URBANAGE

santander - use case 1: Age-friendly - route planner

Description and goal

The older people´s community:

The main target of the use case is the older people´s community. However, categories can be expanded to those with reduced mobility or, in general, with any of their physical or social capacities permanently or temporarily reduced.
Furthermore, it cannot be forgotten that, although senior citizens are considered the main objective because they are the most impacted by the problems raised and the benefits that the use case can bring, in general, the use case benefits the entire community. For example, it is clear that a breakdown in an escalator affects all citizens who use it differently, but what is certain is that it affects everyone to some degree.
The main objective is to improve the user experience in the city. Citizens must perceive those municipal services are attentive to their needs and take care of them.

Municipal civil servants:

We consider within this group municipal workers who are in charge of the daily operations of municipal services, including from technical staff to senior officials who have responsibility for decision-making.
It is known that the demand of citizens for better municipal services is increasing and unfortunately it is not possible to grow public resources in accordance with these needs. In this context, sustainability and efficiency are paramount. Any tool that facilitates decision-making in the shortest time possible for a public official is of benefit to citizens. In addition, the greater knowledge of the civil society’ needs will lead to better service and better use of available resources.

Politicians/Decision Makers:

Politicians have the responsibility to make the more significant / largest decisions in the development of the city. These decisions have a major impact as they affect both citizens in their daily lives and municipal civil servants in their work. This impact has a great impact in the city but they are usually made for the medium-term perspective, whereas some decisions have larger scale effects. In this context, the availability of information on the daily functioning of the infrastructure and the activities of the citizens in the city are of particular importance to be able to make the right decisions to match both aspects: resources with needs. In addition, accountability to citizens is more appropriate when informed decisions are made and the data that led to those decisions can be shown. In that sense, citizens can better understand the decisions made by being more aware of the difficulty of those decisions and those responsible for executing those decisions can be better aligned with them by having a more technical component.

Involved persona’s

The older people´s community:

The main target of the use case is the older people´s community. However, categories can be expanded to those with reduced mobility or, in general, with any of their physical or social capacities permanently or temporarily reduced.
Furthermore, it cannot be forgotten that, although senior citizens are considered the main objective because they are the most impacted by the problems raised and the benefits that the use case can bring, in general, the use case benefits the entire community. For example, it is clear that a breakdown in an escalator affects all citizens who use it differently, but what is certain is that it affects everyone to some degree.
The main objective is to improve the user experience in the city. Citizens must perceive those municipal services are attentive to their needs and take care of them.

Municipal civil servants:

We consider within these group municipal workers who are in charge of the daily operations of municipal services, including from technical staff to senior officials who have responsibility for decision-making.
It is known that the demand of citizens for better municipal services is increasing and unfortunately it is not possible to grow public resources in accordance with these needs. In this context, sustainability and efficiency are paramount. Any tool that facilitates decision-making in the shortest time possible for a public official is of benefit to citizens. In addition, the greater knowledge of the civil society’ needs will lead to better service and better use of available resources.

Politicians/Decision Makers:

Politicians have the responsibility to make the more significant / largest decisions in the development of the city. These decisions have a major impact as they affect both citizens in their daily lives and municipal civil servants in their work. This impact has a great impact in the city but they are usually made for the medium-term perspective, whereas some decisions have larger scale effects. In this context, the availability of information on the daily functioning of the infrastructure and the activities of the citizens in the city are of particular importance to be able to make the right decisions to match both aspects: resources with needs. In addition, accountability to citizens is more appropriate when informed decisions are made and the data that led to those decisions can be shown. In that sense, citizens can better understand the decisions made by being more aware of the difficulty of those decisions and those responsible for executing those decisions can be better aligned with them by having a more technical component.

Expected outcomes

Studies show that a regular physical activity helps older people to stay fit, prevent common diseases and loneliness. In addition, daily activities and obligations prevent frailty and social isolation. Hence the importance of seniors getting out and continuing their daily activities.

In this context, a system that facilitates mobility within the city is expected, mainly on foot, thanks to a planning tool that will include incident alerts. The system should provide the following functions:

find routes between specific places in the city minimizing mobility difficulties and take into account the particular needs of citizens, in particular those related to mobility, and provide additional information about the reasons a particular route is recommended to the user;
integrate an input communication channel that rely on incidents warning municipality system, out of the scope of this project, in urban infrastructures that hinder or impede paths/trajectories in the city, either in global city mobility (e.g. an incidence at the main entrance of the city) or for certain identified movements (e.g. a breakdown in an escalator). The flow of information of incidents will be bidirectional between City Council and the users;
simulate incidents on certain infrastructures in order to evaluate their impact on citizens. Selecting the infrastructures according to the schedules and the nature of incidents will facilitate the measure of the impact, with the aim to minimize it., e.g., to delay the execution of a work in a street until a certain date, to schedule maintenance operations on a specific day of the week or at specific hours, etc.;
produce reports with information about the demand and utilization of the different infrastructures based on the effective use of the system.

Regarding the different outcomes categories:

Social goal-related

An improvement in the transparency and efficiency of the functioning of the municipal services that influence citizens' mobility on foot, establishing a channel of communication adapted to the day-to-day needs of citizens and in particular of those particularly affected by changes and incidents in the city's infrastructures. This will increase daily outings in the city and the perception that the city is attentive to their needs and problems.

Policy related

From the point of view of public officials better and more efficient management of municipal and citizen-oriented resources and faster decision making. From the point of view of politicians, a progress in the development of Santander as a Smart City and an example of a good practice in the use of technology at the service of citizens and public officials.

Communication/co-creation/co-design related (storytelling, gamification)

Although many activities related to the use of technology for the improvement of public services have been developed and the city of Santander is committed to its development as Smart City, it is necessary for all stakeholders that a real impact can be seen in the city. This has been achieved previously with other initiatives, but it is necessary to develop new scenarios in the definition of a process of continuous improvement and expansion of municipal services under improvement.
This use case is one of those examples of improving public services to citizens in one of the aspects that can have the greatest transcendence such as mobility. Mobility is an area that has a great impact because it multiplies the effect of the number of citizens affected by the daily frequency of actions. Furthermore, as mentioned above, although the improvement of mobility affects citizens in general, the use case has been oriented to a segment of the population with an even greater sensitivity, demonstrating that it is possible to carry out actions for certain groups with bigger vulnerability.
In addition, the use case will reinforce the communication channels with citizens based on the technology to be used. Besides the usual channels of communication in line with today's society (social networks, web, etc.,) the City of Santander is currently developing a city App oriented to the service of citizens and visitors of the city. The use case can become part of this tool if it has the right features establishing synergies with other parallel activities that are being carried out. This App has a very broad set of components with which bidirectional communication links can be established. These results will improve the co-creation processes with citizens based on the information they provide.