Smart Community Research Project

An infraNET Project

Communities and Information Technology

Every day we live, work, study, and play in many different geographic and virtual communities. For example, many of us live and play in a community such as Waterloo and work, study and play in both the community of the University of Waterloo and in the internal and external communities of employers, students and professors. These communities and their “citizens” are using information technology such as e-mail and the World-Wide Web to communicate and conduct various business transactions. The numerous sources of information and electronic destinations and the amount of communication at times feel overwhelming and unmanageable. Are there better ways to manage our interactions with these communities? This research project is focused on developing software and processes to bring the power of the Internet and the Web to the community level. Examples of the work being done at the University of Waterloo and some of its spin-offs to manage communities and their rich information content are:

• Region of Waterloo (formerly www.mapcheck.com)
• Oxford County (formerly cool.county.oxford.on.ca)
• City of Waterloo (formerly win.uwaterloo.ca)
• University of Waterloo (experimental, formerly uwin.csg.uwaterloo.ca)