Space for a Safe Society and Sustainable Growth Session: Satellite applications for safe and resilient cities. The conference is organized by the European Commission, in collaboration with the Romanian Space Agency, European Space Agency and Eurisy, under the auspices of the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council and the Romanian Ministry for Research and Innovation. https://muell-weg.de https://www.copernicus.eu/en/events/events/space-safe-society-and-sustainable-growth

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MÜLLweg! DE
an application for citizens to help fight
the dumping of illegal rubbish
Thomas Lennartz, Germany
https://muell-weg.de
Session: Satellite applications for safe and resilient cities
Image source: https://copernicusromanianpresidency.eventsite.be/

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„fly tipping“MÜLLweg! DE
an application for citizens to help fight
the dumping of illegal rubbish
Cambridge Dictionary:
illegally leaving things that you do
not want next to a road, in fields, in rivers, etc.

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Looking for a universal, mobile,
multi-plattform solution?

4. What about one solution for all?
• Blessing and curse of municipal self government
• > 13,000 municipal areas in Germany, each one independantly responsible.
• Principally, there is a seperate reporting solution for every municipal area. If at all…
• 13.000 different solutions – ever thought about user comfort?!?
• Variety report channels: phone / form / app / email, still even fax and mail
• Separate registration processes for most online reporting solutions.
• No central solution for reporting directly and easily to administrations.
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5. Just a Touch of Legal Tech
Due to German environmental law no community may refuse processing reports
about illegal waste disposals,
• once they are informed about them in a sufficiently accurate manner, especially,
• if the report is not anonymous and therefore of acceptable reliability.
MÜLLweg! DE needs no cooperation for full operability in all of Germany.
It´s a matter of law, not local politics. This makes growing fast much easier…
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6. Comfort by Geolocation technology
• User comfort: Satellite powered reporting
• High accuracy smartphone GPS geolocation services
• GPS information extraction from picture EXIF-tags
• Manual address entries automatically converted to Latitude / Longitude
• Report handling comfort: Reports with precise, geodata information
• Direct links for Google Maps & OpenStreetMap
• Plain latitude / longitude information for usage in internal systems
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7. MÜLLweg! DE – Effortless Reporting
• Central contact database & realtime contact research algorithm
• All munipical areas in just one app. All it takes is an email address.
(Here comes the tricky part…)
• Covers > 10.000 municipal areas, > 85% of German territory, steadily growing
• New areas are normally added instantly by automatic background real-time web research,
• Sufficient user authentification without registration process
• Email account serves as sufficient legitimation
• Direct contact via own email account & app
• Email as automatically available minimal bi-directional communication channel
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8. Simple Reporting < 1 Minute
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1. Location 2. Validation 3. Description

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Please forward to: City of Castrop-Rauxel, Regulatory Office
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
At the location mentioned above you will find an illegal waste dump, which probably lies your area of responsibility.
Approximate address: …
You will find the exact address on Google Maps or OpenStreetMap.
Link to Google Street Map
Link to OpenStreetMap
Geolocation Data:
Latitude …
Longitude …
Unfortunately, I have no information about the person who caused this littering.
In case your are not in charge here, would you please be so kind and forward my email to the correct authorities.
If you have any queries, you can reach me by email.
Best regards,
Illegal waste dump, Am Kärling 80, 44581 Castrop-Rauxel (Ickern Nord). (approximately)

10. Technical specifications
• Web based: PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Geolocation via JavaScript functions (tricky)
• Reverse geolocation via OpenStreetMap API
(Google Geolocation API as fallback)
• Bonus: Railway station details via
Deutsche Bahn Open Data project API
• City details via official data sources,
combined with Wikipedia API, Bing Search API
& real time Homepage screenscraping.
• GeoJSON support:
geofencing individual areas for divergent receipients
• Open311.org Support:
Read ( & optional write) access to supporting local
issue tracking systems.
• RFC 6068 conform „mailto:“
for generating reports to be handled by users
standard mail application.
• iOS & Android wrapper apps
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11. Facts & Figures – No Secrets
Municipal areas connected > 10,000 (of approx. 13,000) (and rising)
• App downloads > 6,400, + approx. 300 - 400 / month
• Active users in > 1,900 areas
• Reports / month: 500 - 600
Costs & effort:
• approx. 200 € / year (hosting, ssl, app store fees)
• Costs for marketing / advertising: none
• Personal effort per single report: none
Revenue:
• None. MÜLLweg! DE is completely non-profit.
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MÜLLweg! DE Timeline – working on the hockey stick
Timeline designed by PresentationGO.com
7642
07/17
12/17
07/18
09/18
03/19
04/18
08/18
11/18
Added iOS Version.. Number
of included municipal areas
raised to roundabout 250.
iOS Launch
Started adding large city
email address datasets
where freely accessible.
Still missing areas are
automatically added by real-
time webcrawling
algorithms.
Recommended by BUND
10000 Areas
Integration of open311.org API
for automatic connection to
Rostocks “Klarschiff HRO”
(r/w) and several additional
cities (read-only).
Open311.org
Adding special support for
geofenced private real
estates.
Geofencing
After approximately 2
Weeks of development
including setup of
homepage – with about a
dozen main cities. Web &
Android only.
Launch
First 100 App Downloads for
Android reached. Special
support for Berlin added.
350 areas included. In May:
first 100 downloads.
for iOS
100 Downloads
Enormous rise in publicity
after mayor app web
magazine reports about
MÜLLweg! DE. Approx.
2,000 App downloads peak
in
just 1 week..
Breakthrough
Added over 5,000 railway
stations, reachable via
phone or, for selected
stations, via whatsapp.
Train Stations
05/18
Migration from Google
Geodata API to OSM
Geodata and Maps as
primary data source
Downloads : > 6,400
OSM Migration

13. Actively Cooperating Areas
Though not neccessary for operation, support from official side is welcome!
• City of Rostock, City of Schwerin
explicitly granted write access to their local reporting system via open311-integration.
• Pulheim, Volkmarsen, Bischweiler, Schifferstadt
recommend MÜLLweg! DE explicitly to their citizens
• Forschungszentrum (Research Center) Jülich
special arrangement, reports fly tippings located on site to facility management.
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14. Non-Profit Organisations
Recommendations by
• BUND – Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland
• NABU – Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Section Lübeck)
• Many smaller environmentalist organisations
• Some local subdivisions of political parties (Grüne, SPD, CDU)
MÜLLweg! DE is completely independant.
Nevertheless, MÜLLweg! DE is a supporter and partner of
„Cleanup Network“ – an environmental group founded in Stuttgart
and operating through network partners all over Germany.
„Cleanup Network“ (https://cleanupnetwork.com/) optionally
uses an individually branded version of MÜLLweg! DE, adding
their organisational claim to the signature of all reports.
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15. Thomas Lennartz
Assessor jur.
Am Kärling 80 · 44581 Castrop-Rauxel
+49 160 96879483
t.lennartz@muell-weg.de
https://www.linkedin.com/in/thlennartz/
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MÜLLweg! DE
Thank you for your attention!
https://muell-weg.de