Customer Impact Story: Smart Docklands

Welcome to the first in a series of ‘Impact Diaries’ submissions! These are customer stories and experiences written first-hand by our customers. Thanks to our wonderful and talented client Karolina, at Smart Docklands for sharing her experiences with us! We are delighted to be collaborating with you and your teams. 

Project Overview: Smart Docklands Community Engagement

The project site: https://smartdocklands.commonplace.is/

Region: Ireland

Sector: Public Sector

Client: Smart Dublin | Smart Docklands 

Partners: Dublin City Council | CONNECT SFI Research Centre (Trinity College Dublin) 

Location: Dublin, Docklands

Project Start Date: November 2023

Duration: Ongoing

Project Lead: Karolina Anielska- Project and Engagement Manager

About Smart Docklands

Smart Docklands works across the local ecosystem to deliver sustainable smart city innovation. Smart Docklands programme is a partnership between Dublin City Council and CONNECT SFI Research Centre for Future Networks headquartered at Trinity College Dublin.

This initiative positions Docklands as one of the "testbed districts" within the Smart Dublin framework. Its primary goal is to explore and test various technologies within a defined geographic area to address city challenges effectively.

Smart Docklands collaborates with a wide range of companies, ranging from tech giants like Google to smaller startups based in the Docklands area, underscoring its commitment to leveraging technology to solve urban challenges through community-focused and collaborative approaches.

Key Outcomes

• Enhanced community engagement: One of the key outcomes of using Commonplace is increased community engagement and satisfaction. By using the insights gathered through the Commonplace platform, the Smart Docklands team aims to foster a stronger sense of community involvement and ownership over the smart city initiatives. This includes ensuring that residents, workers, and visitors feel their voices are heard and their concerns are addressed, leading to a more inclusive community. The site attracted over 5,000 visitors. 

• Informing the Call for Pilots with community feedback: The primary desired outcome is to use the community feedback to inform and shape the ‘Call for Pilots’. The community survey identified environmental monitoring, urban greening/biodiversity, community development, and antisocial behaviour/safety as key categories that were used in the Call for Pilots. By aligning these projects with the specific needs and challenges of the Docklands area, the initiatives will be more innovative, practical, and effective in enhancing the urban environment.

• Utilising Insights from mapping: Another desired outcome is to gather and analyse insights from the mapping exercise and feed these findings back to the project partners. This process will help to identify and prioritise areas for intervention and improvement. Additionally, the mapping exercise aims to identify and document community spaces. By leveraging this detailed, localised data, Smart Docklands can make informed decisions that reflect the community's priorities and contribute to more targeted and impactful urban development strategies.

Community Insights Shared on Commonplace:

How Commonplace helped

Did you use any of our platform Add-Ons and how did these help your project? 

I used the social media campaign add-on which worked surprisingly well. (Basic social media campaign).

Did Commonplace change how you previously engaged communities? Eg. moving from in-person to online engagement etc. 

It helped to engage the community online.

If you could describe your experience using Commonplace on this project in three words, what would they be?!

Intuitive, Friendly, Colourful

Words from Karolina

"As part of the Smart Docklands team, I am proud to be responsible for launching our online engagement platform using Commonplace! Bringing my community consultation and engagement experience into smart cities projects, we aim to create smarter, more sustainable, and more inclusive urban environments.

We always say that we don’t want to do tech for tech’s sake, but we also don’t want to do engagement for its own sake. That’s why I’m delighted we were able to gather insights through our Community Survey on Commonplace from those who live in, work in, or visit the Docklands area. The survey findings were used as the basis for the Call for Pilots, where Dublin City Council, through its Smart City programme, will fund a number of innovative solutions that can address the identified challenges. Based on the feedback, we identified four key areas: environmental monitoring, urban greening/biodiversity, community development, and antisocial behaviour/safety.

Informing the Call for Pilots based on community feedback to ensure the pilots meet their needs is invaluable. Commonplace has been instrumental in enabling us to align our projects with the actual needs of the community, making our urban environments smarter and more inclusive. This feedback-driven approach exemplifies our commitment to creating sustainable and inclusive smart city solutions." 

Karolina Anielska, Smart Docklands Project and Engagement Manager

On a final note:

Out of the survey options, digital community engagement platforms like Commonplace were the preferred technology choice to "use technology to engage locally."

Want to be featured or find out more? Just click the link below and chat with one of our engagement experts!