long they stay in each park location.
Taking it only a short step further,
when no movement is detected
overnight, it is logical to assume
that the cellphone is in the owner's
home. Overlaying this with geographic information system (GIS)
information and other publicly
available data can associate phones
with specific addresses, where individuals have been, and even what
they are doing in real time.
There will be a trend to use this

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Parks & Recreation

January 2021 - Parks & Recreation

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