Citybook: A mobile crowdsourcing and crowdsensing platform

Abstract

Digital technology allows an individual to simultaneously interact with a multitude of people and with smart objects, namely intelligent devices and electronic programs. As a consequence, new modalities for involving citizens in participatory processes can be applied.Applications can be created with the goal of collecting data as well as ideas, suggestions, and opinions from the multitude of citizens at large, but citizens need to be motivated to participate and be able to trust that their privacy will be respected. In this article, we propose a mobile platform, called Citybook, that aims to provide citizens with a personal smart diary that includes itineraries, automatic generated searches, repositories for images and videos, and functions for sharing personal feelings, opinions, and suggestions with other users and with public services.We present the functional structure of this platform, which has been conceived in a perspective of smart and connected communities. It should also be able to integrate crowd sensing with existing data repositories via an OpenData approach.