The crowdsensing project aims to make our cities more livable, resilient and inclusive based on data gathered with the help of our citizens. The project focuses specifically on data that could impact the health of our citizens such as environmental (air quality and noise) and activity data (heart rate and location data).
This will be done by distributing environmental sensors (air quality, sound etc.) to citizens and start partnerships with wearable tech companies (Polar, Fitbit, Garmin etc.) to gather a volume of data that can be used as a fundament in urban planning to aid better places for public health. Data is already being gathered in large amounts by citizens but is locked in separate devices and rarely used in urban decision making. The project therefore desires to develop the crowdsensing field further and unlock data from personal activity trackers, air quality sensors and other sensors that can improve public health. In an aggregated manner, this data would prove valuable for new innovations, urban planning and urban health projects
The project is divided in four phases.
- Exploring what’s out there
- Market dialogue and open call
- Gathering data with our citizens
- Analyzing the data and suggest valuable uses
The project builds on existing experience from the project partner cities Stavanger, Århus, Helsinki, Vejle and Copenhagen. As part of the project 1-3 pilots will be run in the partner cities with the aim to scale successful pilots to other cities. The open call will focus on private companies that wishes to assist the cities in gathering volumes of data with the help from its citizens.
Synergies with other Healthy Liveable Cities projects
The project is part of the Nordic Healthy Cities collaboration between the Nordic Smart City Network and Nordic Innovation. Crowdsensing, with citizen participation and ownership, is present in several of the projects in the Nordic Healthy Cities collaboration but they all have different approaches to data gathering and could greatly benefit from exchanging experiences as the projects mature. A similar benefit will also arise if the projects manage to share their aggregated data in a joint pool to be used across all relevant projects. This could be the start of a data sharing agreement to aid innovation across the Nordics.