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Digitization

Online tools

The following online tools developed at the University of Bern help you cope with everyday life in a variety of ways.

Texte: Valentin Bär 2023/06/06

Recommendations for sustainable consumption

The interactive app “BENE Stadtplan” (a city map of Bern in German) helps with sustainable consumer decisions by listing more than 180 smaller and lesser-known shops and restaurants in the city of Bern. These were selected on the basis of eight ecological, social and economic sustainability criteria. The app was developed by the BENE Association, an association of students from all three Bern universities, in cooperation with the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE). The plan provides an overview of sustainable consumer options and invites people to rediscover the City of Bern from a different perspective.

Digital voting support

The online voting aid Smartvote has been helping voters make fact-based decisions since 2003. You can use a questionnaire to compare your political position with the various parties and individual candidates. Smartvote was co-founded by Daniel Schwarz and Jan Fivaz, who at the time were students at the University of Bern. Today, the platform is further developed and operated by the non-profit association Polittools. And this has been extremely successful: In Switzerland, Smartvote has already provided information in over 300 elections. The platform has also occasionally been used abroad, for example in Bulgaria, Luxembourg and Australia.

Keeping languages alive with an app

The Vamale language is threatened with extinction, with only about 130 active speakers of a Pacific ethnic group. As part of his doctoral thesis at the University of Bern, linguist Jean Rohleder developed an app that contains a Vamale dictionary, word-specific images and sample sentences to prevent the disappearance of the language. To this end, he developed a writing system for the language which is only used orally. Although the app is not available through commercial app stores, the Vamale still use and publicize the app to this day. In this way, the app makes an active contribution to preserving the indigenous language.

The app to make apps

Developing an app requires programming skills and time, which can prevent non-specialists from implementing their research ideas digitally. SelfHelp is a CMS-based system with an integrated app toolkit. This makes it easier for researchers to create apps for collecting data: Incoming data is continuously integrated into the program, and a planning system makes it possible to create session-based interventions. In addition, the app, developed by the technology platform of the Faculty of Human Sciences, offers an administration system that can be used to categorize study participants.

Online psychotherapy

The HERMES self-help program helps to strengthen mental well-being and problem-solving skills and to reduce symptoms of depression with texts, audios, videos and exercises. The program has been scientifically researched and is considered to complement conventional therapies. A team from the Institute of Psychology developed HERMES as part of its research on online programs for the prevention and treatment of psychological problems. The team regularly develops new programs and monitors their effectiveness.

Predicting flood hazards

With climate change, the frequency of severe flooding is also increasing in Switzerland. To counter this danger, the Mobiliar Lab for Natural Risks at the University of Bern developed a modeling tool that visualizes the flood dynamics of Switzerland’s most important bodies of water spatially and in time lapse. What is special about the tool is that it does not analyze the effects of flooding per municipality, but rather considers the combined consequences for several river basins. The simulations can thus help civil protection and the emergency services to optimize emergency planning and minimize any damage in the event of a disaster.

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This article first appeared in uniFOKUS, the new University of Bern print magazine. Four times a year, uniFOKUS shows what academia and science are capable of. Thematically, each issue focuses on one specialist area from different points of view and thus aims to bring together as much expertise and as many research results from scientists and other academics at the University of Bern as possible.

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