Big Data, Social Networks and Well-Being

Social Networks aimed at understanding well-being could sustain the shift in paradigm from Sustainable to Regenerative Design. Well-being, i.e. ‘the state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy’, is a concept related to happiness, positive experiences and pleasure with implications on physical, mental, social and environmental aspects. In the built environment, recent works have linked indoor comfort, as well as long-term mental health and illnesses, to Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). Further studies focusing on outdoor spaces were conducted on the relationship between landscape and well-being, proving how urban landscapes affect the physical, mental and social well-being and health of citizens. Recent studies have also shown a positive impact of social ties on health and the value of adopting a socioecological approach to co-benefit individuals and the ecosystem, thus calling for integrated governance of social-ecological systems. However, there are only a few projects that focus on the integrated governance of a social-ecological system with ubiquitous technologies, and these projects are highly focused on human-centric design rather than on an eco-centric perspective. Ubiquitous technologies, also defined as ambient intelligence, refer to sensitive environments where computing is available everywhere at any time and may allow a more regenerative design by taking into account all the components of an ecosystem and their interactions.