Mobile Crowdsensing Platform

This platform uses cloud computing to gather and organize real-time data from micro-sensors in smart communication devices such as smartphones, tablets, or wearables. Instead of creating a smart grid or ubiquitous surveillance methods to collect data, citizens can individually opt-in with their devices, creating a powerful network of distributed sensors. By collectively extracting information about the environment, weather, urban mobility, and other useful sensory information, crowdsensing platforms could record, measure, map, and offer visualization of massive crowdsourced data in order to access common interest themes.

A variety of mobile-phone applications use crowdsensing today to help millions of users avoid traffic congestion and help decrease air and sound pollution levels, as well as measuring large-scale phenomena related to public-works issues such as damaged or broken public property (e.g., traffic light outages, potholes, etc.). A Mobile Crowdsensing Platform can also be used to measure pollution levels in a city or water levels in estuaries, monitor wildlife habitats, or utilize microphones in mobile phones to control noise levels in communities. Furthermore, by tracking the movements of thousands of people and correlating this with the time and speed of travel, it could synchronize the public transportation network of a big city with its inhabitants' daily habits and lifestyles.

Gender Equality

Challenges

• This platform raises different privacy concerns as it collects sensitive data from citizens (such as the user's location or interests) and needs to constantly update its cybersecurity measures in order to keep up with emerging threats to citizen data.

Opportunities

• By crowdsourcing areas with high crime rates or attacks, this technology may highlight risky spaces for women, trans, and non-binary individuals.
  Helps marginalized people access cities more safely and actively participate in decisions that were previously handled only by those in power.