IndAtlas - Technopolitic platform for urban investigation

This article presents the project of the urban research platform IndAtlas, currently in early development stage by UFMG’s Research Group Indisciplinar. Through the association of crowdsourcing tools, a spatial database and the production of visualizations of different types, it is intended to create a Web platform for collecting, analyzing and depicting information about processes of production and transformation of urban space. It is proposed that the phenomena (themes) investigated in the platform are approached mainly from four axes: 1) spatial / territorial; 2) temporal; 3) social; 4) communicational. To do this, we try to combine online collaborative maps with the production of dynamic timelines and visualizations of networks of social actors (graphs), connected with social networks and Wiki pages. The article will address the development of Indisciplinar’s working method, which guided the proposal of the platform, as well as the functional and technical aspects to be observed for its implementation, the proposed architecture and the importance of interoperability for the project. Finally, the inquiries derived from the first test experiment of an IndAtlas test prototype will be presented. The experiment took place in a workshop belonging to the Cidade Eletronika 2018 Festival – an arts and technology event. The workshop was offered in January of the same year, and it proposed a collaborative cartography of the Santa Tereza neighborhood, in Belo Horizonte / MG – a traditional neighborhood of great importance for historical heritage, currently subject to great real estate pressure and the focus of a series of territorial disputes.