https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/tag/civic-technology/Civic TechnologyHugo Blox Builder (https://hugoblox.com)en-usSun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/media/logo_hu_8646b2b27455bd.pnghttps://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/tag/civic-technology/https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/trailblaze-chicago/Sun, 01 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/trailblaze-chicago/<div class="article-style"> <h2 id="motivation-and-approach">Motivation and Approach</h2> <p>TrailBlaze Chicago was an app for Android-owning cyclists in the Chicago area — one of the most bike-friendly big cities in America, and one that had worked hard to become so. But a city can only keep improving its network if it knows where new paths are needed, and that information sits with the people already riding.</p> <p>TrailBlaze recorded and anonymously reported a rider&rsquo;s tracks, letting them vote for new paths simply by carrying their phone while doing what they already enjoyed. It also gave the rider something back: a dashboard with distance, speed, and a map, plus the ability to review previously reported routes.</p> <p>The app came <strong>2nd in the Apps 4 Metro Chicago Grand Challenge</strong>, and <strong>4th in the Transportation Round</strong> — first among the not-for-profit entries.</p> <p>It was distributed through the Android Market and is no longer available.</p> <hr> <h2 id="related-work">Related Work</h2> <p>TrailBlaze has no paper of its own. The research questions it touches are treated in our crowdsourcing work:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2012/jrula-hotmobile12/">Crowd (Soft) Control</a> — HotMobile 2012</li> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2014/jrula-hotmobile14/">No One-Size Fits All: Towards a Principled Approach for Incentives in Mobile Crowdsourcing</a> — HotMobile 2014</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="people">People</h2> <p><strong>Lead &amp; PI</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/author/fabian-e.-bustamante/">Fabián E. Bustamante</a> (Northwestern University)</li> </ul> <p><strong>Students</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/author/john-rula/">John P. Rula</a></li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="related-links">Related Links</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/civic-apps/">Civic Crowdsourcing Apps</a></li> </ul> </div>https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/civic-apps/Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/civic-apps/<div class="article-style"> <h2 id="project-overview">Project Overview</h2> <p>Most of our crowdsourcing work points at the network: users&rsquo; own traffic and devices as a source of measurement about the Internet. These two apps pointed the same idea at the city instead, and were built for the Apps 4 Metro Chicago competitions in 2011 and 2012.</p> <p>The interesting problem in both is not collection but trust. Anyone can file a report; the question is which reports are real, which are duplicates, and which matter enough to act on. That is a validation problem, and it looks a lot like the one in crowdsourced network measurement, where a single client&rsquo;s view is cheap and unreliable and the value comes from reconciling many of them.</p> <hr> <h2 id="fixit">FixIt!</h2> <p>FixIt! crowdsources both the reporting and the <em>validation</em> of issues requiring city attention — broken streetlights, potholes, graffiti. Reports from one user can be confirmed or disputed by others nearby, so the system accumulates evidence rather than just a queue of claims.</p> <p>It took 5th place in the Apps 4 Metro Chicago Challenge, Community Round.</p> <hr> <h2 id="trailblaze-chicago">TrailBlaze Chicago</h2> <p>TrailBlaze Chicago applies the same approach to cycling: planning routes and reporting the current status of bike paths, where conditions change faster than any official dataset can track and the people who know are the ones riding.</p> <p>It came 2nd in the Apps 4 Metro Chicago Grand Challenge, and 4th in the Transportation Round — first among the not-for-profit entries.</p> <hr> <h2 id="software">Software</h2> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/">FixIt!</a></strong> — crowdsourced reporting and report-validation of issues requiring city attention.</li> <li><strong><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/trailblaze-chicago/">TrailBlaze Chicago</a></strong> — crowdsourced planning and status reporting for bike paths.</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="related-work">Related Work</h2> <p>Neither app has a paper of its own. The research questions they touch are treated in our crowdsourcing work:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2012/jrula-hotmobile12/">Crowd (Soft) Control</a> — HotMobile 2012</li> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2014/jrula-hotmobile14/">No One-Size Fits All: Towards a Principled Approach for Incentives in Mobile Crowdsourcing</a> — HotMobile 2014</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="people">People</h2> <p><strong>Lead &amp; PI</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/author/fabian-e.-bustamante/">Fabián E. Bustamante</a> (Northwestern University)</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="related-links">Related Links</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AquaLab Research Group</a></li> </ul> </div>https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/<div class="article-style"> <h2 id="the-story">The Story</h2> <p>FixIt! was an AquaLab project built around collaborative civic engagement, originally developed for the <strong>2011 Apps for Metro Chicago</strong> competition. It allowed citizens to report broken streetlights, potholes, graffiti and other public property issues requiring city attention.</p> <p>Once something was reported, FixIt! unobtrusively asked other users in the area to confirm or refute the request. The result was a curated, crowdsourced list of items for the city to act on — letting it dispatch personnel with more confidence that there was something to fix, and with a sense of which issues were affecting citizens most.</p> <p>That confirmation step is the whole design. Collecting reports is easy; knowing which ones are real, which are duplicates, and which matter is the part that makes the data usable, and it is the same problem that shows up in crowdsourced network measurement, where one client&rsquo;s view is cheap and unreliable and the value comes from reconciling many.</p> <p>It took <strong>5th place</strong> in the Apps 4 Metro Chicago Challenge, Community Round.</p> <h2 id="the-app">The App</h2> <p> <figure > <div class="d-flex justify-content-center"> <div class="w-100" ><img alt="FixIt! report screen: choosing a report type of &ldquo;Maintenance request&rdquo;, with the location marked on a map of downtown Chicago" srcset=" /project/fixit/screenshot-report_hu_1cc7ae34f11e003e.webp 400w, /project/fixit/screenshot-report_hu_d5e3db6cb1542b09.webp 760w, /project/fixit/screenshot-report_hu_f1cf3424a4b5eedf.webp 1200w" src="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/screenshot-report_hu_1cc7ae34f11e003e.webp" width="456" height="760" loading="lazy" data-zoomable /></div> </div></figure> <figure > <div class="d-flex justify-content-center"> <div class="w-100" ><img alt="FixIt! details screen for describing the issue" srcset=" /project/fixit/screenshot-details_hu_8186b9a6be6a2fc6.webp 400w, /project/fixit/screenshot-details_hu_a3168c59a84e1abc.webp 760w, /project/fixit/screenshot-details_hu_db35532d44e35ce1.webp 1200w" src="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/screenshot-details_hu_8186b9a6be6a2fc6.webp" width="456" height="760" loading="lazy" data-zoomable /></div> </div></figure> <figure > <div class="d-flex justify-content-center"> <div class="w-100" ><img alt="FixIt! confirmation request, asking a nearby user to confirm or refute someone else&rsquo;s report" srcset=" /project/fixit/screenshot-confirmation_hu_657f8b707c8be275.webp 400w, /project/fixit/screenshot-confirmation_hu_76559396964fe7ec.webp 760w, /project/fixit/screenshot-confirmation_hu_8a18f121a78dc410.webp 1200w" src="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/fixit/screenshot-confirmation_hu_657f8b707c8be275.webp" width="456" height="760" loading="lazy" data-zoomable /></div> </div></figure> </p> <p>Reporting, describing, and — the part that mattered — being asked to confirm somebody else&rsquo;s report.</p> <hr> <h2 id="related-work">Related Work</h2> <p>FixIt! has no paper of its own. The research questions it touches are treated in our crowdsourcing work:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2012/jrula-hotmobile12/">Crowd (Soft) Control</a> — HotMobile 2012</li> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/publication/2014/jrula-hotmobile14/">No One-Size Fits All: Towards a Principled Approach for Incentives in Mobile Crowdsourcing</a> — HotMobile 2014</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="people">People</h2> <p><strong>Lead &amp; PI</strong></p> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/author/fabian-e.-bustamante/">Fabián E. Bustamante</a> (Northwestern University)</li> </ul> <hr> <h2 id="related-links">Related Links</h2> <ul> <li><a href="https://aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/project/civic-apps/">Civic Crowdsourcing Apps</a></li> </ul> </div>