Our cities are currently characterized by a disorderly disposition. Our research on urbanization since 2002, through stays at the former Urban Planning Laboratory (LAU), at the National Polytechnic School of Yaoundé (ENSPY), and the Lorrain Laboratory of Research in Computer Science and Applications ( LORIA) in France, have made us discover the possibility of mitigating this situation thanks to the availability of data. An urban scene where reliable data would be stored in business information systems for more accessible information. This is the mission of the Platform for Integration and Interoperability of Urban Information Systems of Yaoundé (YUSIIP).

YUSIIP is therefore a digital platform gathering information from multiple and heterogeneous sources in a data warehouse. It is managed by the Agence Privée de Promotion de l'Urbanisme et de l'Informatique (APPUI). Its objectives are :

• to capitalize on data, statistics and thematic indicators on urban development and planning in one place;
• to put at the disposal of a very large public, including all the persons concerned by the city and the development of the Decentralized Territorial Communities (CTD), a synthetic and updated information;
• follow news (events, norms, statistics, standards, discoveries, innovation, files, research results, etc.) and opportunities (agenda, announcements, studies, markets, etc.) of the urban sector;
• to inform Internet users about major urban projects;
• tto propose an Electronic Directory of Access to Urban Data (READU) that provides information on the various existing data sources of interest in order to facilitate their access as much as possible, so that current and potential urban actors do not have to do the same things over and over again, and do not have to try to collect information that exists elsewhere;
• to share data of general interest between public and private actors, and to federate their efforts in data management, co-production and/or co-construction of the city;
• to get the data out in good conditions so that it can be reused.

The available data, statistics and indicators are grouped into themes:

 

1. Urban environment (pollution, waste, sanitation, climate change);
2. Urban risks (disasters, disasters, etc.);
3. Living environment (population, housing, housing, youth, major projects, social cohesion);
4. Transportation (road, air, rail, marine);
5. Basic urban infrastructure and services (communication, telecommunications, Internet, electricity, water, etc.);
6. Urban economy (activities, animation, employment, business creation, real estate, digital economy, etc.);
7. Culture, sports, tourism and recreation;
8. Education and training (higher education, secondary education, primary and nursery education, vocational training);
9. Urban health;
10. Land (land titles, etc.);
11. Municipalities (municipalities, urban communities, regions).

They can be consulted according to several levels of aggregation (district, zone, municipality, etc.) and in several time periods. These spatial and temporal levels are selected by the user beforehand. After selection, the corresponding graphs, tables and details are automatically updated.
YUSIIP is a collaborative, scalable and open project:

• Collaborative, because the selection of key figures is done in collaboration with public administrations, public and private organizations, companies, CTD, NGOs, associations and other development partners;
• Scalable, because with each version, new indicators, themes, partners and functionalities are added;
• Open, because it addresses everyone (citizens, public administrations, public and private organizations, local elected officials, decision-makers, scientists, media, etc.) by offering products that meet their different needs (tables and graphs for visualization and comparison, metadata for understanding, etc.). Open also because most of the tools used are free ("Open Source") and the data are available in machine-readable format.

Finally, YUSIIP aims to offer a data centralization and monitoring tool that allows to follow and compare the evolution of data and the phenomena they reflect in space and time.br /> A complete catalog of indicators and online help are available to the user. /p>