Citizens@City mobile application for urban problem reporting

Abstract

Urban problems, such as holes in the pavement, poor accesses to wheelchairs or lack of public lighting, are becoming pervasive. Despite the fact that most of these problems directly affect life quality and sometimes even safety, not everyone has the readiness or initiative to report them to the proper authorities. This fact makes these "black spots" difficult to identify and the repairing process slow. Citizens@City is an Android mobile application that allows the general population to play a more active role in the identification of these problems by reporting them to the proper authorities in a simple and fast way. Moreover, citizens will have the possibility to follow the identification and repairing processes, and know at a given moment its status (e.g. identified, repairing scheduled, solved). Additionally, it will also allow the proper authorities to identify and manage the reported problems, from their identification until they are solved. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.