Alessia Calafiore

Interactive Urban Maps for People with Autism Spectrum Disorder

This paper outlines the roadmap and the preliminary results of an interactive systems aimed at providing interactive urban maps tailored to people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It aims at involving ASDs in the design process to produce personalized services that can support their daily movements and task management, improving their autonomy and sense of agency.

MiraMap: A We-Government Tool for Smart Peripheries in Smart Cities

Increasingly over the last decade, there has been attention and expectations on the role that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) solutions can play in increasing accountability, participation, and transparency in the public administration. In addition, attention to citizen participation is more and more at the center of the debate about smart cities. However, technological solutions have been often proposed without considering the first citizens needs and the sociotechnical misalignment within the city, i.e., in peripheral area. This paper outlines the design and implementation process of a we-government IT tool, called MiraMap. The project has been developed in the Mirafiori District in Torino (Italy), a neighborhood, which is characterized by the problems of marginality and by several undergoing urban transformations with a very high potential for social and economic development in the next few years. This makes Mirafiori Sud a valuable case study environment to experiment new methods and IT solutions to strengthen the connection between citizens and public administration. The object of MiraMap, indeed, is to facilitate communication and management between citizens and administration in reporting of issues and claims but also in submitting proposals. Collecting and handling of this information in an efficient way are crucial to improve the quality of life in urban suburbs, addressing more targeted and better performed public policies. In order to achieve those results, we combined First Life, a new local social network based on an interactive map, with a business process management system for easing reports about claims and proposals to be handled. The research process involves an interdisciplinary team, composed by architects, computer scientists, engineers, geographers, and legal experts, with the direct participation of local administrators and citizens.

Tracking personal movements in urban environments: personalized maps for people with autism spectrum disorder

This paper presents the preliminary results of PIUMA project, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, which aims at tracking personal movements of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to support them in their everyday life.

SEeS@W: Internet of Persons meets Internet of Things for Safety at Work

SEeS@w faces the problem of safety in working environments in an innovative way, putting together objects and people, and the virtual and real word. We aimed at designing and developing a demonstrative prototype of an innovative ICT solution to monitor, evaluate and manage risks in a complex cooperative working environment. Data about risks are provided by workers themselves using interactive maps, according to the Internet of Persons paradigm. Maps are also fed by other data collected by networks of ambient and wearable sensors connected to the Internet, according to the Internet of Things paradigm. Maps display and bring all these data together, and can be therefore used by workers as a powerful instrument to coordinate people, manage risk issues, and improve safety at work. Thanks to the Living Lab methodology, we brought together the technical and human aspects of the project, testing the solution in terms of effectiveness, acceptability, usability and ergonomics.

First Life, the Neighborhood Social Network: a Collaborative Environment for Citizens

First Life is a platform for Computer Supported Cooperation aimed at fostering co-production (in the sense of the Nobel Prize Elinor Ostrom) and Do It Yourself initiatives, providing a virtual place connected via maps to the concrete reality.

FirstLife: From Maps to Social Networks and Back

Social network and web sharing sites represent a novel and ever-growing source of information that usually contains geographical information. In this chapter, we first present FirstLife, i.e. a specific social platform that has been recently awarded by a national-level competition in the “Smart Cities and Social Communities” context. FirstLife aims at fostering co-production (in the sense of the Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom) and Do It Yourself initiatives, providing a virtual place connected via maps to the concrete reality. Thus, the platform by itself is intended to involve the different actors in developing new services, from institutions to associations, from citizens to enterprises. We propose a set of methodologies to face such complexity in terms of data management, integration and smart functionalities.

Personalized interactive urban maps for autism: enhancing accessibility to urban environments for people with autism spectrum disorder

This paper presents an ongoing project, PIUMA, Personalized Interactive Urban Maps for Autism, with the aim to help people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) move and live within cities.