Community-Driven Cartography
Community-Driven Cartography is a digital safety map defined, updated and shared within a community. Users customize which datasets to incorporate into their map based on the communities they identify with. With a wearable device as the interface, users can gesture when they do or do not feel safe in their location to update the safety index and receive the safest route to their destination.
Context
Safety is a big concern for everyone, especially vulnerable and historically marginalized people in unfamiliar locations. This project proposes a new form of social and cultural interaction in a city using self-tracked data for collective benefit. Today, self-tracking is an independent behavior primarily for individual use. Contemporary data-driven systems don't focus on "Groups" or "Communities" but on individuals and categorize people without an identity. Encouraging people in different communities and cultures to contribute to safety maps would provide more trusted and customized safety information and help elevate the diverse safety requirements needed by communities under threat to establish a more just society.
What is the problem? Why is it important in the world?
Users choose a community during the onboarding setting
During the onboarding, users select a community to which they belong. The answer is necessary for community-building features later on.
In this prototype, whereas gender identity is a question, it is possible to ask about race, geographical information, or other attributes that form communities.
Highlights
Each user defines safety by factors including information from peers
One of the onboarding steps asks users which attribute they'd feel safe and unsafe and how much. Sliders enable them to input their safety at a granular level and the app to reflect their preference.
Users also decide how trustworthy the safety information is from members of the same community.
Users can update the safety map for other members of their community
The app offers users a peer mapping program in which they can update a map in real-time by sending safe/unsafe signals when they move around a city.
While the onboarding setting, users can decide which gesture they want to use to send signals with a wearable. It is also an option for users to create an original motion.
Customized Safety Map
Based on a combination of user inputs and selected safety databases, the backend system calculates a compound safety index displayed as a range-defined colored layer composed of hexagonal cells overlaid on the map. Users can adjust the color scheme to represent their community identity better or obfuscate the map's meaning to others.
Fast and Safe Routing
The app algorithm generates fast and safe routes for the user that incorporate the road length and safety index.
Values
Compared with similar services, such as safety map applications for women like Safe & the City, this project is unique because of the custom communities, discreet interaction, and real-time information. Community-driven Cartography allows for customized communities for marginalized and intersectional individuals to feel supported, not only a specific group. Instead of a brightly lit smartphone, the wearable device provides the user with a discreet means of signaling a safe or unsafe area. The safety map's real-time feedback offers relevant information in moments of crisis and gives users peace of mind when building confidence navigating the city.
Why is it different from similar projects in the same area?
Today
In the future
Impact
Trust in civic institutions is waning as politics become more derisive and positions of authority are questioned. But in activist and grassroots contexts, individual experience on the ground is trusted. The Memiro Community-driven cartography project believes smart cities start from citizens within. This project aims to elevate the value of personal data aggregated to help social and cultural collectives. Expanding it could decentralize data usage and support marginalized peoples to regain data ownership.
While the project's focus is safety mapping, it has the potential to facilitate social events or cultural hot spots to create a more vibrant urban life for people in each community. With these features, city governments and social sectors could leverage the anonymized data to develop infrastructures and services that better serve the needs of citizens, specifically those most in need of support.