A web-based participatory management and evaluation support system for urban maintenance

Abstract

The participatory support system for urban maintenance we present here: (1) lets citizens directly report neighbourhood issues requiring attention from urban maintenance services, (2) evaluates the priority of reported issues, (3) allows the allocation and management of resources and workforce on solving issues and (4) permits public tracking of their status. Unlike many existing platforms for collecting citizens reports, our system incorporates an explicit, transparent and publicly accessible evaluation model to prioritise issues and assign resources for their solution. This, we argue, is a crucial element to assure that the principles of transparency, publicity, accountability and equity are observed by the municipal government. After presenting the system's standard workflow, the evaluation model and an example application, we discuss its possible more general implications for citizen participation. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.