Project proposal by
- Institution : Municipality of Mazara del Vallo
- City : Mazara del Vallo
- Country : Italy
- Type of region : Less developed
- Population : 49 992
Looking for Project Partners
PROSPECT (Proactive Resilience Observatories for Social Preparedness through Evidence, Community and Territorial intelligence) explores how medium-sized cities can close the social intelligence gap by building community intelligence systems — integrated governance frameworks that combine cross-sector municipal data with community-level knowledge generated in civic hubs, labs, and local stakeholder groups. The aim is to move social policy from reactive assistance to proactive social preparedness.
Across small and medium-sized European cities, a structural paradox is deepening. Municipalities hold growing volumes of administrative data — on employment, education, housing, health, and mobility — yet their social services remain largely reactive: intervening when citizens are already in crisis rather than reaching those at risk before crisis strikes. At the same time, the communities most in need — migrants, youth in fragile households, isolated elderly, families in post-industrial transition — are precisely those whose situations are least visible in digital datasets. Traditional statistics capture what has already happened; they struggle to capture what is emerging.
The result is a social intelligence gap: a mismatch between the data cities collect and the knowledge they actually need to design timely, targeted, and effective social responses. This gap is not primarily a technology problem. It is a governance problem: cities lack integrated systems that combine top-down municipal data with bottom-up community-level knowledge to build a shared, actionable picture of social risk and opportunity.