The strategy is to research which existing communities in Barcelona could be identified as a potential users of the Smart Citizen sensing devices as well as contributors to the open data platform.
There are several interesting group to investigate:
urban gardeners, members of science clubs, engineering students, civic centers members, environmentalists, etc…

The aim of this project is focused on the urban gardening community in Barcelona, who redefine vacant plots all across the city and turn them into gardens, cultivate crops and produce food independently. There are more then 50 urban gardens in Barcelona but not all of them are equally discoverable and accessible via internet.
The project scenario is to contact the members of urban gardening community, either via email or personally and introduce the Smart Citizen project and its benefits to the community. Modified or customized shield with a specific set of sensors, such as temperature, humidity, soil moisture, luminosity, etc.., can be deployed in the gardens and collect data, monitor and create trigger messages. Data can be collected and stored in an independent platform or as a part of Smart Citizen platform. This platform will also serve as a forum, providing up-to-date information on plants, crops and products. Mobile application can be a useful extension of the platform, enabling an easy navigation, sensor data control and information exchange.
The application of these technologies could bring a new aspect to the strategies of urban gardening and do-it-yourself food production, which will become more and more important part of the city future.

The community can become more discoverable and accessible to the public and thus become an important source of information about the city.

The Smart Re-Use Network comes from the idea of bringing people together into a smart community. The current Smart Citizen Platform accepts the input of Data from sensored devices to measure environmental information like contamination, sound, light, temperature, etc. This project aims to the people, understanding them as the sensors and also taking into account that we carry sensors always with us, like the computers, smartphones and tablets. Recycling and managing waste in the city becomes interactive in a way that the user is directly involved in a ‘gamelike’ environment always having information accessible about location and condition of things in the city. A whole new environment of ‘exchange shopping’ can be achievable by joining community efforts and precedents that are already working and available in the city of Barcelona.

The proposal implies using  the Smart Citizen Platform to visualize and account ‘things’ in the city. A platform that provides the instruments to reuse and exchange items in an interactive manner. Multi-device  applications can be accessed at any time to view the realtime data while specific actions can be done to acquire a desired item. The Users can use the open information about things to track and reserve items, and then look for them. The user has the advantage of  having the ability to filter items on a map or on a list by class or location.

More info will be posted soon.

Principal elements of the concept:

• controlled form of getting lost
• balance between exploring by yourself and actually arriving at your destination
• tactile interface instead of visual
• look around instead of look down
• learn to orient by yourself and get a little help when you need (some form of reassurance)

Process

When we started to work on the “smart citizen” project, we were to studying Barcelona, its major problems and possible improvements. But more professional and deeper research seemed to be incorrect and too ambitious, since we are living here only for four months.

We decided to start from very beginning by answering some basic questions:

• What is our personal relation with the city?
• What do we know about the neighborhood we live in?
• How can we get to know it better?

Walking is probably the best way to become familiar with a neighborhood. By memorising places, street names, sounds, scents you are drawing personal mental map and building it every time you are travelling in the city.

We didn’t want to rely it only on our personal experience, so we did a small survey in Poblenou. We asked people to answer questions about their neighborhood and the way they are navigating in the city.

Finding Gandhi park

The next step was to make a research on the influence GPS apps have on how we experience the city.
For this we decided to find a park that was very close from our school – but without using any navigating system.  Each of us had a different experience. We were documenting our trips and here are the results. One of the interesting facts is that none of us took the route Google Maps suggested.

Furqan

Gerda

• This is my subjective map, which is based on impressions and details which paid my attention. I knew the approximate direction, but my walk and turns depended on objects which intuitively grabbed attention. The length of the distance depends how many impressions I had during that walk.
• I was making brief sketches and pictures of details and directions (straight, left or right) to fix the route. Later on I’ve tried to structure this trip. I distinguished a few groups why I this object paid my attention.

So what are my conclusions out of this trip?

• First of all, I had very good experience. It was the same effect as travelling.
• I could easily come back to the same place, because the map that remained in my head is very bright.
• Finally, it revealed that the map is something much more complex and valuable than grid of streets.

Bert

I didn’t make any sketches and pictures, but before I left from here, I opened up AntiMap on my phone, which is a little app that records your GPS position. What you see here is the result of a little Processing sketch I did that visualizes the data recorded by that app.

The IAAC is at the bottom of the screen. I was convinced that the park was somewhere between the IAAC and Diagonal. You can see that I’m starting off in the right direction, and then at a certain point I start to go around in circles, looking for the park completely in the wrong part of Poblenou.

The big red dot in the middle of the screen is where I stopped recording my GPS position. That’s where Furqan called me to find out where I was. Gerda and him had found the place half an hour ago and I still had no clue where the park might be.

At that point a got a little nervous. I had asked around for the place but since I was not in the neighborhood of the park nobody knew where it was. I had really enjoyed the first part of my walk, because it was a nice day and I discovered some new things about the neighborhood, but at point I started to feel very frustrated that I couldn’t find the place. To me that highlights the tension between discovering and not getting (totally) lost. We want to explore, but also need a (very general) idea of where we are.

Existing GPS devices

• Most GPS devices are suited for streets and don’t take pedestrian roads and walkways into consideration
• http://www.walkingworld.com/home/index.asp?id=3&nid=590
• http://www.pocketfinder.com/gps-locator/personal-gps-locator/
• http://www.gpsforwalkers.com/
• examples of car GPS with walking mode https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?cID=401&pID=92773
• http://reviews.cnet.com/gps/magellan-crossovergps/4505-3490_7-32399885.html
• http://gps.about.com/od/gpsproductoverview/a/pedestrian_gps.htm

Are GPS navigation devices really helping us?

• A study conducted in Tokyo found that pedestrians exploring a city with the help of a GPS device took longer to get places, made more errors, stopped more frequently and walked farther than those relying on paper maps.

• In 2008, the president of the British Cartographic Society, Mary Spence, warned that travelers—especially drivers—reliant on electronic navigation gadgets were focusing mainly on reaching a destination without understanding quite how they got there.
• Navigating by using our brains helps us to develop important skills.
• Using real printed maps also demands—and can help users develop—critical thinking skills.
• Sailors are increasingly relying on GPS systems while neglecting to learn “the fundamentals”—the basic skills of navigating only b ur brain by charts, compass, sky and the mighty strengths of the human brain.

• Have GPS Devices Taken the Fun out of Navigation?

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/adventure/2012/12/have-gps-devices-taken-the-fun-out-of-navigation/

We created  small video which highlights issues caused by overusing google maps.

The app

how does it work?

• take out phone
• launch the app
• select destination
• • there is a map function where you could search for addresses, but we it the last on purpose because that’s not the main goal of the app
  • closest park: when I would press this it would take to the nearest park
  • random place: could be taken from a list of interesting places (monuments, interesting buildings, …) this is a part we didn’t fully develop, but it could linked to some preferences, data from the smart citizen project, or data from my friends
  • home & work: convenient, for example after you had a drink on a  friday night
  • these buttons could be customized in the settings screen
• screen goes black
• put phone in pocket
• i can start my walk to the nearest park
• if need help i tap my phone
• vibration helps to find the right orientation
• if I’m heading the right way, the phone will vibrate for a brief moment to indicate that I’m on the right track
• suppose I’m going the wrong way, then it’s easy to find which way I have to go: I just need to turn around, and the vibrations will help me to find the right direction

video

possible developments

application intefaces

Adaptation for smart citizen project.

Knowing barrios by navigating in the city and finding “smart citizen” sensors. Each barrio could have it’s public “Smart citizen” kit, which interface is an art installation representing barrio’s historical, social or cultural singularity (since barrios of Barcelona are former villages, it could be good way to maintain it’s uniqueness). Also it could work as a reason to explore different barrios by walking and finding unique art installations (devices). Data collected from sensors would be used by application users to interact with devices.

ideas for interfaces of sensor kits

• Use water to draw a graph/data visualization on the floor. Nice thing: it dries up, it’s a temporary thing (like the bicycles and the chalk). There could be marks on the floor or on a wall that represent the data.
• Soap bubbles could be used to represent the audio levels of the past night. Each bubble could represent 1 hour, and the size could represent the noise level. It could create a line chart in the sky (if the wind is right : ))
• To use existing urban elements (drinking water fountains, sewer manholes, showcases, street lamps etc) that visually do not stand out from regular ones. Each of them could be related with a sensor. E.x. window (showcase) which twinkle and reflects steps of people that passes through it (it can be real time experience. In that case you could play by stepping, dancing, singing etc.) Or sewer manhole with noise pollution sensor. Using mobile you could turn it on and hear water roaring noise.
• Other is with pictures. While looking at them through the mobile screen you can see historical views from that place (e.x. in the market square you could see historical interactive video how people were trading here 100 years ago. In the movie size of crowd could be related to number of people that passed the market square that day.

inspiring analogues for interfaces of public devices

• http://www.creativeapplications.net/maxmsp/talking-tree-maxmsp/
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8S6-ferjuY
• https://vimeo.com/50747223

THE VISIBLE CITIES
This project consists in a system to use cameras to collect data and comprehend the metabolic dynamics on people’s movement and enhance geo-position tools. It aims to be implemented on Smart Citizen platform as an urban tool to identify the where amount of people, but also, to be as useful as an installation for those who experience the city.

WHY?
To track down cars, buses, bikes, metros and so on, is easy on Internet of Things times, but to track the most important player in the city, the human, is a much harder task. It usually involves peoples’ collaboration, technology limitations and privacy implications.
A good example of this, are the tourists, they are not part of local communities, but they play a very important role in the big cities, especially in Barcelona, a city that receives around 5 times its own population of tourists. That’s more visitors per year than the whole Brazil!

DO WE HAVE THE TOOLS FOR IT?
Cameras have an enormous potential as they are already there, thousands spread all over the cities, running 24h a day, and their capacity to collect data is amazing. It’s difficult but once the tool is prepared, it can be implemented everywhere.

Using cameras and Computer Vision application, it’s possible to establish the position of individuals with absolute precision, much better than mobiles’ GPS. On the other hand, mobiles carry much more information like the user’s ID, preferences, social contacts and many other sensors.

XL. CITY SCALE
The goal here is to overlap both in a platform that can identify the person for the camera, and provide precise position for the mobile app.
This platform is also necessary to filter user’s privacy and returning data feedback for the Smart Citizen map and the city council with the information that the user decides to provide, such as sex, age, and communities it participate. On the map it will be possible to see hotspots in real-time, pedestrian space usage over time, number of visits in touristic place, and so on. The data can get much more specific and complex than today’s systems like the time spent by men about 20-30 years old in front a billboard’.

THE APP – MUYBRIDGE’S LOGBOOK!
To sync this data between camera and an app is a bit tricky. The method I’m trying to develop involves stabilizing the approximate position, direction, speed, walking frequency and timing (or Gait) to the platform to be sure that ‘person one’ on camera is the right device. For that I developed an Android App on Processing that collects data from device’s sensors such as GPS, compass and gyroscope (used to identify walking bouncing rhythm, for example) and sends the data to the server in real time. The server uses a probability equation based on the number of people and the sensors ‘reliability’ and precision to do the match. The app is meant to go under the hood of the previously app interface I proposed for the Smart Citizen.

M. AN HUMANCENTRIC INTERFACE
Taking advantage of this technology, the final part of this work is an installation that displays with projectors a dynamic interface guiding and informing a target individual. Could be set inside museum halls, or just pointing directions with a laser projector in touristic outdoor places.

1. A citizen based bike/moto parking:

How does that work?
1. Fablab fabricates bike station units that has embedded RFID reader.
2. A campaign is made to encourage bikers to come to fablab and make their own tags.
3. Stations will appear on the system with its location and maximum capacity of bikes.
4. When a tagged bike is there, it appears on the system, so bikers can tell how many slots are left and whether they can park or not.

We can start by a couple of stations in dense areas. If the people liked it, they will use it and request more (and fund it!).

I don’t know how bicing works, but if it doesn’t have something similar, then it needs one.

Of course, I am not talking about creating new stations, just simply applying the system to existing parkings:

2. Recycling stations:

Similar to the above, SmatCitizen can contribute to encouraging re-use and recycling, by creating SmartCitizen recycling stations. Stations could be placed in second hand markets (Glorias, Sants, where else?). Through a simple campaign, we encourage citizens to make their own tags and link it to the objects they want to place in the station. If a tagged object is near, then it is “checked in”. We can make different categories of objects (electronics, fabric, books, etc) and assign cards of different frequencies to each one, so they are mapped with different colors on the map, or we can simply make different stations for each kind of objects. Tags will be reused, of course.

//More to follow.

The data is in XML (which is not supported by CartoDB) and contains way too much info, so first I had to convert it to CSV.

Here is a short PHP script that will grab the XML and turn it into CSV with event name, latitude and longitude. Other fields could be added easily if necessary.


$fp = fopen('agenda.csv', 'w');
$xml = new SimpleXMLElement(file_get_contents('http://www.bcn.cat/tercerlloc/agendaAvui.xml'));
foreach ($xml->body->resultat->actes->acte as $acte) {
$name = $acte->nom;
$co = $acte->lloc_simple->adreca_simple->coordenades->googleMaps;
fputcsv($fp, array($name, $co['lat'], $co['lon']));
}


You can save this into a file called grab_bcn_events.php and run this from the command line:


php grab_bcn_events.php


It will dump the CSV data into a file called agenda.csv in the same directory as the PHP script.

After creating a CartoDB account you can import to file into it. You’ll need to let CartoDB know which are the location fields by clicking on ‘georeference’. Then you can switch to the map view, and on the right there’s an icon to edit the contents of the info window. If you enable the title field then that piece of information will appear when clicking on the icon in the map.

Applications, benefits and relations between: 1/Intelligence,
2/Disabilities and 3/Health.

Smart citizen platform/system could convert in a way of
relevant information. It could improve the quality of life as
well as the smart citizen security.

It could convert in a special data capture. In this sense,
smart citizen platform could become in an accurate tool.
It could inform about temperature changes, moisture changes
or light changes. Smart citizen platform could be assistant
tool for people with disabilities.

Somebody with an olfactory handicap could not detect some
strange smell as well as a strange situation. The fire smell could
be detected by the smart citizen sensors. In this way, it would
be a skillful informative tool for people with disabilities.

Applications, benefits and relations between: 1/Intelligence,
2/Disabilities and 3/Health.

Smart citizen platform/system could convert in a way of relevant
information. It could improve the quality of life as well as the citizen
security.

1/Smart citizen platform could be assistant tool for police and
intelligence services. It could convert in a special data capture
for solving criminal acts and robberies. In this sense, smart
citizen platform could become in an accurate tool. It could
inform about temperature changes, moisture changes or light
changes.

2/Smart citizen platform could be assistant tool for people with
disabilities. A symbolic examples could be: A person with a
visual disabilities could Know the weather in your neighborhood
using the smart citizen platform.
Somebody with an olfactory handicap could not detect some
strange smell as well as a strange situation. The fire smell could
be detected by the smart citizen sensors. In this way, it would
be a skillful informative tool for people with disabilities.

3/Smart citizen platform could be assistant tool for nurses and
doctors. They could know the moisture, temperature and other
city-life concepts. Then nurses and doctors could advise about
life habits, life behaviour or adequate travels.