CIRCLES

Team Name

Team BC

Team Members

Project Description

⚠️ The Take→Make→Waste Problem

Cities are responsible for consuming 75% of the world's natural resources, despite only having around half the world's population. This is a having a catastrophic impact on our envioronment.

Our communities are designed around a take→make→waste model, rather than a circular economy model which is built upon the principles of reducing waste, reusing materials, promoting positive social change, and making better use of existing public spaces.

❌ Linear Economy Model: Take→Make→Waste
✔️ Circular Economy Model: Make→Use→Reuse→Repeat

Building a Circular Economy in our communities across Australia & New Zealand is essential to make our cities and regions more sustainable - but how do we do that efficiently?
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✨ Introducing Project Circles

Project Circles is a mobile app that uses digital technology and open data to:
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➊ Intelligently suggest locations for where circular economy Communtiy Circles should be located. This is achieved by using open population and geospatial data to place Community Circles at population centres to maximise population and minimise the total radius - as a result, larger cities will have more smaller Community Circles and smaller towns will have a single large Community Circle.

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➋ Act as a hub for existing circular economy initiatives within Community Circles - such as community gardens, recycling centres, or online social media item giveaway/swap groups. Providing a central hub for these exisiting initiatives will empower communities to reduce waste and reuse materials - it will also help to highlight existing locations like community gardens which will assist in creating better community spaces.

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➌ Suggest locations where additional initiatives could take place. For example, it can suggest centrally located public parks within Community Circles where a community garden could be beneficial. This helps to reduce waste and create new public spaces. This is achieved using open public spaces data.

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🌏 More Sustainable Communities & Better Spaces for Everyone

Circles builds more sustainable communities that cut down on waste, activate existing spaces, and promotes positive social and economic change by connecting people to circular economy initiatives within their Community Circles.

This in turn protects the environment, leads to greater wellbeing for everyone involved, and builds better public spaces for everyone.
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📼 More Info

Watch our video at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1g4fMZDHAmUCLThRCilQOouZ67LEdNGP7/view
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🏷️ Tags

Data Story

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📊 Our Data Story

This project was possible due to the availability of open government data. A full list of used data used in this project can be found below under the 'Team DataSets' header.

The 'ACT Population Projections by District' data was used for dertermining locations of Community Circles. The 'Urban Park Locations in the ACT' data as well as data provided by the Google Maps API were used for finding recommend community garden locations within Community Circles. Geospatial Data was used for enhancing maps displaying NSW and ACT.
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