Bangkok’s online complaints channel, Traffy Fondue, was hailed as a game-changer at a global conference on climate change on Thursday.

Traffy Fondue was highlighted by Bangkok deputy governor Tavida Kamolvej in her speech to the 17th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation to Climate Change (CBA17).

The four-day conference dedicated to promoting climate-change efforts among public and private partners is being held at the Royal Orchid Sheraton Hotel in Bang Rak district until Sunday.

Tavida said the key to successful community-based adaptation is “operational innovation” – or the adoption of new ideas and processes in actual workflows that results in practical benefits to community members.

She highlighted Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA)’s Traffy Fondue platform, which provides an online channel for city residents to lodge their complaints about BMA operations as well as safety and environmental issues.

“Traffy Fondue has received over 300,000 complaints and responded to nearly 250,000 of them promptly,” she said. “It also logged and archived all complaints for future reference without using a single sheet of paper, and used the complaint data to create ‘Bangkok Risk Map’ or areas where reports of crimes, fires, or road accidents spike.”

The platform also includes PM2.5 air pollution readings in real-time and lists public health units in each community.

“Data collected by the platform will also be used to improve the city’s public health system, including the BMA’s current campaigns for telemedicine services and boosting hospital beds to 10,000,” she added.

The CBA conference sees climate-change workers and volunteers gather to share their knowledge, experience, innovations and best practices that can be adopted at community level. Besides the main forum, the four-day conference also includes activities such as a debate session and peer-to-peer group discussion.