The H(app)athon Project (www.happathon.com), an organization leveraging emerging technology and global happiness metrics to improve human well-being, announced today a partnership with the city of Somerville, Mass., to build out its sensor-based Happiness survey platform to measure the city residents’ well-being. The partnership will pilot the system with Somerville residents this fall. The city’s existing census questions on happiness will be added to The H(app)athon Project’s survey, making it easy for users to answer these questions on their mobile devices and laptops.

“We’re thrilled to be working with the City of Somerville,” notes John C. Havens, Founder of the H(app)athon Project. “They’re the first city in the US to implement happiness metrics for policy creation, and our goal is to demonstrate how mobile sensors can better help identify and improve the well-being of their citizens.”

Connecting H(app)iness to Action

The pilot test is the first step in reaching H(app)athon’s goal of creating sensor-based technologies that measure happiness and well-being. Leveraging emerging technology and global happiness indicator metrics, The H(app)athon Project aims to develop a technology that combines answers to survey questions with results from physiological sensors. These combined results will then yield a Personal Happiness Indicator (PHI) score that can help users understand what brings them well being and find corresponding resources to help them increase their happiness.

The partnership between Somerville and The H(app)athon Project will be the world’s first government implementation of sensor-based happiness measurements that inform public policy.

“Somerville, Mass., is the first city in the U.S. to track resident’s happiness,” notes Daniel Hadley from the Somerville Mayor’s office. “For the past two years, Somerville has included happiness surveys in their census to measure the happiness and well-being of the city’s residents. Now, users can access the survey through H(app)athon’s survey app.”

On March 20, 2013, International Day of Happiness, The H(app)athon Project launched in over nine cities around the world and was featured in Forbes, Mashable and USA Today. More events are currently planned for San Diego, Lisbon, Amsterdam and Dubai. Now, The H(app)athon Project is taking its mission to the next level with its partnership with the city of Somerville.

For more information: The H(app)athon Project, visit www.happathon.com.

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The H(app)athon Project is Connecting Happiness to Action. By leveraging emerging technology and global happiness indicator metrics, the Project’s goal is to improve human well-being and the way the world measures happiness.

For more information on H(app)athon, visit www.happathon.com, follow them on Twitter at @happathon, or check them out on Facebook at www.facebook.com/happathon.

Happathon

Happathon

The H(app)athon Project helps people identify and track their values as a way to measure what makes life count. Based on data collected from mobile surveys and passive data, users are provided with a volunteer recommendation based on their results. The science of positive psychology shows that living to your values and being altruistic increases intrinsic wellbeing, which is why the H(app)athon Project is 'connecting happiness to action' via their surveys and “Happy City Workshops” that inspire citizens to create positive campaigns for their communities focused on increasing worth versus wealth. For more information, visit www.happathon.com.

The H(app)athon Project Introduction Video

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