Browsing by Issue Date, starting with "2019-06-12"
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- Communication with citizens in the first EU citizen observatories experiencesPublication . Montargil, Filipe; Santos, VitorThis communication presents the emerging concept and reality of Citizen Observatories (COs). We offer a brief overview of its opportunities and its areas of application and discuss some central elements of the first generation of Citizen Observatories pilot projects’ funded by the European Union, between 2012 and 2016, in what regards communication with citizens. The concept of CO implies, according to the existing definitions, an open and shared information system dedicated to the collection of data on the environment and natural resources, using ICT, and the volunteer participation of individuals in data collection. The EU has adopted a more specific concept of CO in the projects funded, so that the resulting information complements existing earth observation systems (including the European Copernicus satellite program). In the 2012 In the 2012—2016 period five CO projects have been funded by the EU, covering different areas: natural waters monitoring, odour monitoring, air quality monitoring, flood risk management and a platform for citizen science surveys. These COs allowed to develop and test the concept’s implementation. According to our analysis, we can identify different communication strategies with citizens, in these projects, ranging from all-inclusive strategies (using websites, Android and IOS apps, both to collect and disseminate information) to more focused communication strategies. Besides this, awareness is also a critical issue for COs, since they need to attract a relevant number of citizens in order to justify their existence and to thrive. Most projects make extensive use of social networking sites (SNS), including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and Slideshare. Despite this use, however, it cannot yet be considered that COs reach a vast number of citizens. Rather, the number of citizens involved was very limited, in the first generation of pilot projects. But societal challenges may assume a more relevant role in the following stages, with the projects that will be developed between 2016 and 2020.
- Toward sustainable and smart cities in Africa: a review and challengesPublication . Dos Santos, Maria José Palma LampreiaThis paper aims to present the main challenges to overcome in order to have sustainable and smart cities in Africa in the future, by analyzing social, economic, environmental, and political problems in African regions/cities. This study is particularly relevant as the problems of sustainable development in this region and the task of finding the solutions to minimize them became world problems, since they will affect the world sustainable development. It is also important to note that although there are many studies in the scientific field of smart cities, few of them had analyzed the topic of smart cities and sustainability and none of them so far analyzed the complex situation in African cities nor brought to the scientific debate and forecast new insights about these topics. The holistic approach was used to analyze sustainable and smart cities in Africa is believed to be the first of its kind and hence has not been, to the best of our knowledge, produced elsewhere. This paper gives insights to stakeholders and public decision-makers about the way forward in the promotion and development of cities in Africa in a sustainable way, in order to foster research in these innovative areas. It also broadens new research opportunities to explore and bring more knowledge in smart sustainable cities in general and in Africa in particular.