Civic technology
Civic technology is technology designed to help people, communities, and public institutions solve civic problems and improve democratic life.
Category
Technology Topics
Browse Qlopedia topics grouped under Technology.
894 topics, showing 1-24 on page 1 of 38.
Topics
Platform cooperativism
Platform cooperativism is a movement and business model that applies cooperative ownership and democratic governance to digital platforms.
Right to repair
Right to repair is the idea that people and independent repair shops should have practical access to the parts, tools, manuals, software, and diagnostics needed to fix products they own. It connects consumer choice, competition, product design, and waste reduction.
Phase-change material
A phase-change material stores and releases heat as it changes phase, allowing thermal energy to be absorbed or delivered near a chosen temperature.
Digital twin
A digital twin is a data-driven virtual representation of a real-world entity, process, or system that is synchronized with its counterpart to support monitoring, simulation, prediction, and decisions.
Zero trust architecture
Zero trust architecture is a cybersecurity approach that treats every access request as something to evaluate, authorize, and monitor instead of assuming a trusted internal network.
Fog computing
Fog computing is a distributed architecture that places compute, storage, networking, and control functions between smart devices and centralized cloud systems.
Thermal runaway
Thermal runaway is a dangerous self-heating failure process in which heat generation exceeds heat removal, potentially causing venting, smoke, fire, or explosion.
Combined heat and power
Combined heat and power, or CHP, generates electricity and captures useful heat from the same fuel or energy source instead of wasting that heat.
Building insulation
Building insulation slows heat flow through walls, roofs, floors, and foundations, helping buildings stay more comfortable while reducing heating and cooling demand.
Demand-controlled ventilation
Demand-controlled ventilation adjusts outdoor-air ventilation based on changing need, often using carbon dioxide, occupancy, or air-quality sensors. Instead of ventilating every zone at a fixed maximum rate all day, a DCV system can reduce airflow when spaces are lightly occupied and increase it when people or pollutants rise.
Heat recovery ventilation
Heat recovery ventilation uses a heat exchanger to transfer heat between outgoing stale indoor air and incoming outdoor air. HRV and ERV systems provide controlled fresh air while reducing the heating or cooling energy lost through ventilation, especially in airtight buildings.
Stack effect
Stack effect is air movement caused by density and pressure differences between warmer and cooler air columns. In buildings, it can pull air in through lower leaks and push air out through upper leaks in cold weather, or reverse direction in some cooling conditions, affecting comfort, energy use, moisture, smoke, odors, and ventilation.
Blower door test
A blower door test measures building air leakage by using a calibrated fan, temporary door panel, and pressure gauge to pressurize or depressurize a building. The result helps builders, auditors, and homeowners understand airtightness, find leaks, verify code targets, and plan air-sealing work.
Air barrier
An air barrier is a continuous system of materials, joints, and transitions that limits uncontrolled air leakage through a building envelope. It helps reduce drafts, energy loss, moisture transport, pollutants, and comfort problems, while planned ventilation supplies outdoor air in a controlled way.
Rainscreen
A rainscreen is an exterior wall approach that separates cladding from the water-resistive layer behind it with a drainage and often ventilated cavity. The outer cladding sheds most rain, while the cavity, flashing, and inner control layers drain, dry, and manage water that gets past the first line of defense.
Vapor barrier
A vapor barrier, more accurately called a vapor retarder, is a material or coating that slows water vapor diffusion through a building assembly. It can help reduce condensation risk in walls, roofs, floors, basements, and crawlspaces, but only when it is matched to the climate, assembly, air barrier, insulation, and drying path.
Thermal bridge
A thermal bridge is a localized path where heat flows more easily through a building envelope than through the surrounding insulated assembly. It can occur at framing, balconies, slab edges, fasteners, corners, window perimeters, foundations, and other junctions, reducing comfort and energy performance while increasing condensation risk.
Building envelope
A building envelope is the set of walls, roofs, windows, doors, floors, and foundations that separates indoor space from outdoor or unconditioned space. It controls heat, air, moisture, sunlight, sound, views, and weather exposure, making it central to comfort, durability, energy use, and indoor environmental quality.
Daylighting
Daylighting is the planned use of sunlight and diffuse daylight to illuminate building interiors. It uses windows, skylights, clerestories, atriums, light shelves, reflective surfaces, shading, and lighting controls to reduce electric lighting while protecting comfort, views, and energy performance.
Thermal comfort
Thermal comfort describes whether people feel acceptably warm, cool, or neutral in a space. It is not just room temperature: humidity, air speed, radiant heat from surfaces, clothing, activity level, acclimatization, health, and personal control all affect how a thermal environment feels.
ACM Digital Library
ACM Digital Library is a computing research website for ACM publications, conference proceedings, journals, magazines, citations, author profiles, and the Guide to Computing Literature.
IEEE Xplore
IEEE Xplore is a research website and digital library for engineering, computer science, technology journals, conference papers, standards, eBooks, and educational courses.
Datawrapper
Datawrapper is a data visualization website for creating, publishing, embedding, and exporting interactive charts, maps, and tables without writing code.