Involving Citizens into Mapping of Illegal Landfills and other civic issues in the Czech Republic

Session A4: Smart and Mobile Devices Used for Environmental Applications

Today's smartphones can unlock the full potential of crowdsourcing and take eParticipation to a new level. Users are allowed to transparently contribute to complex and novel problem solving. Engagement of citizens is still challenging but the proliferation of smartphones with geolocation have made it easier than before. The paper introduces the environmental project called ZmapujTo.cz. This project is primarily intended to fight illegal waste dumps in the Czech Republic. The idea is to use the potential awareness of the broader public about the environmental and economic drawbacks of illegal landfills. We developed a more efficient version of the web portal ZmapujTo using current specific information technologies, where we have extended its reporting capabilities. This new version enables reporting other civic issues, which is introduced in the paper. We also introduce "Uklid'me Česko" (Clean up the Czech Republic) which is a maiden event taking place in the Czech Republic. We explain how ZmapujTo is applied in this event and the ICT tools that are offered to volunteers and organizers for communication and management of the event.