LAB for sustainable IT solutions
The Green Blue LAB is a team of solution architects, who is able to implement sustainable and green IT solutions for cities and municipalities. We use Open Source code and Open Data to build applications that help preserving the green-blue infrastructure of cities but also enable citizen participation. We are a small team having many years of experience in participation projects and IT projects. We have gained a lot of insight through our work on Gieß den Kiez (Water the neighborhood) resp. Leipzig gießt (Leipzig waters). Our team is coordinated by the non-profit foundation “Ecken wecken” and is currently still in the start-up phase.
Water City Trees with an App
Several prolonged periods of drought and the effects of climate change are now also making Several prolonged years of drought and the effects of climate change are now also making themselves visible in our cities: green spaces are more yellow than green and many a tree crown is already bare in early summer. These effects put a lot of pressure on city administrations and green space agencies since they have to raise the watering frequencies and amounts significantly to prevent trees from dying and requiring expensive replanting. However, with the help of a participatory watering app, citizen:s can be motivated to water along and help the city trees. Watering apps like Gieß den Kiez from CityLAB Berlin and Leipzig gießt from Leipzig can help cities, to engage their citizens to fill the gaps in providing the trees with enough water. By working on Leipzig giesst, Potsdam giesst as well as providing support the GreenBlueLab team has gained a lot of experience in the last couple of years. So we now have set ourselves the goal of using open source and open data to help the urban trees of all German cities.
Screenshot of Liepzig gießt: All city trees are visualized on an interactive map. Users can adopt trees and mark them within the app when they have watered a tree.
Example functions and Views
All trees in a city are available via a map. The color of a tree/circle shows its current water demand.
Citizens can adopt trees and enter their watering quantities. Further information about ‘their’ tree also strengthens identification.
Motivation to pour increases when pouring becomes a community event.
Various statistics make it possible to track the effect of a casting app.
At the end of 2022, Leipzig gießt was awarded the Saxon Digital Prize 2022 and took 1st place in the “Open Source” category.
An App doesn’t water a Tree on its own
Complementary to the app development, we offer the following services to communicate with and support citizens in watering trees:
- Providing ideas and templates for for events, actions and accompanying projects, examples: Tonnen an Fallrohre (barrels on downspouts), KiTa-Kinder gießen Straßenbäume (Kindergarten children watering street trees), Schwammstadt macht Schule (sponge city makes a precedent)
- Editorial support for blogs or social media channels. Examples: Blog, instagram, facebook
- Design and production of logos, flyers, stickers, tree stickers, etc.
- Organizing the distribution of supporting resources, e.g., watering bags, watering cans, etc.
With our expertise in the development of the application, the rich communication, but also in citizen participation formats on the ground, we help other cities and municipalities to implement the casting app in their own city.
Our services and prices
App set up
One-time from € 14.000
- Create the accounts for all micro and cloud services (GitHub, Supabase, Mapbox, Netlify, GitLAB//DockerHUB).
- Procurement of the website URL and setup
- Fork and set up the GitHub repositories (Installation Development & Production environment).
- Import of urban data (tree cadastre)
- Individual configuration (texts, logo, FAQ, contact person, imprint, etc.)
- Function and load test on multiple end devices
- Reconciliation on accounts, content and operating costs
- Documentation of work packages for ongoing operation
- Handover of the documentation to the project coordination of the client
- Hosting for one year
Running operations
€ 4.800 per year
- Provision of the website URL
- Hosting server & database in a German data center
- Monitoring and support for server and app
- Integration and installation of updates
- Access to the backoffice dashboard
- Assumption of all running costs for external services
- Ideas and templates for events and accompanying projects
Community
One-time from € 8.000
- Access zu Grafana user statistics dashboard
- Provision of print layouts for e.g. stickers, flyers, and posters
- Elaboration of tree characteristica sheets
- ideas for three event formats
Custom:
upon consultation
- Implementation of new features
- Customized design
- Gamification
- Organization of hackathons
- Supporting material (stickers, flyers, etc.)
- and much more
Small municipality resp. small budget?
We will find a solidarity pricing for you as well. Just talk to us.
Get in touch
You would like to realize this or a similar project in your city?
We look forward to receiving your e-mail at info@greenbluelab.org or your message via the contact form.