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that classifies the services offered by a novel kind of
mobile application that we called Mobile Public Util-
ity and to contribute to both the academic discussion
and the practical world by providing a framework for
other researchers and managers.
3 A CASE OF MPU: Onde Chiare
APP
Onde Chiare is a prototype for Android we designed
and tested internally at the University. Onde Chiare
is a valuable tool to enable community members to
report specific information to the community, and to
improve the communication efforts by local author-
ities. Detailed description of Onde Chiare App can
be found in a previously published paper (Mannaro
and Ortu, 2016). In this section, only a brief descrip-
tion of the app will be presented before explaining the
classification of this app in a new class that we called
MPU app. Onde Chiare aims to promote a proper
form of active involvement of citizens, and real-time
information sharing of electromagnetic field levels in
a given geographical area. The typical scenario is rep-
resented by users carrying a smartphone loaded with
the Onde Chiare application and moving in a geo-
graphical area. Some services that the application can
manage are: i) Measurement of environmental data;
ii) Geolocation of the measurements; iii) Sending ge-
olocalized reports (i.e. broken antennas); iv) View ge-
olocalized information on the map. A remote server is
the part of the system demanded for the communica-
tion with the mobile application. It is responsible for
processing the geolocalized point received from the
application client. The remote servers response con-
tains information about the field measure (either real
or estimated) in that area and the position of possible
electromagnetic pollution sources in the surrounding
area. In addition to the involvement of experts using
tracking technologies to read data and information re-
lated to the environmental status, active participation
of individual citizen has a fundamental role. Users
in this context are an active stakeholder of the sys-
tem, they can send report that can be shared. Users
report may be a real measure of environmental data,
i.e., an EMF measure, or more general report i.e., a
broken antenna or apparatus. These report are val-
idated by experts before being shared. Our mobile
application offers the possibility to every smartphone
owner of becoming part of a network of distributed
information made up of citizens interested in environ-
mental issues and quality of life related to the urban
area. The participation will take place through an ac-
tive use of the app. To the best of our knowledge, in
the app store there are no similar mobile applications
and they are not intended as tools of this type. Onde
Chiare will make it easier for citizens to report public-
facing issues, taking a picture, locate it, categorize it,
and quickly and conveniently notify to the appropri-
ate parties for a better response related to exposure to
electromagnetic fields, but also for more general is-
sues.
4 A TAXONOMY OF MPU
APPLICATION SERVICES
We indicated with term MPU apps all those applica-
tions that provide to users public utility services, and
allow also a dialog with local authorities. In our case,
we considered a particular MPU app that promotes
a proper form of active involvement of citizens and
the real-time information sharing of electromagnetic
field levels in a given geographical area (Mannaro and
Ortu, 2016). Through the app, citizens can report a
problem directly to government officials by snapping
a photo and sending a report, authorities receive the
report and can send a response. This mobile applica-
tion aims to make information accessible to the local
stakeholders (for example local residents) and public
stakeholders (for example, local officials, leaders or
politicians, decision makers), via a click.
In this section we show the taxonomy that we cre-
ated on basis of the services offered by MPU apps
from users perspective. We adopted the taxonomy
development method of Nickerson et al. (Nickerson
et al., 2013). This method is iterative and consists in 7
steps. In the first step, a meta-characteristic needs to
be determined. Meta-characteristic represent the per-
spective of classification which guides choosing the
application characteristics in the taxonomy. We deter-
mine as meta-characteristic ”Services offered by Mo-
bile Public Utility applications from users perspec-
tives”. We assumed that users of the taxonomy are
citizens, public administrations, certified authority.
In the second step one has to determine ending con-
ditions. We assume that to reach ending condition
our taxonomy must be concise, robust, comprehen-
sive, extendible and explanatory. From the third step
to seventh step the process is iterative. The seventh
step checks if the ending conditions are reached. In
Figure 1 we show the created taxonomy as results of
the method we have just mentioned, totally we did
four iterations. According to the method, each step
can start chosing between two different approach:
Empirical-to-conceptual or Conceptual-to-empirical.
Usually, one chooses ”Empirical-to-conceptual” ap-
proach if there are enough available data. Instead,