Right-to-Override for Critical Urban Control Systems: A Deliberative Audit Method for Buildings, Power, and Transport

Abstract

Automation now steers building HVAC, distribution grids, and traffic signals, yet residents rarely have authority to pause or redirect these systems when they harm inclusivity, safety, or accessibility. We formalize a Right-to-Override (R2O) - defining override authorities, evidentiary thresholds, and domain-validated safe fallback states - and introduce a Deliberative Audit Method (DAM) with playbooks for pre-deployment walkthroughs, shadow-mode trials, and post-incident review. We instantiate R2O/DAM in simulations of smart-grid load shedding, building HVAC under occupancy uncertainty, and multi-agent traffic signals. R2O reduces distributional harm with limited efficiency loss: load-shedding disparity in unserved energy drops from 5.61x to 0.69x with constant curtailment; an override eliminates two discomfort-hours for seniors at an energy cost of 77 kWh; and median pedestrian wait falls from 90.4 s to 55.9 s with a 6.0 s increase in mean vehicle delay. We also contribute a policy standard, audit worksheets, and a ModelOps integration pattern to make urban automation contestable and reviewable.