Sensors and citizen sciences : What contributions for environmental sciences? The OZCAR Community's case

The development of participatory science and research projects using sensors (measurement of temperature, relative humidity, pollutants in the air, vibrations in the ground, radiation, etc.) represents an unprecedented opportunity to deal with the societal and environmental challenges. In an ever-renewed perspective of co-construction, sharing and enhancement of scientific knowledge, science and participatory research continue to open the way to increasingly broad possibilities for dialogue and rapprochement between “science and society”. The scales of the actors' participation nevertheless remain to be questioned in order to grasp what is being built, according to a gradient that runs from manipulation to possible citizen control.

However, despite their origins dating back to the 17th century (in Europe), many theoretical, methodological and practical obstacles still remain to this day with regard to participatory sciences and more particularly when they involve the use of sensors. First of all, the provision of a "general public" version of these devices necessarily involves choices in the way of presenting the functionalities and the associated documents and therefore the non-presentation of certain others. In addition, although these tools are theoretically accessible to everyone, it can be noted that a part of the population still lives in indifference or even ignorance of the local and regional environmental issues that surround them ( Guermond, 2011 - https://www.cairn-int.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=E_EG_402_0097 )

Is it enough to make new data and tools available to generate enthusiasm and a real change in citizen practices around environmental issues by relying solely on a democratization of access to information?

This presentation aims to provide some answers to this question by discussing around three points:

• Between citizen training in the use of sensors, effective cognitive capacity of the citizen to seize the relevant information that he can produce concerning his territory in order to bring it to the public debate, several difficulties remain. What are they?
• The presentation proposes also to discuss theoretically and methodologically the sciences and participatory research mobilizing the use of sensors. It will be about knowledge production on these aspects, by looking at them in a fairly detailed way. 
• We will conclude by sharing an experience of how citizen science is considered and envisioned in a community that was not used to working with citizens until recently: OZCAR (Critical Zone Observatories: Research and Application), a national distributed research infrastructure associating most of the French observation sites dedicated to the observation and monitoring of the Critical Zone.