DivAirCity: Developing digital tools for Citizen Engagement and Climate Neutral Cities

The rapid urbanization and challenges related to climate change challenges demand innovative technological solutions to achieve climate-neutral cities. Innovative technologies, however, can tackle the lack of awareness among citizens, enhancing their participation in a sustainable urban transformation process. The DivAirCity project promotes Nature Based Solutions (NBS) to improve air quality and decarbonization in EU cities. It has also developed an application, which incorporates a hybrid platform, designed to promote citizen engagement. As a core element of the DivAirCity project, this application motivates citizens participation, by tracking their routes and modes of transport, incentivizing eco-friendly behavior, through a blockchain-based tokenization approach and a traditional backend system. The application is not limited only to the above functionalities but acts as an enabler to behavioural change in the city, promoting diversity, inclusion and sustainable urban mobility. The scope of this paper is to present the different functionalities of the DivAirCity application, as well as its overall structure combining a framework for blockchain and cloud services. The DivAirCity app can also serve as an educational tool, encouraging eco-friendly behaviors and informing citizens on hybrid systems’ practical use. Moreover, its citizen-generated environmental data could be exploited by universities for research on urban sustainability. Students can also benefit, since the app can be utilized as an interactive platform to get a deeper insight in decentralized technologies, through hands-on engagement.