SenseCityVity: Mobile sensing, urban awareness, and collective action in Mexico

SenseCityVity is a Switzerland-Mexico collaborative project between Idiap Research Institute and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), and the National Center for Supercomputing of the Instituto Potosino de Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnologica (CNS-IPICYT), supported by EPFL's Cooperation and Development Center (CODEV).

The project goal is to engage citizens as factors of social change through the use of mobile technologies as tools that can improve the understanding of socio-urban problems in cities, neighborhoods, and communities.

SenseCityVity is developed with the participation of a group of specialists in information technologies, psychology, media, and visual arts.

The project includes three stages. In the first stage (called the Urban Challenge), teams of young students will collect multimedia urban data with mobile devices and mobile sensing apps to map and document socio-urban problems collectively defined as relevant. The Urban Challenge takes place in Guanajuato City, Mexico, with students from CECYTEG (Center of Scientific and Technological Studies), a science and technology-oriented high school.

In the second stage, the collected data will be analyzed by computer scientists in Switzerland and Mexico, and shared with the students so they can use both raw and analyzed data to create mini-documentaries, which allow for group reflection and creation of specific proposals of solutions.

In the project's last stage, the documentaries will be presented in a local film festival, organized to share the work and proposals of SenseCityVity's young participants with Guanajuato City's society and authorities.

The SenseCityVity team includes

Daniel Gatica-Perez, PI
Social Computing Group, Idiap-EPFL, Switzerland
SenseCityVity.Science

Salvador Ruiz Correa, PI
CIMAT and IPYCYT, Mexico
SenseCityVity.Science

Brisa Carmina Sandoval Mexicano
Clinical psychologist, Mexico
SenseCityVity.People

Itzia Ruiz Correa
Media and communications, Mexico
SenseCityVity.Media

Carlo Olmos Castillo
Film maker and producer, Mexico
SenseCityVity.Art

Juan Luis Salazar Villanueva
Software engineer, Mexico
SenseCityVity.Apps

Beatriz Ramirez Salazar
Visual arts, Mexico
SenseCityVity.Support

Pointers to the project:

YouTube (turn on english subtitles):

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/SenseCityVity/1420771584831936