Throughout history, there have been severalinitiatives from organisations, countries or regionsto unify people, share economy and assets, or divide the responsibilities between each member of a group.
However, several initiatives that involve giving control to the masses have ended up being politicised, or created debates on whether one economic system is better than the others.
In recent years though,new forms of economy and sourcing,driven by communities of people sharingbeliefs, ideals or goals have been developed; especiallythanks to the internet, and a world that is more connected and more aware of the need ofsmart solutionseveryday.
Indeed, we have been part of the success of models such ascrowdfunding,decentralisation of currencies withcryptocurrencies, and also,an important shift on the way we create and innovate thanks to crowdsourcing: a sourcing model that is empowering individuals and organisations with the help of the “crowd”.
Understanding Crowdsourcing and Smart City
When we talk aboutsourcing, we are mostly talking about the individuals or companies thatuse their knowledge, skills and resources to complete one or more tasks within a business.
If we add the wordcrowdbefore, then we are talking not about specific individuals or companies hired, butpretty muchanyonewho has the skills and the motivation to contribute, whether it is公益性服务or in exchange for a fixed rate.
This way,crowdsourcingcan be defined as a form of sourcing wherealmost everybody can contribute to the completion of different tasks, whether they have been previously defined, or they have appeared out of necessity; and it mostly occurs on the internet.
One famous example of this model isAmazon Mechanical Turk,a crowdsourcing platformwhere businesses and individuals can publish tasks with a fixed price for users within the site to complete them. Especially, tasks that cannot be automated yet.
However, not all forms ofcrowdsourcinghappen entirely online, as the internet is rather the key ingredient to keep everybody aligned, informed and aware of everything that is happening.
With this in mind, otherforms of crowdsourcingmayinclude initiatives from organisations, such as governments, to request people for something, such ascreative and innovative solutions for cities’s concerns.
The health, new technology andenergy sectors, among others, have already found their place in the challenges for innovation! You have probably heard of smart homes and “smart” gadgets such as Google Home, but what happens if we apply this technology to an entire metropolitan area? In this case, we talk about“smart cities”and crowdsourcing actively contributes to their development.
Asmart city is an urban area that uses information and communication technologies,Internet of Thingsanddevicesto collect data and efficiently manage resources based on this data (Big Data). The resources concerned include waste management,energy efficiency, traffic and public transportation, etc. Barcelona for example, has adopted intelligent technologies in their municipalities and used crowdsourcing to best meet citizens’ needs:
- In Barcelona, the city council uses theDecidim.Barcelona crowdsourcing platformto look for innovative solutions.
- The communication company Deutsche Telekom uses theHeroX platformtoinvent digital services.
Many other crowdsourcing platforms exist to help organisations and individuals around the world propose solutions for a faster digital transformation, such asCivocracyorCitizenLab.
众包如何contributes to develop the cities of tomorrow
We are living in asmartage. We are always connected thanks to the use of smartphones, our houses are starting to become smart and theIoTis making our devices smarter, too. Now, we are also taking the first steps towardsmoving from our current cities to smart cities.
使用创新技术y and the internet are of coursekey tools for cities to become smart, but the collaboration ofsmart humansis more important than ever if we really want cities to adapt to our needs, rather than continue to adapt to models that are not tailored to us.
The first aspect is the integration of citizens, governments and authorities. Whether the figure of government will be maintained is something we cannot predict, but it is clear thatsmart governmentswill trust citizens, the ultimate judges of what a city really needs.
The City of London ran campaigns and contests such asthe“智能城市的挑战”,offering a prizeof £750,000to developers and startupswho designed the besttechnology applicationsand the most creative and efficient solutions to solve the city’s most well-known problems and necessities. The City of London launched other collaborative competitions, such as the “Smart Green Spaces” challenge and organised hackathons, such as “Climathon”.
The cities of tomorrowshould also provide its inhabitants with clean, public data on areassuch as energy consumption, level of pollution, traffic on the streets, etc. All of which can bepublic assets for anyone who would like to learn more or contribute with the city.
Cooperation and specialisation for faster innovation
We are lucky to live at this point in time, as nowadays we are able to stay connected with people all over the world, and it is possible for us to actuallybring our expertise or knowledge on one or more areas to help people, organisations and projects we believe in. Furthermore, Having more than one skill is something that is highly appreciated, as opposed to years ago where we were all expected to only focus on one particular area.
Cities can leverage this to finally make it possible tofind solutions for many of the problems they have faced and have historically been unable to solve, as well as continue to improve over time.
Crowdsourcing and Sustainability in Smart City development
Sustainability, renewable energy generation and consumption, and overall better energy consumption practices are all top prioritiesfor a city to be considered smart. And these major areas are some of the ones that require the most collaboration of people.
Nowadays, with the increasing interest and initiatives to adopt renewable energy sources, a new term has been coined:prosumers. In the field ofrenewable energy, this term refers to thoseindividuals and organisations producing their own energyand distributing the surplus, or consuming that of others when they haven’t generated enough.
Theuse of smart meters and other devices to collect dataof the energy consumption in houses, buildings or industries is yet another aspect wherecrowdsourcingbecomes fundamental, as this data can be distributed in order to generate the greatest insightsin order toachieve major energy efficiency.
Data in the palms of the crowd
If there is something that smart cities are going to need, generate and consume in massive amounts,that is data. But these data must be used intelligently, openly and in a more transparent way to actuallyopen the door to solutions and innovations from the crowd.
AI已成为一个基本的工具企业,薪酬anies and individuals to generate solutions in the form ofbusiness intelligence. However, whilemachine learning and AIcan automate tasks and process data, humans are still required in order to get real insights from this data.
As such, methodologies such asDataOpscan be applied at a macro scale on cities, for every citizen, and for every member of an organisation, to be able to see the data, to work with it, and hopefully, tocontribute with the development of the citythanks to the information contained on the different datasets.
This is an exciting moment in time, and many of the minds who dreamed ofa connected world, where almost everybody could contribute to something bigger, or for everybody to be her/his own boss, would be happy to know that this time has come already with the internet.
Crowdsourcingis just one example of the many ways we are finally embracing our collective nature. And as such, governments and citizens have the possibility, but also the responsibility of working together, generating ideas and solutions, andsharing what they know to keep on moving towards a more sustainable future.
