Mobile Edition
Print
Get the Mag
Weekly UpdatesThe ICING Messenger is a J2ME Instant Messaging mobile application, enriching city-to-citizen and citizen-to-citizen communication. It is a carrier independent service gateway for other J2ME applications (e.g. ILC). The iMessenger is built using the open instant messaging standard XMPP, which is rapidly gaining hold of the market and is used by Google amongst others. Users, managed by the back-end services of the IISYS component, can use their phones to open up chat sessions with fellow citizens, city officials or 'robotic' services such as Issue Reporting services. Public trials in Barcelona and Dublin have shown the utility and flexibility of these services.
The iMessenger also allows citizens to see how far away friends and neighbours are by using simple to understand icons. Naturally, the iMessenger carefully protects the privacy of citizens by giving them full control of when and to whom they show location information. However, citizens in Barcelona have found this service of great use in finding nearby neighbours and friends who have made themselves available to help each other--or just to keep in touch during the day.
The iMessenger software, once installed on a phone, provides limitless possibilities for designing customized services provided by the city, other citizens or the private sector. iMessenger gives a common, easy to understand and use interface to each of these services based on the idea of a chat or conversation. This of course also makes it far easier to provide these services in a wider variety of languages. Citizens in Dublin have used the iMessenger to report problems relating to accessibility and mobility and allowing them to send 'on-the-spot' multimedia messages reporting these issues.
The ICING Location Client (ILC)
The ability to locate a phone to a particular place means that you can very precisely know from where an issue has been reported. You can decide your response with reference to assets you know you have near that location. For example, a friend visiting you from out of town gets lost on the way to your house. By being able to report their location to you, you can find them. However, locating a phone, even a GPS enabled phone, is not straightforward.
The ILC was developed to use a combination of technologies to develop a location determination system that integrates the best features of all technologies available on mobile devices (WiFi, GSM, Bluetooth, GPS). By using all these technologies together, any disadvantage of an individual technology is diminished. The ILC is designed as software which is network-provider independent, privacy sensitive and zero cost (in terms of network resource usage), and which allows mobile devices to determine its location.
Unlike most existing location clients, the ILC can allow the user to identify his location even while indoors. This particular feature is an inherent part of ICING's ability to support communities and could enable people to connect to one another at major events in a broad range of outdoor/indoor venues. One can see, for example, on a personal level, if there any people from one's contact list within three kilometres of one's position.
The ICING Mobility Matrix
The Mobility Service is based on live traffic sensor information. It calculates the traffic density in the city and links it to the city's street map, thus providing an effective traffic monitor. The ICING Mobility Matrix allows realtime (seconds to minutes) monitoring of traffic flows across the city, facilitating decision support in terms of route choice, journey times and ongoing traffic management. In common with other elements of ICING, the ICING mobility matrix is capable of using a number of inputs relevant to that particular application--such as sensor data/inputs from blue tooth signals, specially adapted traffic cameras and counting coils.
The ICING3D
The ICING3D component allows rendering of three-dimensional models of cities or buildings in a web browser, using dynamic data from the ICING Urban Mediator. This architecture allows city planning departments to integrate the functionality of any ICING web application into the 3D User Interface. Through the ICING 3D tool, location based information relevant to a particular issue can be converted into 3D images appropriate to that particular issue The tool also allows the UI designer to determine which kinds of artefacts will be included in the scene.
For the citizen, the 3D interface provides a more tangible representation of an area than a map. The ability to dynamically switch elements in the space (e.g. showing how a new building would fit into an area) makes it easier for the citizen to easily visualise how local development plans would look when complete. While it is helpful to be able to see how a space or building will be completed, oftentimes a user also needs to know how local access will change as building progresses, e.g. which local roads will close and for how long, where public transport routes will be altered, and so on. Together, these tools offer the ability to analyse effects of development on one's own area. This promises a range of opportunities for civic engagement in the planning process, which need no longer be the preserve of the architect or town planner.
The ICING Integrating System (IISYS)
The IISYS is at the core of the integrated deployment of the broad range of ICING components. IISYS was designed and built as a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). A SOA has been defined as 'Services [that] interoperate with each other and can be accessed without knowledge of the underlying platform implementation'. This independence from the underlying, in ICING's case, city data-systems allowed the IISYS to be developed as a very light and flexible architecture that would facilitate integration of common user registration, be interoperable with existing data-systems in cities and various existing service provisions (customer care, public consultation) and multiple platforms for access (both input and output). IISYS is implemented as a series of distinct modules, each of which is 'charged' with handling a specific function.
ICING City testbeds
Each of the three participating cities provided a 'city testbed' for services developed in ICING. The Barcelona testbed required a variety of third party inputs and a link to the city's IRIS customer service system. This testbed included elements of city-to-citizen (Traffic management), citizen-to-city (issue reporting, ICING instant messenger, ICING icon recognition) and citizen-to-citizen (groups of likeminded citizens using ICING to cooperate among themselves).
The Dublin testbed involved the integration and development of city initiatives in wireless network infrastructure and accessibility policy. In Dublin, the Grangegorman WiFi/Bluetooth location testbed was a deployment of a small scale municipal wireless network incorporating deployment of location based services.
In Helsinki, the Arabianranta testbed focussed on multiple tests of the ICING Urban Mediator, which greatly facilitated the exchange of learning between cities--resulting in each municipality implementing the Urban Mediator in each testbed for different purposes appropriate to each city.
In Dublin, the ICING testbed enabled ordinary citizens or council workers to accurately report accessibility issues with a description, photograph and automatically determined location from their mobile phone or via the PC. This then provided work orders for Council crews to address issues. Users who were registered with the ICING system could then keep track of the issues they raised. In the waste management testbed, ICING used Daem software to allow users to report the state of public litter bins. This encouraged the City Council to adjust cleaning routes to ensure that the most 'active' bins could be emptied more frequently.
The Helsinki testbed focused primarily on multiple uses for the ICING Urban Mediator component which was used by a number of city departments, including the Helsinki Public Works Department which had been struggling with a growing number of non-indigenous rabbits in Helsinki. When the ICING Urban Mediator was introduced to the Department, they saw it as an opportunity to map how broadly the rabbits were distributed around Helsinki and at the same to collect opinions about rabbits from Helsinki residents. The trial lasted three months and during that time about 2400 visits to the ICING Urban Mediator web pages were made, along with 450 sighting reports. The users could report a sighting or damage done by rabbits, and more than 60 entries or comments were made to the discussion board provided for the residential association (HELKA).
Also in Helsinki, the city planning department used the IUM for a month-long trial mapping opinions, ideas and complaints regarding a local neighbourhood traffic safety plan. Residents could choose between three IUM widgets to report dangerous places, make improvements in traffic and report parking problems. The trial was started by introducing the plans and the IUM in an event organised by the Lord Mayor of Helsinki. He commented that IUM-type interaction tools are very beneficial in hearing citizen opinions. The trial was a great success with over 101 answers from local residents. The city department found the trial most useful because it allowed council to obtain input from affected citizens much earlier in the planning process.
Future exploitation of ICING
An important part of the project was an iterative approach to exploitation planning that considered the disparate aspects of potential business models, intellectual property management, open source software licensing, proprietary versus exploitable inputs, organisational objectives and agreed amendments to the terms of the consortium agreement. This approach managed to bring very different types of partner organisations with culturally different approaches to exploitation--through a consensus based loop which drew academic, commercial and municipal partners to a shared position on exploitation.
FEED