Presentation at the 2016 ePart conference in Guimaraes, Portugal. Research in progress presenting a case study of a smart cities app, and discussing how the data can be used for increased citizen participation.

1. Using gamification to generate
citizen input for public transport
planning
Marius Rohde Johannessen
Ass. professor
School of business
9/7/2016 2016 eGov/ePart conference 1

2. • Example of so-called «smart» initiative
– Trafpoint – a digital ecosystem for smart urban transport planning
• Stealth democracy – How user-generated data can provide input for decision-makers
Key issues
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3. Background and motivation
• 50% + of world population in urban areas
• Cities take up 2% of the world’s space
• …and 80% of the energy
• Air pollution, energy, infrasttructure etc
• People will not stop moving to cities, so we
need to make cities smarter and more
sustainable
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4. Smart cities
• A label/statement/hype(?) that attempts to collect current technological and social matters
– IoT, urban plannling, sustainability, networks, participation…
• Objectives: Using ICT and networked technologies to:
– Improve environmental quality in urban spaces
– Optimize energy consumption
– Increase quality of life
– Deliver better public and private services
(Dameri and Coccia, 2013)
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5. Smart cities – ICT for
sustainability and growth
• Creating network effects between systems
– Economic, environment, social
• Wicked problems: Require collaboration
between a range of actors, disciplines etc
• Requires: Human and social capital (know how
and know who), willingness to change,
human-centered development
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6. (human) sensors – Smart City Lego
• Sensors are everywhere – smartphones, watches, Raspberry PI, Arduino...
• And they’re cheap, off-the-shelf, and possible to adapt to just about everything
• «Human» sensors
– Smartphones are full of sensors
• Accelerometer, camera, microphone, GPS, light, temperature, heart rate, barometer etc
– Coupled with 4G, these sensors provide massive amounts of data
– But we need people to actively use them, install apps and send data
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7. Research approach
• Purpose: Examine how sensor-based apps can be important tools for smart cities, and discuss
if these apps can be called participatory
• Time: November 2015, February 2016
• Data:
– (E-mail) interview, Workshop observation, Documents (legal, policy, planning)
• Analysis:
– Gil-Garcia (et al, 2015) Smart City framework
– Theoretical frame: Stealth/implicit democracy
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8. One example - Trafpoint
• Response to county-level innovation challenge:
«“how can we get more people to travel by public
transport, in a region where most people prefer to
travel by car?”
• Consortium with members from business, tech
industry and university
– Business development, app development,
supported by micro/nanotech research
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9. Trafpoint elements
• Mobile app
– Beacon/BT – registers people coming and going.
– Users build their environment profile based on miles travelled, and can share this in social
media, encouraging others to go green
• Automatic registration of people
– Video/motion-detection. Automatic registration of people entering and leaving
– Captures those without the app, bit provides less data
• Analytics and presentation with focus on transport planning
– Currently: daily statistics for each bus stop. Travel patterns.
– Virtual stops: Registers if people exit other places than regular stops
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10. Trafpoint
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Data input
Mobile app
Beacon
Video
Road authority DB
Google maps
Back end
Cloud servers
Hadoop DB
Analytics engine
Front end
Auto-generated reports
User-generated reports
Map view
End-user "game" profile

11. Trafpoint - gamification
• «The use of game-design elements in non-game contexts» (Deterding, 2011)
– Important for user-experience and engagement
• Important when developing the app
– A way of getting more people to install it, thereby creating more data
– And encouraging people to use the bus more often
• Points system (more points for travelling often by bus)
• Leaderboard
• Social media integration and competition
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12. Trafpoint – status and challenges
• Status at time of writing:
– Looking for partners to move out of pilot stage. Discussions with county and others
– Tech just as interesting for private sector, as people flow is important in malls, airports etc
• Challenges:
– Private sector funding can be a hindrance to further development
– How many apps do we want to carry on our phones?
• For cities, many intersting applications of sensors/smartphones/people. Transport,
environmental monitoring, fixmystreet, birdwatching etc etc
– Should government take control and create one app to rule them all?
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13. Ehm, ok…
So why and how is this eParticipation?
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14. Back to basics – What is eParticipation?
• Actors:
– Citizens and government
• Activities:
– Consultation (provides data to
decision-makers)
– Activism (promotes green transport)
• Effects:
– Civic engagement
9/7/2016 Sæbø, Rose, Flak (2008), Medaglia (2012) 14

15. Theoretical implications: stealth democracy
Stealth democracy
•People don’t care about
politics and dont want to
be involved.
•But they will volunteer
their time as long as it is
easy and of value to
them
Passive
crowdsourcing
•Make things easy
enough, and fun, and
people will participate
Implicit
participation
•Participation with little
or no effort, but
provinding valuable data
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16. Future work
• Theoretical development copuling stealth democracy, crowdsourcing and human sensors
• Because: Citizen involvement is essential if we are to acheive a more sustainable world
• Get more data
– Currently a lot of potential, little real world application
– IoT and related technologies are still being tried and tested,
and no one really knows what will happen
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17. Summary
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Mobile Apps
•Using built-in sensors to support
Implicit participation
•Provides input to decision makers through
Analytics
•Using
Gamification
•To attract users and
facilitate
Green smart cities

18. Thank you for listening
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mj@hbv.no
Twitter: @mariusjoh