About

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The FirstLife open-source map allows digital community mapping of bottom-up requests, proposals, projects and points of view put forward by citizens. The social features of geo-referenced content enhances the connections, coordination and monitoring of community actions.

FirstLife creates digital environments to support real situations.

Adopt a slow approach to digital technologies by rethinking your relationship with social networks.

FirstLife does not do user profiling or collect user data, and it has no commercial interests.

All this ensures a free and conscious digital experience.

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Who uses FirstLife and why

Who uses FirstLife and why

  • CITIZENS who publish their actions, thoughts and plans for the common good online.
  • SCHOOLS promoting civic and digital education to address the challenges of the contemporary world.
  • PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONS engaging in dialogue with citizens for the development of participatory democracy.
  • BUSINESSES and NETWORKS promoting trade and proximity services.
  • RESEARCH BODIES AND INSTITUTIONS investigating local areas in the light of issues of collective interest.
  • NETWORKS and ORGANISATIONS engaged in international cooperation.
  • THIRD SECTOR ORGANISATIONS that believe in high-participation activities.
  • People involved in narrating and documenting situations in the local area.

FirstLife ecosystem

The method

FirstLife is a multiscale civic social network based on crowdmapping and neogeography. Inspired by the 15-minute city urban model, which enhances proximity and local communities, it adopts the approaches of city journalism and slow communication. It aspires to achieve digital regeneration and encourages the dissemination of quality content and civic values.

The platform

The platform

The platform was designed using an approach based on microservices and modern technologies that guarantee modularity, reliability and performance. The Angular framework was used to develop the front end. User authentication is performed on an authentication server based on Node.js. Angular's modular architecture allows incremental extensions to the platform, without excessive refactoring, and is equipped with many features. Division between the client and authentication servers allows the creation of different customised front-end instances that potentially share a single authentication service, thus creating an ecosystem.
User interface

User interface

Textual content created by users is managed via a back end based on the LoopBack framework which saves the data on a MongoDB database. Uploaded images, documents and attachments are managed and served by a Node. All communication between the various services are carried out via the REST API. Monitoring service based on Sentry sends notifications about anomalies and errors, and guarantees full control of the infrastructure. The statistics service keeps track of user visits.
Tecnologies

Tecnologies

FirstLife embraces Agile programming techniques that allow the implementation of automated deployment pipelines, thereby lowering downtime and, at the same time, increasing the performance and security of the services provided. The source codes of the various services are hosted on a self-hosted GitLab from which the pipelines for container build, test and deployment on-premise Kubernetes clusters start.

Sustainability

FirstLife is financed from research funds assigned through participation in national and European projects, where calls are highly competitive and subject to anonymous review. It is also supported by the research funds of the Social Computing Group at the University of Turin's Computer Science Department, which self-finances experimentations and pilot projects.
Sustainability
Sustainability

Sustainability

FirstLife is financed from research funds assigned through participation in national and European projects, where calls are highly competitive and subject to anonymous review. It is also supported by the research funds of the Social Computing Group at the University of Turin's Computer Science Department, which self-finances experimentations and pilot projects.

Sources of funding from 2014 to today

  • The European Commission: programmes to support research and innovation (H2020) and urban innovation (UIA), and the Erasmus+ programme.
  • Local authorities: POR-FESR programmes by the regional government of Piedmont to support industrial research and/or experimental development projects.
  • Banking foundations: funds derived from projects presented by local partners from Turin and the wider Metropolitan City of Turin.
  • International cooperation: funds to support decentralised cooperation by local organisations in Piedmont and central Africa (Piedmont Region, Compagnia di San Paolo).

Integration and co-design

Evolution of the FirstLife platform is the result of integration between solutions designed and tested in the pilot projects mentioned, research and development conducted by the project team, and co-design processes involving local partners (associations, groups, institutions and local authorities). The Department of Computer Science provides development, technical support, maintenance and data extraction from the platform free of charge to local partners. It also provides training and education activities on the civic use of technologies.