Citizens Involvement for Safe and High Quality Urban Living: Three Success Factors for ICT-Enabled Initiatives

By enabling different forms of networked, participative systems, ICTs could play a pivotal role in enhancing the safety of everyday living settings, spanning from private homes to city contexts. But the literature on this issue is still in its infancy. This theory-building paper seeks to contribute to the identification of success factors for participative systems influencing living settings safety. Three different case studies were conducted, enlightening several aspects such as remote home assistance for the elderly, city day-by-day management based on citizens’ reports, and city emergency management. On the basis of such case studies, three possible success factors were extracted: in all the successful cases examined, (1) citizens perceived their involvement as an “inverse commons” investment; (2) before involving citizens, the necessary back-office had been soundly organized; and (3) at least in the first place, the role of citizens essentially consisted in collaborative sensing and monitoring.