Smart Citizen
Open tools for environmental monitoring
The Challenge
Generate open environmental data, promote awareness, and empower communities to take action.
Our Solution
The Smart Citizen project creates tools to collect environmental data, visualize it, and share it with the world through the Smart Citizen Platform.
Type of Project
Smart Citizen is an open source project, founded and maintained by Fab Lab Barcelona.
Achievements
Smart Citizen has been part of projects involving sensors all around the world, with thousands of sensors and users. Check it out on the Smart Citizen Platform!
We need new methods to decide how we want to shape our future while respecting humans and ecosystems. Anybody should be able to collect, share and contribute environmental data and take action in environmental protection. Smart Citizen is a platform that helps do this by connecting people, data and knowledge with open source tools and technologies that are consciously designed to bring power back to the people.
Smart Citizen
Smart Citizen offers an alternative to centralised data production and management systems used by large corporations that constitute the driving force behind the smart city concept. The project has collaborated with communities around the world, helping them collect and share environmental data, making it available for anybody that wants to use it.
Smart Citizen began in 2012 in Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC. The project develops open technological tools for environmental monitoring, as well as methodologies for participatory sensing and community action.
At a technical level, the project has developed several iterations of the Smart Citizen Kit, as well as an open data platform with thousands of sensors and users around the world. One iconic version of the hardware was launched in 2019, together with Seeed Studio: the Smart Citizen Kit 2.1, including a multi-sensor solution capable of measuring particulate matter, noise, temperature, humidity, light and a wide variety of add-ons and sensors. Since then, several iterations and improvements of the Smart Citizen Kit 2.X series were released by Fab Lab Barcelona together with the worldwide community, including the recently introduced SCK2.3 version, in 2024.
The project has also worked with communities worldwide to help them collect data, either directly, or through the community forum. Smart Citizen works with citizens and communities, research institutions and universities worldwide, providing everything that it develops in an open manner, helping anybody adapt these solutions to their own local contexts.
Smart Citizen’s hardware and software is released under free and open source licenses. Over the past years, Smart Citizen has been part of multiple projects, both at local and EU levels, including EU-Commision funded research projects such as more4nature, CitiObs, TwinAIR, MINKE, Making Sense, iSCAPE, Organicity and GROW Observatory.
As always, the latest version, the Smart Citizen Kit 2.3 is open source and is more flexible and robust than ever. It is available for purchase through Seeed Studio and distributors. For customizations, you can contact [email protected]. The Smart Citizen Platform is fully open-source as is the project documentation.
Who is it for?
Anyone who wants to be involved in a local sensing initiative that connects to a global community.
Citizens and local communities
Any citizen who feels empowered to start collecting environmental data and founding communities on the premise of making urban habitats better.
Educators
For educators to use freely accessible tools and methodologies, giving environmental awareness a hands-on toolkit.
Researchers
For researchers looking for open data capture and analysis tools to understand the relationship between people, environment, and technology using low-cost and open tools.
