🥝Smart Citizen Kit

Collect, map, understand and manage your own environmental data

What is it about and why is it relevant ?

Smart Citizen Kit is a sensor kit that could be used to create local maps of noise and air quality; or use it to raise awareness and find solutions for issues that matter to a community locally. It is aimed for participatory environmental maker practices, but may also have interest for researchers, municipalities or policy makers who want to map, understand and manage environmental data.

The Making Sense Toolkit, developed in the context of the Making Sense Project includes operational, conceptual and methodological information to show citizens and communities how to use the Smart Citizen Kit, along with other tools to enhance their everyday environmental awareness, to enable active intervention in their surroundings, and to change their individual and collective practices. This toolkit is also connected to an online platform where the measured data is also visualised, with more than 3400 kits located globally.

The Smart Citizen Kit has been tested in several places, including Kosovo, Amsterdam or Barcelona. We will go a bit more in detail for the Plaça del Sol case in Barcelona. Plaça del Sol is a town square that has historically suffered from the noise of drinking into the early hours of the morning by crowds drawn from near and far. Working with the Smart Citizen Kit and the Making Sense team in Barcelona, the neighbourhood association of Plaça del Sol researched and measured how high were noise levels around the plaça in 2017 in relation to the norm, and what could be done to improve the situation.

Plaça del Sol – Making SenseMaking Sense

The measuring process went in parallel with community building activities, such as the definition of the mapping and sensor strategies, training workshops for the neighbors to learn the minimum technical skills to set up and use the sensor kits, and public events to raise awareness and engage new stakeholders and participants. The data was collected and displayed through the Smart Citizen Platform in order to start a conversation with the local municipality to discuss regulations and potential interventions to mitigate the noise issues. This initiative took place prior to CENTRINNO, but if we are to analyse it through the project’s lens, all these activities, tools and methods could be considered as part of one micro mission: mapping collaboratively the noise at Plaça el Sol to engage in a conversation with the local Municipality.

The sensor approach of this framework can be used to develop any assessment on the local environment and gather data that can be used in the CENTRINNO cartography or in relation to circular economy. The Smart Citizen Kit could be used to engage an existing (or new) community to the CENTRINNO Network, working together around a specific problem that is measured and assessed.

You can read more detailed information about the Smart Citizen Kit in the Making Sense Toolkit, which includes practical data and examples on how this kit could be applied in different contexts.

http://making-sense.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Citizen-Sensing-A-Toolkit.pdf