What was this project about?

This project engaged citizens in collecting spatially referenced mobility data pertaining to their patterns of active travel within their community. They used the outputs from this data to encourage and educate their community and local authorities about sustainable travel opportunities/barriers for the town, thus tackling issues of local transport-related pollution.

There were two levels of engagement. Firstly, through contributors who mapped the most effective/ relative quality of local routes. The project also engaged with those who experience mobility challenges, allowing them to collect their own data, but also in promoting a ‘buddy’ system and getting contributors to complete routes for them, thus facilitating inclusive design on new mobility networks. Secondly, citizen scientists were trained as to how to collect, analyse and generate visualisations using a Geographic Information Systems approach. The data was produced by the community for the community to encourage modal shifts in travel.  

The pilot built on the previous Zero Carbon Rugeley project that worked towards an innovative design for a town-wide Smart Local Energy System (SLES) in Rugeley (West Midlands, England). The pilot was led by the Institute for Sustainable Futures at Keele University.