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{{Paper
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|storemode=property
|title=Urbana: An Innovative Platform for Collective Awareness and Enhancement of Urban Agriculture - Abstract
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper32.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=Electra Athanatsiki,Ifigeneia-Maria Tsioutsia,Harry Nakos,Panagiotis Kalampokis,Theodore Dalamagas
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/AthanatsikiTNK022
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==Urbana: An Innovative Platform for Collective Awareness and Enhancement of Urban Agriculture - Abstract==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper32.pdf
Urbana: An Innovative Platform for Collective Awareness and
Enhancement of Urban Agriculture - Abstract
Electra Athanatsiki 1, Ifigeneia-Maria Tsioutsia 1, Harry Nakos 2, Panagiotis Kalampokis 2 and
Theodore Dalamagas 2
1
DRAXIS, Thessaloniki, Greece
2
Information Management Systems Institute, Athena Research Center, Marousi, Greece
Summary 1
The need to provide adequate food supplies for an estimated population of nine billion people
in the near future, while reducing the agricultural footprint on the environment, will be one of
the most critical challenges to be faced. To that course, scientists are looking for alternative
ways to ensure sufficient food production, without relying on the intensification of
conventional agriculture or land clearing. Urban agriculture, defined as the food-producing
activity within or around the limits of an urban area, could be one way to increase food supplies,
utilizing the already cleared spaces and areas.
Urban agriculture has multiple positive impacts on societies. To begin with, it provides food
security to urban farmers and fresh goods to city markets, with little to no environmental impact
regarding transportation. In addition, urban farming fosters social inclusion and improves
gender equality, as it can be practiced by any resident regardless of their social status or gender.
Finally, it is observed that air quality and biodiversity are improved, while city waste is
reduced, in the areas where urban agriculture is applied.
Despite the various ecological and social benefits of urban agriculture and a broad swift
towards the implementation of sustainable and eco-living practices, urban agriculture remains
unknown to the vast majority of people.
In order to raise awareness of urban farming and amplify its social and environmental benefits,
we developed the Urbana platform. The Urbana platform is formed around a mobile
application, which provides the space for urban cultivators and agricultural consultants to
exchange knowledge and good practices regarding urban farming. In the Urbana app, users can
create and share their own do-it-yourself (DIY) projects describing the steps and the resources
needed for completion. Users may also initiate or participate in collective projects, thus
promoting a common utilization of public areas and reinforcing social inclusion.
Having identified the need for scientific guidance regarding farming practices, we introduce
the role of the agricultural consultant. Agricultural consultants can advise urban cultivators on
their projects, while they build a foundation of further promoting their business. Agricultural
consultants may also provide expertise data on cultivation practices applicable to each project.
Cultivation practice data include growing and harvest seasons, soil parameters (soil type and
pH), parameters related to climate (temperature), irrigation parameters (quantity and
frequency), and fertilization parameters.
Furthermore, users can retrieve valuable information from crowdsourcing mechanisms, IoT,
and social media. More specifically, users can assemble sensors and connect them to their
cultivations in order to obtain values of specific indicators in real time. Users, also, have access
to tweets related to certain agricultural terms being tracked within Twitter’s stream, and to an
embedded analytics web application that encompasses Business Intelligence (BI)
functionalities, including filtering of data, charts, and maps. The analytics application allows
users to run parameterized queries presented in user-friendly dashboards of aggregated advice,
statistics, and trends of the platform’s contemporary data. Gaining a deeper insight into the
Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: iathanatsiki@gmail.com (A. 1); iftsioutsia@draxis.gr (A. 2); xnakos@athenarc.gr (A. 3); pkalampokis@athenarc.gr (A. 4);
dalamag@athenarc.gr (A. 5)
ORCID: 0000-0002-5002-7901 (A. 5)
©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
162
platform’s data facilitates the decision-making process of the user and magnifies the
crowdsourcing power of the platform.
Finally, in order to increase the engagement and enjoyment of the users, gamification
techniques are utilized. To that end, we introduce a competitive aspect by providing points,
awards, and badges to users who perform specific tasks, impelling them to share their work
with their communities.
By leveraging gamification principles, providing adequate sources of information, and
fostering a sense of collaboration between users and communities, Urbana is expected to raise
awareness of the aforementioned benefits of urban agriculture and provide communities with
a suitable tool to improve their urban ecosystems.
Keywords
urban agriculture, urban cultivators, agricultural consultants, mobile application, DIY projects,
IoT, sensors, data analytics, crowdsourcing
Acknowledgements
This research has been co‐financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the
European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness,
Entrepreneurship, and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE
(project code: T2EDK-03148).
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