According to David Barnes at the Web 2.0 Summit in 2011, cities are like big unorganized superorganisms. However, as cities around the world are growing larger and larger, both infrastructure and data systems need to change to meet growing demands and the challenges of population concentration. Barnes emphasizes the need for these new systems to be smart and interconnected in order for analysis and large-scale efficiency to occur.

As part of these five innovations, Barnes presents several important elements in major cities that should have sensors and more oversight, if not an entire overhaul. These major concepts include health service sectors, electrical grids, and water and sewage lines. Barnes advocates for massive amounts of data collection relating to these systems in order to better organize water distribution and efficiency, power usage, and how to contain and minimize disease outbreaks.

Though Barnes's primary idea in this presentation is the need for smarter cities with reproducible infrastructures for a smarter planet, his underlying idea stresses the need for analytics and the application of collected data. It is not enough to have sensors in one city and ideas for efficiency in another: innovation and analytics must be brought together on a level that can match the total global growth of urban populations.