Why build a "Green Watch"?
Only 10 public sensors measure air quality in Paris!
Coproduce environmental measures with citizens,
Imagine new urban services,
Add a playful, aesthetic and sensitive dimension to the objective of sustainable cities.
In many cities in the world, projects tend to involve citizens in environmental measures as a complement to "high resolution" measures such as those of AIRPARIF. The green watch / Citypulse is part of this move where the citizenship dimension is obvious, and it feeds it in three ways:
1. An approach to product and associated services design, in order to make the environmental measure a daily and familiar action,
2. The gathering of public territorial actors, companies, researchers and associations, to make sure that the project enhances knowledge and debates on the Urban Environment without opposing official measures to that of the citizens’,
3. The opening of the device, via the platform CityPulse which will host other measures from other physical devices.
What are the project's components?
The object: the "green watch" is a familiar object, aesthetic and it belongs to everyday life. It carries a watch, a GPS chip, a Bluetooth chip, and ozone (O3) and noise (dB) sensors. On request of its holder or at a scheduled time, the watch measures and saves indices. Those measures are « low resolution » ones, which makes it possible to use light sensors and avoid maintenance. They indicate whether the air quality is, for example, "good", "correct" or "bad".
The mobile phone
Those qualitative values are returned to the user via the screen of his mobile phone: in the image of the eye, the color of the pupil varies according to air quality, and that of the iris to the level of noise.
Finally the watch sends the measures via the mobile phone to an open platform either in real time (via the mobile carrier) or by synchronization in the evening (like an iPod).
The platform: Citypulse All the measures are time-stamped and geolocated, then saved on the platform. Citypulse makes these data available to anyone who wants to use them and who committed to an ethical charter. These data can be used for public matters (eg mapping, identification of hot spots, public debate), as well as citizen (warning, alternative analysis...), artistic, and business matters (eg services for people suffering from asthma). Its open specifications will enable it in the future to incorporate other measures from other devices than that of the green watch, wherever they come from..
Open and sharable monitoring and observation. The ultimate goal is to change the approach to the "sustainable city". To do this, the project will involve from the beginning institutional and private actors and associations. They will define together the overall governance system, its success criteria, its rules of use. They will analyze all the benefits of the experience, from observations conducted by a university laboratory
What is it all about?
The experiments that will take place should enable :
To test the techniques and architectures used,
To make the Citypulse platform lively and make possible use of data for different actors: public institutions, researchers, artists, businesses, activists…
To produce and share feedback while keeping in mind developments of the project.
The results of experiments will be made public.
Experiments Programm
15th May, 2009 : « apéro festif » with residents of the 2nd arrondissement of Paris and our partner Quartier Numérique (Digital District) : we will present the prototypes for the 1st time to general public and will propose participants to travel in the area with the green watch. Mapping in real time will enable to visualize the course of the holders of the green watch and collectively and publicly comment on ozone and noise measurements registered by the participants.
As part of “Future en Seine”, several events are scheduled :
22-25 May: green watch week-end in Montreuil. In partnership with the Maison Populaire de Montreuil and the environmental club of the College Jean Moulin, 15 teenagers will wear a green watch throughout the weekend. On 25 May, the results of these broadcasts will be discussed collectively with the students.
4 June : green watch workshop in the Cité des sciences et de l’industrie. Under the Hyperurbain 2 symposium co-organized by the Fing and Paris 8, this workshop will provide an opportunity for researchers to wear the green watch and discuss the results. Moreover, thanks to the first prototypes of the green watch, they will discuss the new opportunities for urban services and urban mapping.
29 May-7 June : green watch at the wikiplaza, place de la Bastille, Paris. Visitors to the wikiplaza equipped with green watches will share daily and collaborative mapping.
