Listen When Citizen Sensors Speak: Free Text in Urban Problem Reporting Platforms

BIB
Lindt, Dennis and Bartling, Mona and Meiners, Katharina and Wehking, Roland*Ronja and Wolters, Maria K
British HCI - Late Breaking Work
Citizen sensors provide valuable data about the state of municipal infrastructure. Many urban problem reporting platforms have been created that support citizen sensors in this task. Reports typically have four components, location, free text description, category, and image upload. In this paper, we investigate the information contained in the free text descriptions. In a qualitative content analysis of 360 problem reports of a major German city, we find that almost all users of the reporting system provide useful additional data that can help process and act on their reports, even though key information about problem and location has already been provided through a category assignment and a map interface. We discuss how these findings might inform the design of AI tools that improve problem reporting services for citizens and administrators.
2025
inproceedings
Digitopias
DIGItal TechnOlogies for Participation and InterAction in Society - Digitale Technologien für Teilhabe und Interaktion an und mit Gesellschaft