Cluj Geoweb

More and more people, objects and sensors are connected to the Internet, in what is now emerging as the Internet of Everything (IoE). The IoE is producing a never-ending flux of raw, unstructured data which can be distilled into information about social interactions, the built and unbuilt environment, traffic, air quality etc. Each minute, 1.7 million bits of information are generated, and the last two years have seen more digital data accumulate than all human history. Estimates point to 4 billion people regularly accessing the internet by 2020 and roughly 31 billion connected devices generating trillions of GB of data.

Collecting and processing this data helps to: (1) better understand the Network Society and (2) create a set of strategies and predictive simulations in the fields of architecture, urbanism, energy consumption, transportation etc.
The term geoweb refers to the technologies and Web 2.0 platforms integrated in Geographic Information Systems, in other words, the geoweb consists of data with a geographic location attatched to it.
As a result of this online activity, there are several types of online footprints, which show:
(a) relations and interactions between users;
(b) relations and interactions between users and the city's physical environment;
(c) users' psychological state, opinions, ideologies etc.
Websites such as Thingful show that networks of sensors connected to the Internet are starting to appear in Cluj.
Cluj Geoweb will include different stages of development and will explore different sorts of analyses based on:
(a) data collection;
(b) visualization of this data;
(c) in some cases, the creation of predictive models with agent-based systems.
Cluj Geoweb is an ambitious project which hopes to become inter and trans-disciplinary and will include multiple analyses.
We try to create a meta-narrative of the digital exoskeleton which is generated in, around, about and above Cluj. We
are interested in transforming this raw data in information and later knowldge relevant for understanding urban centers.
In other words - we want to transform the quantitative, unstructured, and continously generated stream of data from people, objects and sensors connected to the internet - in information, and knowledge relevant for architecture, urban planning, local authorities, even sociology.

What this project does:
- creates maps which show gelocated data from social media over Cluj
- writes a (meta)narrative on areas of the city where users are producing social media content

Aplicability:
- help in decision making with urban strategies which are correclated to the realities of the city and the needs of their users for urban planners and decision makers
Why is it new:
- as far as we know, no such a study has been done on any city in Romania until now