Case Study: WWF Greece achieves citizen-led mapping and management of urban green spaces with Microsoft Azure

By hosting the GreenSpaces app on Microsoft Azure, WWF Hellas has created an innovative mechanism for urban green spaces management and promotion

WWF Hellas, the Greek office of the global WWF network, created the crowdsourced GreenSpaces app to encourage citizens to map, rate and help maintain urban green areas. The challenge was ensuring the app stayed available and responsive during seasonal and weekend demand spikes so users could reliably find, suggest or comment on green spaces across many cities without large in‑house infrastructure or operations overhead.

By hosting GreenSpaces on Microsoft Azure (using Azure Mobile Apps), WWF Hellas gained scalable, stable cloud hosting that supports peak loads and multiplatform access. The app now covers 945 registered urban green spaces in 109 Greek cities, has a few thousand downloads, and delivers consistent performance—boosting citizen participation and helping WWF further its biodiversity and urban‑green management goals.

WWF

Achilleas Plitharas

Awareness Officer