WalkingCity - Global Urban Datafest

Walk Towards a Smart City

Summary

   WalkingCity's main goal is to aid the evolution of Miami towards becoming a smarter city by making it a more suitable ecosystem that supports a walking community. This transformation would directly impact and improve the local economy, environment and health of the population.

Full Description

   WalkingCity is the first reward-based walking community based off Miami, FL. You could now improve the city’s sustainability through each walk you take, obtain rewards such as redeemable discounts, coupons or gifts that could be exchanged in local businesses. By joining the walking community, you will save a significantly amount of money in gas, support the local environment and economy, while getting rewarded for it. It’s very simple!

    Once the user downloads the application, it will present a map focused on the current location and provide options to overlay relevant data, such as bus stops, routes, points of interest and more. Next, the user would proceed to record the walk and when completed the application will present the user with a summary of the walk.
    The data collected from the recorded walk is sent to the back-end for further analysis and distribution. It is updated on the web portal as well as in the rewards section of the application. Based on this analysis, the user earns points that could be used to redeem discounts or coupons in local businesses.
    When a coupon is available, the user will be able to retrieve it through the application. In addition, the app would provide a QR code to be used for redeeming (Currently, the app presents a default QR code but in the future a QR code/Coupon system will be developed and integrated to WalkingCity).

    WalkingCity benefits the community in 3 key areas: Economical, Health and Environmental. When the user chooses to walk rather than drive, there is a potential saving in gas and parking. In addition, this scenario would produce a shift or redirection of the disposable income towards expenses that could replace car depency ones. Furthermore, this shift would directy impact the local economy by promoting the use of coupons or discounts in local businesses. Fostering local developments and economic well being.
    Regarding health, WalkingCity aims to reduce the amount of time a user would spend on their car when possible. This would potentially reduce the amount of time a person would spend commuting, which also reduces the probability of accidents. Also, it promotes an alternative to becoming sedimentary by providing incentives to those who choose to walk rather than to drive.
    Lastly, the environment would benefit from this system due to the reduction of CO2 emissions as well as the evolution of landscapes for the community to walk in.
    As a system, WalkingCity is composed of 3 core components: a mobile application, a web portal and a centralized cloud back-end. It was built with scalability and interoperability in mind, potentially a variety of devices or sensors could be programmed to interface with the system, which would improve its efficiency and performance. The following outline describes each one of these core components individually:

Mobile Application:

A native iOS mobile application written in Objective C
Utilizes iPhone's built-in M7 chip to track steps and motion activity
Integration with Parse's API (parse.com) to interact with the back-end
Real time data synchronization with the web portal (walkingcity.parseapp.com)
GPS capabilities to provide nearby relevant data and a localized experience
Built-in map implementation to display data obtained from Miami's Open Data portal

http://gis.mdc.opendata.arcgis.com/

A feed implementation based on redeemed rewards through WalkingCity

Customized social experience
User's reports of "flagged" areas or issues to collaborate on improving the walking community

Existing social networks integration to provide capability of "sharing" information about walks

Planned - Not yet implemented

Rewards feed based on user's available points and performance
Analysis of cumulative walks and their impact on the ecosystem

Steps count
Gas saved
CO2 emissions not emitted

Web Portal - Dashboard

Web application written in AngularJS
Integration with Parse's API to allow real time data synchronization
Display of cumulative data based on the community's walks as well as a personalized portal for each user to have a visual representation of their performance.
Graphs based on the 3 main categories