Research Projects

In this project M-ITI's research will focus in the communities.Communities need both autonomy and connectivity; islands even more so. Communities should have the resources for resilience, sustainability, and self-reliance. These resources should be locally owned and operated, accessible by as many people as possible, and most importantly they should be trusted and respected. Information is a resource that amplifies all other resources and can serve as a scaffold to self-reliance and sustainable growth. Our approach, Civic Media, born and developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and now based in Madeira, is to create peer-oriented, software-enabled platforms for the creation and exploitation of information for community resilience in the Macaronesian region. This project focuses on bottom-up, inexpensive, and sustainable approaches to geographic information systems (GIS) and documentation, communication and discourse within communities, and evidence gathering and decision making. Through a program of tactical interventions in the knowledge ecosystems of islands - involving field research, community outreach and engagement, education, citizen science, and grassroots mapping actions - this project aims to bring existing ideas and efforts into new configurations for civic knowledge generation in Cape Verde and Madeira.

Project Acronym: MAC/3.5b/154