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Our CEO Daniel Pelaez joined Harvard's Data-Smart City Pod this week alongside Khahlil Louisy of the Public Innovation Institute and Mike Dennehy, former Boston Public Works Commissioner and present Government Partnerships Lead at Cyvl. The conversation, hosted by Professor Stephen Goldsmith at the Bloomberg Center for Cities, explored a question at the heart of what we do: what happens when cities stop waiting for problems to surface and start preventing them instead?
The gap between who reports and who needs help
The episode builds on a recent research paper by Khahlil Louisy comparing 311 reports with AI-detected infrastructure issues in Boston. The findings confirmed what many public works teams already sense: neighborhoods with higher civic engagement generate more 311 requests and, in turn, receive a greater share of city resources. Lower-income communities and areas with large immigrant populations tend to report less, even when conditions are just as bad or worse. Computer vision picks up what complaint-based systems miss, from hairline pavement fractures to early-stage distresses that would otherwise go unnoticed until they become costly safety hazards.
Talking to your infrastructure
Daniel shared how Cyvl's technology is being explored in Boston right now, in collaboration with the city's Office of the CIO. With Cyvl, city staff are using natural language to query infrastructure data directly. As Daniel described it on the show: a city leader can ask the system to surface manhole covers, catch basins, roadway geometry, and resident complaints for a specific intersection, all in a single conversation, and get a report ready for the mayor in minutes.
From budget defense to budget intelligence
Mike Dennehy brought the operator's perspective, drawing on 20 years in Boston city government. He described how departments today still walk into budget hearings armed with mostly historical requests and hope. With infrastructure intelligence, those same teams can arrive with data-backed reports showing exactly where preventive investment will avoid costly emergency repairs down the road. Mike put it simply: this technology lets you address problems in a financially responsible way before they spiral.
A bright future
Daniel shared his view that infrastructure intelligence is on the verge of becoming standard across local government. As more municipalities within a state adopt the same platform, the network effects compound, unlocking insights at a scale that just wasn't possible before. In Daniel's words, this could be "the next big thing after LLMs."
We're proud to be part of this conversation alongside such thoughtful voices in public innovation and urban policy. Give the full episode a listen here.
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What’s the ideal customer retention rate?
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Next steps to increase your customer retention
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