Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Research Fund/Wikidata in Sociable Smart Cities

statusnot funded
Wikidata in Sociable Smart Cities
start and end datesJuly 2023 - July 2024
budget (USD)50000 USD
fiscal year2022-23
applicant(s)• Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas, Marios Magioladitis, Michalis Stefanidakis and Konstantinos Oikonomou

Overview

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Applicant(s)

Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas, Marios Magioladitis, Michalis Stefanidakis and Konstantinos Oikonomou

Affiliation or grant type

Ionian University

Author(s)

Eleni Christopoulou, Dimitrios Ringas, Marios Magioladitis, Michalis Stefanidakis and Konstantinos Oikonomou

Wikimedia username(s)

Eleni Christopoulou: User:Eleni.Christopoulou

Dimitrios Ringas: User:DimitriosRingas

Marios Magioladitis: User:Magioladitis

Project title

Wikidata in Sociable Smart Cities

Research proposal

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Description

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Description of the proposed project, including aims and approach. Be sure to clearly state the problem, why it is important, why previous approaches (if any) have been insufficient, and your methods to address it.

We defined “A sociable smart city is one rich in infrastructure, which combines and exploits both people and artificial intelligence, empowering and engaging people in activities where urban social interactions thrive aiming to advance the quality of life and culture”. Our research on sociable smart cities over the years has led to a series of applications that promote outdoor learning activities, raise awareness of cultural heritage and local history, enhance smart tourism experiences and activate citizens’ engagement and participation.

Our aim in this project is to research how Wikidata, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia data sources can interact with sociable smart city applications highlighting the value of open data in smart city activities. Our main research questions include:

RQ1: Which data can be exploited from Wikimedia sources in order to support sociable smart city applications in various domains of city life?

RQ2: Are the available tools for extracting data from Wikidata and Wikipedia suitable to support innovative context-aware applications?

RQ3: How users perceive the use of Wikimedia free knowledge in sociable smart city applications and how eager is a community to share and open its own created data.

RQ4: Can Wikimedia benefit from the interaction with our applications via encouraging users and stakeholders to edit and share more data?

Our methodology follows:

Focus on four main domains of a sociable smart city: learning activities, cultural heritage, smart tourism experiences and citizens’s engagement and participation

Design appropriate applications following a user experience design methodology and identify the necessary Wikimedia data for each domain.

Evaluate the available tools for extracting Wikidata and we’ll adapt or create the necessary ones towards our goals.

Collaborate with various communities in order to use and evaluate our applications assessing how users perceive and recognise the value of Wikidata and Wikipedia via them. Specifically we will work with schools and universities, museums, libraries, archives and other cultural heritage bodies, smart tourism innovators as well as local communities and municipalities.

Highlight the value of open data and the importance of sharing data aiming to accentuate the role of Wikimedia as global free knowledge.

Our final goal is to provide the community with tools and methods to create their own sociable smart city applications which interact with Wikidata.

Personnel

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N/A

Budget

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Approximate amount requested in USD.

50000 USD

Budget Description

Briefly describe what you expect to spend money on (specific budgets and details are not necessary at this time).

Institutional overhead - 5.000: Ionian University 10%

Salaries - 21.000: salaries for five researchers: develop proposed applications, collaborate with communities to evaluate our research, write research papers and organise dissemination events

Equipment - 12.000: laptops for the development and mobile devices to evaluate the applications

Software - 1.000: overleaf collabator, grammarly

Open Access Publishing Costs - 11.000: at least 2 paper conference registration and 4 journal articles

Impact

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Address the impact and relevance to the Wikimedia projects, including the degree to which the research will address the 2030 Wikimedia Strategic Direction and/or support the work of Wikimedia user groups, affiliates, and developer communities. If your work relates to knowledge gaps, please directly relate it to the knowledge gaps taxonomy.

Our project shares the vision of the Wikimedia 2030 by creating sociable smart city applications using Wikimedia as the main source of knowledge. We follow 2030 Wikimedia SD: Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Improve User Experience, Identify Topics for Impact and Innovate in Free Knowledge; we aim to increase awareness on Wikimedia via innovative SSC applications making free knowledge accessible and evaluate how such applications and Wikimedia can impact users and encourage them to edit and create content.

The domains of apps aim the UN Sustainable DG: Quality Education, Gender Equality and Sustainable Cities and Communities. We will collaborate with the Wikimedia Community UG Greece and Wikimedia affiliates from CEE.

Dissemination

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Plans for dissemination.

Publish our results on conferences and journals

Present the outcomes of our research in Wikimedia Conferences, like Wikimania, WikidataCon, Wikimedia Summit, Wikimedia CEE Meeting and Wikimedia Hackathon

Share the source code of our applications and tools in GitHub

Organise workshops with local stakeholders and communities to evaluate and get feedback on our research

Organise live lectures and demonstrations to communities and institutions

Create a network of participants in various domains

Past Contributions

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Prior contributions to related academic and/or research projects and/or the Wikimedia and free culture communities. If you do not have prior experience, please explain your planned contributions.

Dr. Christopoulou and Dr. Ringas have defined the term “Sociable Smart City” and designed various applications promoting their vision; focusing on smart cities, smart tourism experience and computer mediated cultural and learning experiences. Mr. Magioladitis is the president of the Wikimedia Community UG Greece. In 2022 he co-organised the Ionian Wikithon and he is in the scholarship committee of Wikimedia Hackathon 2023. Prof. Oikonomou has coordinated various research projects and his research interests include cultural heritage and museum-augmented experiences.

Prof. Stefanidakis research activities include interlinking and transformation of public data into open linked datasets and development of platforms for open data dissemination.


I agree to license the information I entered in this form excluding the pronouns, countries of residence, and email addresses under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. I understand that the decision to fund this Research Fund application, the application itself along with all the information entered by my in this form excluding the pronouns, country of residences, and email addresses of the personnel will be published on Wikimedia Foundation Funds pages on Meta-Wiki and will be made available to the public in perpetuity. To make the results of your research actionable and reusable by the Wikimedia volunteer communities, affiliates and Foundation, I agree that any output of my research will comply with the WMF Open Access Policy. I also confirm that I have read the privacy statement and agree to abide by the WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes