Collective Awareness Platforms

The Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) are ICT systems leveraging the emerging "network effect" by combining open online social media, distributed knowledge creation and data from real environments ("Internet of Things") in order to create new forms of social innovation.

The Collective Awareness Platforms are expected to support environmentally aware, grassroots processes and practices to share knowledge, to achieve changes in lifestyle, production and consumption patterns, and to set up more participatory democratic processes. Several efforts have been made by governments and public organisations to cope with these crises, however much more can be done if citizens are more actively involved, in a grassroots manner. There is consensus about the global span of the problem, but little awareness of the role that each and every one of us can play in coping with this.

Be the change you wish to see in the world

The vision behind this call is that individuals can collectively save the planet if they are given the opportunity to act socially, based on trusted information. The key is enabling access to trusted knowledge about the state of the environment, the actions underway in our Communities to improve that situation, and the impact of our own actions.

These "Platforms for Collective Awareness and Action" will support environmentally aware, grassroots processes and practices to share knowledge, to achieve changes in lifestyle, production and consumption patterns, and to set up more participatory democratic processes.

What for?

The distributed situational awareness enabled by such platforms can then have concrete impacts, for instance in empowering (and motivating) citizens to make informed decisions and consumer choices, in real time, fostering collective environmentally-savvy behavioural changes and a more direct democratic participation. These platforms would be collective tools of social innovation, to design new visions of sustainable societies and environmentally sound solutions.

Concrete examples of technical functionalities would include:

• accessing real-time and easily understandable information on resource consumption
• comparing individual lifestyles against some ecological / environmental benchmark
• defining and accessing complex environmental models and simulations

Ultimately, these platforms will enable dialogues and discussions in the civil society to collectively orchestrate the most appropriate actions in a truly democratic, informed and non-mediated manner.

How to build platforms for Collective Awareness and Action?

To implement this vision, we have launched a call for proposals, under objective 5.5 of workprogramme 2013, as a result of which 10 projects have been selected and are currently under negotiation (see details on the projects page).

Here you can download the latest presentation describing the last call  for proposals (Paris, 16 October 2012).

• CAPS Events  - you can find a list of future and past events related to the area.
•  CAPS Examples and projects
• Contact us