Welcome to Citizense
Citizense.com: Putting smart city technology and skills in the hands of:
- Local residents
- Community groups
- Advocates
- City authority staff
- Independent businesses and startups.
Be a part of the community behind citizense.com. This blogsite is open to anyone who wants to learn or share skills in how local citizens can participate and make use of the emerging smart city technology.
Cities around the world are taking up a ‘smart cities’ approach to place-making. This generally involves the following elements:
- Increased use of sensors to measure and monitor environmental factors such as air quality, noise pollution, flood risks, and public lighting
- Administrative move towards making aggregate city data open and accessible to anyone
- Creation and encouragement of external development of apps for citizens and visitors to engage with a city on cultural, planning, environmental and social levels.
Looking online at key sites like IBM’s Smart Planet website suggests that the smart cities focus is widely implemented and working for everyone. The reality is that even the most advanced cities are struggling with a holistic smart cities approach that addresses everything a local area could potentially be implementing. Even worse, citizens are being left behind with limited access to the technology or training in how to make use of emerging opendata and sensor technologies in partnership with city authorities.
This website aims to provide local residents, community groups and local businesses with a forum to discuss your knowledge and skills needs to make use of smart city technology in your local area.
Please subscribe to our email alerts, follow us on twitter or start a conversation on our facebook page while we set up this website and create more opportunities for individual involvement and community participation. Our first goal is to have a fully functioning website and community forums in place by October 2012, in time for a launch at the next Smart Cities Expo, being held in Barcelona.
