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ICT for Urban Resilience: digital tools for the City of Skopje

ICT for Urban Resilience: digital tools for the City of Skopje

Overview

From October 2018 to July 2019, SmartUp worked with the City of Skopje, with support from UNDP, to strengthen the city's capacity to plan and deliver services through ICT solutions. The aim was to show how modern digital tools can make data collection, risk analysis, and communication with citizens faster and more engaging for a public administration.

We built a survey on the implementation of the “Resilient Skopje” climate strategy, interactive flood-scenario maps, and EcoMarko, a chat-bot that shows citizens how their transport choices affect air pollution, supported by infographics, an online air-pollution calculator, and awareness campaigns.

The challenge

Too little know-how for modern data tools

The public sector lacked high-end tools for collecting data through interactive questionnaires and reports.

Flood risks that are hard to picture

Flood scenarios needed to be visualised so that planners and residents could see the risks, and the city had no tools of its own to do it.

New ways to reach citizens

Gathering and sharing information on air pollution called for fresh formats, such as a chat-bot, to engage people.

Activities and methods

Working with the City of Skopje, we designed and built:

  • “Resilient Skopje” survey – a custom survey on how far the strategy's activities have been implemented in each Skopje municipality, with full graphic design, a questionnaire, dissemination to partners, a report, and interactive Power BI results that users can “play” with to explore scenarios.
  • Flood story maps – interactive maps on the city's ArcGIS system showing multiple flood scenarios and the correlations between flooding, erosion, and more.
  • EcoMarko chat-bot – a friendly chat-bot that teaches citizens about transport and shows how much pollution their travel choices create, with fun ideas for reducing it.
  • Awareness campaigns – social media campaigns with strong visuals (infographics, posters, info-banners) and a Mailchimp newsletter campaign for zivotnasredina.skopje.gov.mk, with 4 newsletters a month for 8 months.

We also produced:

  • An infographic on air pollution
  • An online calculator for air pollution by cars, with animated results
  • A print-ready design of the flooding study
  • A facts picture to promote the project results

Outputs

Flood simulation: Upper Vardar and Kozjak dam

Interactive map in Macedonian. Simulation of extreme flooding from the Upper Vardar river and destruction of the Kozjak dam.

View Story map

Flood simulation: 6 August 2016, Skopska Crna Gora

Interactive map in Macedonian. Simulation of the extreme flooding of 6 August 2016 in the Skopska Crna Gora region.

View Story map

Flood simulation: Upper Vardar and Lepenec

Interactive map in Macedonian. Simulation of extreme flooding from the Upper Vardar and Lepenec.

View Story map

Flood simulation: torrential watercourses

Interactive map in Macedonian. Simulation of flooding from torrential watercourses.

View Story map

Planning similar work?

SmartUp can support research, co-creation, facilitation, digital tools, implementation, or learning documentation for related programmes.

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