Modern cities, along with their researchers and innovators can benefit from applying " big data" to their sustainability and infrastructure problems and policies, e.g., water and energy consumption. Unfortunately, current utility customer data (UCD) privacy rulemaking fails to ensure safe release of these data for the public benefit and does not currently strike a sound balance between the competing values of usability and privacy. This paper presents a statistical analysis of the tradeoff between usability and privacy for UCD in Los Angeles. The tradeoffs vary by economic sector (residential vs. commercial/industrial) and by utility type (water, electricity, natural gas). This paper provides guidance for safer and more ethically balanced aggregation and release of utility customer data.

现代城市及其研究人员和创新者可以通过将“大数据”应用于其可持续性和基础设施问题和政策（例如水和能源消耗）而受益。不幸的是，当前的公用事业客户数据（UCD）隐私规则制定不能确保为公共利益安全地释放这些数据，并且当前在可用性和隐私的竞争价值之间未达到合理的平衡。本文对洛杉矶UCD的可用性和隐私权衡之间的折衷进行了统计分析。权衡因经济部门（住宅与商业/工业）和公用事业类型（水，电，天然气）而异。本文为公用事业客户数据的更安全，更合乎道德的平衡汇总和发布提供了指导。