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Maptionnaire is the Geospatial Innovator of the Year

May 9, 2023

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Maarit and Anna with the award, in our Helsinki office.

Maptionnaire has been awarded the Geospatial Innovator of the Year 2023 by Geospatial World!

That’s such an honor to be recognized as one of the geospatial industry leaders, advancing inclusive and lovable citizen engagement with map-based technologies.

Maarit Kahila receiving Geospatial Innovator of the Year award from Reenat Sandhu. — Maarit Kahila, CEO & Co-founder of Maptionnaire, received the award at Geospatial World Forum from Reenat Sandhu, India’s Ambassador to the Netherlands, in Rotterdam on May 3. You can read more about the award and the ceremony here.

Our Road to the Award: Making Citizen Engagement Spatial

What has brought Maptionnaire this status? The jury highlighted that the platform redefined citizen engagement as an ecosystem of data linked to locations, known as PPGIS (Public Participation GIS). GIS is commonly used in urban planning, but it has rarely been used for gathering and understanding citizen-generated data.

While the majority of citizen engagement platforms imitate in-person discussion or online forums, Maptionnaire offers a new way of involving residents in decision-making — by connecting their experiences and ideas with spaces they belong to.

What’s more, this map-first approach gives a great advantage to planners, civil engineers, and local authorities working with citizen engagement data: the results are available as GIS-based data, and can be analyzed and visualized within the platform.

Geospatial World has prepared an amazing video about Maptionnaire and its contribution to citizen engagement and city planning.

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Participatory Budgeting with a Spatial Twist

In 2022, Maptionnaire launched a new module that allows its users to run Participatory Budgeting. Participatory budgeting enables residents to directly decide how the budget is allocated in a certain project, district, or on a city-wide level by suggesting ideas and voting for the selected proposals. You can read up on some participatory budgeting examples here.

This process empowers locals and stakeholders in decision-making, and Maptionnaire is proud to popularize this process by making it more transparent, digital, and efficient. It’s already in use by several municipalities.

Reaching Milestones

This year, the team has also achieved several important milestones since our first steps in 2011!

25 million responses were gathered with Maptionnaire
13 thousand projects influenced by citizen input
40+ countries use Maptionnaire for urban planning, mobility, energy, parks & recs, and other projects.

We’re sharing this award with our fantastic customers who strive for inclusive citizen engagement, never compromising on transparency and quality.

Want to learn more about Maptionnaire's unique spatial features?

We'll show you around in a demo call!

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