Development of a consensus-building smartphone app for community planning using e-assist bicycles (Keio Research Institute at SFC)

Case Study

■ Client

Keio Research Institute at SFC

■ Challenge

Building better communities requires gathering fine-grained input from residents, including the silent majority whose voices are rarely heard. Existing methods, however, fall short of capturing residents' opinions adequately.

■ Solution

・We developed a smartphone application that collects and analyzes residents' behavior and opinions.

・To gather residents' opinions, we adopted liquid democracy, a consensus-building approach that differs from the conventional models of direct democracy (where individuals cast their own votes) and representative democracy (where voting is entrusted to representatives chosen through elections). Under liquid democracy, individuals can delegate part of their voting power to others.

・As a first step, we collected data on residents' movements using GPS data from electric power-assisted bicycles.

・We integrated the GPS data from the electric power-assisted bicycles with the smartphone application and implemented features that collect and visualize residents' movements and their opinions on community development.