We are here, we are the data: the Geração Cidadã de Dados collective in Rio de Janeiro and the right to be seen

In the early 2010s, Rio de Janeiro was internationally hailed as a model of the “smart city.” Its official narrative celebrated the deployment of sensors, platforms, cameras, and predictive algorithms to optimize urban governance and reduce uncertainty. This data-driven urbanism promised safety, innovation, and efficiency. Yet, in the shadows of this hyper-connected city, another Rio persisted — one that remained invisible to these systems. In this other city live thousands of citizens whose neighborhoods are often absent from official maps, and where the state’s presence is more likely to arrive through police operations than through access to clean water, safe transportation, or healthcare. In these places, data is not neutral — it frequently serves to stigmatize. Entire communities are flagged as “risk zones” after floods or crimes, while chronic issues like sewage overflow, transportation failures, and police violence go unrecorded.

Such was the case of Joana Bonifácio, a young Black woman and university student who lost her life during her daily commute. One of her legs got caught in a malfunctioning train door, causing her to fall between the train and the platform. Joana was killed instantly. The official version, promoted by the state-operated railway company (SuperVia), attributed her death to personal negligence, even hinting at suicide. But her family and community knew better: Joana was yet another victim of a long-standing pattern of infrastructural neglect in Rio’s metropolitan transport system.

Determined to seek justice, Joana’s cousin Rafaela Albergaria created the Observatório dos Trens, a grassroots initiative that monitors train-related deaths and injuries. Alongside the Casa Fluminense — a civic organization composed mostly of residents from peripheral areas of the Rio metropolitan region — they collected data to map decades of fatal accidents, revealing Joana’s death not as an isolated tragedy but as part of a structural pattern shaped by racism and inequality. This effort contributed to the Mapa da Desigualdade, a collaboratively produced civic data platform rooted in Geração Cidadã de Dados (Citizen-Generated data). By mobilizing local knowledge, lived experience, and community-based research, the map brings to light what official datasets often ignore: uneven access to transport, sanitation, education, and safety. Like Rafaela and the activists of Casa Fluminense, other groups across Rio’s peripheries are using data to challenge urban injustice.

Like Cocôzap, a WhatsApp-based tool created by data_labe to enables a favela’s residents to report sewage spills and chronic infrastructure failures, and Fogo Cruzado, an open-source app, tracks real-time gunfire to help communities navigate daily risks and push for accountability. These platforms do more than collect data, they tell counter-narratives from the ground up. What unites these initiatives is not just their technological innovation, but their political commitment to building a different city — one rooted in visibility, care, and justice. Through Geração Cidadã de Dados, residents are not just data points; they are researchers, analysts, and agents of change, co-producing knowledge from the territory, for the territory.