City of Melbourne builds data and AI platform on Databricks

The City of Melbourne (CoM) has selected Databricks to build a unified data and AI platform, supporting more than 700 production datasets and powers over 40 AI use cases across the organisation.

Built on Databricks, CoM's Data Central Platform underpins priority use cases including a knowledge bank, predictive city operations, citizen service intelligence, financial management and a new pedestrian chatbot.

The local government authority said a 2023 review of its technology found teams were spending significant time manually sourcing and combining data across systems, with inconsistent standards and siloed, on-premises infrastructure slowing analytics and AI adoption.

In response, it has now consolidated a legacy mix of tools onto a single Databricks platform.

Built with Databricks Genie - the company’s AI agent for querying data in natural language - and supported by Unity Catalog for governance and AI/BI Dashboards for visualisation, the new pedestrian chatbot lets council staff, city planners and local businesses explore Melbourne foot-traffic data by asking plain-language questions rather than lodging technical data requests.

It also draws on near real-time data from the council’s City Sensing network of IoT sensors.

For local businesses, the council said, that means faster insight into how people move through the city to inform decisions on operating hours, staffing and activation; for planners, it can support precinct planning and the night-time economy.

The council sees scope in the future to add datasets such as events, disruptions and road traffic over time.

“Every solution we build is in service of the Melbourne community, and the foundation we’ve built with Databricks gives us the confidence to scale that impact across the city,” said Councillor Andrew Rowse, who holds the innovation and education portfolio at the City of Melbourne.

"Ultimately, every solution we build is in service of the Melbourne community, and the foundation we've built with Databricks gives us the confidence to scale that impact across the city.

“The best AI fades into the experience, helping organisations move faster, make better decisions, and deliver stronger outcomes," said Adam Beavis, VP and country manager of Databricks ANZ.

"That’s what the City of Melbourne is building with Databricks: a secure, governed foundation for data and AI that powers more responsive city services, smarter operations, and real impact for residents. CoM is part of a broader shift we’re seeing across the public sector as organizations move AI from experimentation into production at scale.”