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Welcome to this month's edition of the Best Practice Feature. In this edition, we highlight how KAPPO, a platform developed in Chile, helps to increase the usage of bicycles in urban areas and safety navigation for citizens. Nearly 60% of the world's population lives in urban areas today. This is equivalent to 4 billion people sharing the same space. It is estimated that by 2050, this number will increase up to 70%.

Studies have shown that the exercise you get when you cycle regularly, helps people improve cardiovascular, mental and immunological health. This leads to less illness' (reducing work absenteeism by 50%), better attitudes (improving work environment and strengthening team work relations), and helps boost energy during the day (improving their productivity by 30%). Therefore, changing the way we commute is fundamental to the well-being of our world and the feasibility of our way of life. KAPPO also provides data insights and predictive analytics for governments, creating a better planning and higher return on urban infrastructure investments.

Each month, we feature one of the Best Practices winners from the 11th Cycle of the Dubai International Award endorsed by UN-Habitat and Dubai Municipality. We hope that these best practices will inform and inspire you on initiatives that are making effective interventions to improve the lives of urban residents around the globe. The 11th cycle comprised of the following categories:

WINNER of the Personal Award for contribution to urban economy and municipal finance

This Award category aims to recognize an individual that has made outstanding contributions to the development of urban economy and municipal finance, working for local authorities, and other related organizations. The individual’s work has contributed to enhancing fiscal devolution, increasing the productivity of cities, improving revenue generation and collection, providing decent jobs and equal opportunities.

Name of individual: Ivan Paez Mora, Founder & CEO - KAPPO

Country: Chile

CYCLISTS ANALYTICS FOR SMART CITIES

KAPPO helps to resolve major issues in the world today. Some of these issues include:

1. Urbanization & Traffic Congestion

  • Today, more people are living in cities than in the rural areas, and the rate of urbanization is increasing rapidly
  • Traffic congestion caused delays that resulted to gallons of fuel wasted
  • In 2014, traffic congestion delayed people world wide for 14 billion hours which resulted to 10 billion gallons of fuel going to waste
  • It is estimated that more than a half of world’s human population will be living in urban areas by 2050

2. Global Warming

  • With Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emission are on the rise, the rate of air pollution has drastically increased
  • Vehicles contribute to an estimated 60% to 70% of urban air pollution
  • 50% of car trips are less than 3.5 miles (5 kms) while 20% correspond to cars looking for parking lots

3. The World has become OVERWEIGHT

  • Men and Women’s average weight has increased by 24 lbs in the developed world
  • Overweight is an issue which This results to a lot of money spent in health care cost
  • One of the reasons people do not exercise is because of the time spent in traffic

Cycling present the perfect solution to address these problems. It helps to reduce traffic, air and noise pollution. This also enables commuters to exercise regularly on their way to work and improve their health in overall. For this reason, most cities are encouraging people to use their bicycles more often.

KAPPO was developed through a formula based on an analysis of how Denmark became the best country in the world to incorporate a commute by bicycle.

KAPPO'S FORMULA

KAPPO'S TOOLS

Every city in the world has 3 main actors; Citizens, Governments and private institutions. KAPPO has created tools for each one, which aligns and amplifies the efforts made that encourage cycling, assuring any city that implements this platform can transform itself into a bike-friendly city within 5 years.

1. THE GAME

Urban cyclists and sport cyclists vary in different ways. KAPPO helps urban cyclists to build a habit of using bicycles more often as means of transportation. This is done through a smartphone app, that combines the strategies of successful social games, such as CandyCrush or PokemonGo, with GPS tracking technology.

In order to play KAPPO, one needs to register real bicycle trips, that are later rewarded with Experience Points (XP), BikeCoins and BikeGems, depending on a series of parameters, such as: speed, time and distance as well as safety, jumps and even weather. For example, if a cyclist registers a trip in the rain or with low temperatures, he or she will receive double points to level up, for committing to use their bicycle despite the unfavorable weather conditions.

2. CYCLIST ANALYTICS: PEDAL HEAT

Urban Cyclists risk their lives everyday in many cities around the world. If a bicycle lane is not properly designed or is inaccessible, this will make cyclists does avoid them and look for another alternative to commute.

Most of the times, the low demand for existing infrastructure discourages investment in future bicycle lanes. It is important to note that the demand for bicycle infrastructure exists but existing supply is misplaced.

3. COOL PLACE TO BIKE PLATFORM

90% of all trips made in the cities around the world entails people commuting to and from their place of work. Employers may discourage government's efforts in promoting cycling due to company insurance policies' against commuting accidents for their employees.

Cool Place to Bike is a platform that helps companies to encourage bicycle usage, through an open competition that invites companies and institutions to compete against each other to prove who motivates their workers better to commute by bike. Each company is recognized for their efforts every month, and are provided with a report about their impact on the environment (Corporate Social Responsibility) and the health of their employees (Wellness) as a return on their investment.

KAPPO KIDS

KAPPO runs another initiative called KAPPO Kids which helps 100+ schools in some of the biggest cities in Denmark, Odense and Aarhus, to encourage and assist kids to commute to school using a bicycle. Schools create teams based on their grade levels and those who register the most trips are recognized weekly. These trips are also used to create rankings among schools and identify high demand routes in order to improve their level of safety.

SOCIAL RETURN

Santiago has been recognized with one of the most prestigious sustainable transport awards in the world, thanks to the incentives that exist for urban cyclists. The Pedal Heat tool was used by Santiago (Chile) to encourage their citizens to commute by bike within central zones of the city. The collected geo-located data captured and the geo-locational surveys carried out by Kappo help the city identify and solve, in a quick and proactive way, many of the needs of local urban cyclists, leading to a rapid increase in bicycle usage.

In case you missed the October edition, we focused on an initiative titled, Clean City and Green Economy which involves a community based waste collection system to recycle and manufacture quality Eco-construction products. Established by Regeneration Environmental Services ltd., this initiative provides an economic demand for waste plastic which in turn cleans the environment, creates employment and improves the look of coastal cities.

Credits:

UN-Habitat

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