Project acronym: UrbanSensing

Project full title: UrbanSensing

Project site: urban-sensing.eu

Duration: 24 months – Completed

Programme: 7th Framework Programme – Capacities programme

Type of project: Research for the Benefits of SMEs

Goals: The ✳UrbanSensing project will bring a new product to the urban design, city planning and urban management market: a platform extracting patterns of use and citizens’ perceptions related or concerning city spaces, through robust analysis of User Generated Content (UGC) shared by the city users and inhabitants over social networks and digital media. The platform will allow to analyze users’ perceptions related to specific geographic areas and understand how population reacts to new urban policies within participatory mechanisms. It also gives insight in the lack of structures offered by institutions and city administrations and propose interventions, also within collaborative frameworks and to discover possible emergent structures and bottom-up initiatives responding to uncovered needs and desires. Next to this it will help to understand how specific user groups use public spaces and for instance, identify locations suitable for design interventions.

The two-year ✳UrbanSensing project involves six European Partners, that all contribute their specific expertise and skills in the fields of the project. The Consortium includes 3 SMEs:

• Accurat (Italy)
• LUST (Netherlands)
• Mobivery (Spain)

and 3 Research Performers:

• T-Connect (Italy)
• IT4all (France)
• Technical University of Kosice (Slovakia)

The tools and services provided by Urban Sensing will support the SMEs involved in the consortium in their decision-making processes through a set of personalization of the platform in three main information domains:

• Urban Policy assessment (Accurat)
• Communication, Exhibitions, Events assessment (LUST).
• Public transportation, commuting assessment (Mobivery)

Activities: Project coordination, support for architectural definition, design and development of the UGC collectors, UI development.

Dissemination: Area Magazine (Trieste Area Science Park) – Urban Sensing: studiare le dinamiche delle città coi social (Corriere.it)