Live traf­fic count­ing by citizen

Fol­low­ing this approach, the project will be able to quan­ti­fy local road trans­port (cars, large vehi­cles, active trav­el modes and speed), pro­duce sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge in the field of mobil­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion, and co-design informed solu­tions to tack­le a vari­ety of road trans­port chal­lenges. More­over, the project will pro­vide cost-effec­tive data for local author­i­ties, at a far greater tem­po­ral and spa­tial scale than what would be pos­si­ble in clas­sic traf­fic count­ing cam­paigns, there­by open­ing up new oppor­tu­ni­ties for trans­porta­tion pol­i­cy mak­ing and research. 

Putting cit­i­zens at the heart of the inno­va­tion process

WeCount empow­ers cit­i­zens to devel­op evi­dence-led inter­ven­tions into the polit­i­cal dis­course on civic and envi­ron­men­tal issues. By putting cit­i­zens at the heart of the inno­va­tion process, the project seeks to over­come exist­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and soci­etal silos so that cit­i­zens can cham­pi­on a new per­spec­tive on road trans­port that take into account their own con­cerns in pur­suit of bet­ter qual­i­ty of life and more equi­table, healthy futures.

WeCount aims to change the way trans­port sci­en­tists and pol­i­cy researchers col­lect traf­fic count­ing and traf­fic impact data with the inte­gra­tion of cit­i­zens into trans­port mon­i­tor­ing and trans­late these into prac­ti­cal pol­i­cy messages.

WeCount goes beyond the state-of-the-art

The project aims at achiev­ing a true break­through by mak­ing cit­i­zen-col­lect­ed traf­fic data and sub­se­quent impact data, of dif­fer­ent types (speed, traf­fic vol­ume, modal split, air qual­i­ty), rel­e­vant and ​“unig­nor­able” for local pol­i­cy-mak­ers. WeCount aims to dras­ti­cal­ly reduce the cost of col­lect­ing traf­fic count­ing data (fac­tor 3 to 5), by involv­ing cit­i­zens in the data col­lec­tion process, lead­ing to traf­fic count­ing data for road seg­ments where cur­rent­ly this data is typ­i­cal­ly unavail­able. Fur­ther­more, the project aims to pro­vide evi­dence at unprece­dent­ed lev­el of spa­tial detail of the link between traf­fic and air pollution.

Build­ing on cit­i­zen sci­ence guide­lines and knowl­edge, WeCount’s ambi­tion is to build a durable and scal­able cit­i­zen sci­ence ​“ecosys­tem” that will lead organ­i­cal­ly to new activ­i­ties beyond the 5 use cas­es in the project, using the approach, tech­nol­o­gy and plat­form of WeCount. And final­ly, WeCount wants to cre­ate tal­ent­ed cit­i­zen sci­en­tists, nur­ture local cham­pi­ons and empow­er cit­i­zen activism.