The skills, knowledge, values and rules of common resources management, like surface and groundwater in the M’zab valley (Algeria), are transmitted for centuries from one generation to another orally and on the field through observation and participation in the agricultural and water distribution tasks from a very young age. However, the continuity of intergenerational transfer of traditional knowledge faces challenges. Alterations of the water cycle related to climate change, mainly resulted in water scarcity, and technological transformations like the introduction of mechanised individual pumps, have disrupted the traditional collective organisation and challenged the intergenerational transmission of water management knowledge that prevailed in traditional systems. This has caused a loss of interest among the younger generation in their traditional knowledge around the governance of water resources. The participatory visual approach can facilitate community involvement in different citizen science projects. Our work explored how this approach can be used to address traditional knowledge holders’ concern about how to involve the younger generation in the groundwater management. We propose integrating different forms of knowledge- the research and video made by professional researchers, as well as the videos by four local scouts belonging to the M'zab oasis community.

The experience of participatory video enabled the four scouts to achieve three main things. Firstly, their involvement in concrete and practical projects enabled them to seek out information from knowledge holders from different backgrounds, deepen their own knowledge about the community-managed groundwater recharge and use system groundwater recharge and use system, acquire new skills (i.e. audio-visual and editing), express their perception and vision. Secondly, the four scouts used participatory video combining images and narrative to creatively and engagingly denounce two major environmental problems. Finally, the scouts used the potential of video to launch a call to action, building on the power of images and the emotions that those images can elicit.

Moreover, the interaction between research and artistic methods enables knowledge to be co-produced in a more dynamic and creative way. It also enables to overcome academia's bias against non-academic data. In our case study, the co-production of knowledge is crucial to raise awareness among young people. We believe that connecting different knowledge systems, traditional and scientific expertise, and emotions, can contribute to more sustainable governance of common resources like groundwater, by remembering the past, documenting the present and imagining the future.

How to cite: Hamamouche, M. F., Saidani, M. A., and Fantini, E.: Citizen science project in the M’zab valley oases (Algeria): Making groundwater management visible to young generations through the participatory visual approach, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-21142, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-21142, 2024.

The Dutch citizen science project Delft Measures (https://bit.ly/DelftMeasures) focuses on the collaboration between citizens, local institutions, and NGOs to map the weather and changing climate in the city of Delft. It has been running for 4 years, during which citizens of Delft measure long-term changes in rainfall patterns, temperature, and now also soil moisture in their private gardens. Currently, there are over 45 of the Alecto WS5500 citizen-science weather stations spread across neighborhoods in Delft, capturing rainfall variability in different urban microclimates. But in the past years, more than 100 different inhabitants have already been engaged and have helped to collect data.

The data is used by a diverse number of organizations like the National Meteorological Institute, the Delft University of Technology and the Delft Municipality, to answer different scientific, engineering, or policy questions. We collaborate with multiple NGOs in project execution. Considering the diverse interests of all stakeholders, the project addresses a variety of goals from education to improving climate adaptation to implementing open science practices.

All in all, the project grew into a successful co-creation between many different partners. Delft Measures has been growing and changing and it managed to reach a consistent base of enthusiastic citizens that support the goals of the project, engaging them in making changes in the city for climate change adaptation. For Delft, as a city below sea level, this means a better drainage network to deal with the larger showers of summer rain, while retaining water during longer periods of drought. By setting up secure collaborations with the municipality and university, the data citizens collect is used as direct input for the (future) efficiency of the municipality’s city-wide sewer and drainage network. For the university, this is valuable for education and research into how city infrastructure influences local weather patterns and the variability of rainfall, to understand better where high-intensity rainfall events will have the highest effect. Currently, such high spatial resolution on rainfall in cities is scarce. Additionally, the project functions as a case study for the university’s Open Science program, aiming to evaluate the implementation of open science practices in local citizen science projects, while NGOs invested in climate change adaptation in the city roll up their sleeves to help citizens make the practical changes needed for our new climate.

We are currently in the process of writing down the ‘recipe’ of Delft Measures, to help other cities implement similar projects and not to have to reinvent the wheel. We would like to share this recipe during this session, where we will answer questions such as how we manage to collect useful information and increase community involvement and awareness, what kind of participatory approaches we implemented to facilitate community involvement, how we tackle legitimate concerns about potential data biases, inaccuracies and how we ensure the long-term sustainability of the project.

How to cite: Vries, S. and Droste, A.: The Delft Measures Recipe: how to implement a similar citizen science project in other cities, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-11306, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-11306, 2024.

Numerous obstacles hinder societal transformation toward a climate-resilient future, often rooted in underlying assumptions prevalent across various domains, including civil society, the public/private sector, and politics. AGORA is a HORIZON Europe project (Grant agreement ID: 101093921) whose aim is to support communities and regions to overcome these obstacles in climate change adaptation. It started in January 2023 and will have a total duration of 3 years.

This initiative supports the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change through four main pillars:

• Conduction four Pilots in different countries (i.e., Spain – Zaragoza; Italy – Rome; Sweden – Malmö; and Germany –Dresden), focusing on workshops and implementing co-creation strategies;
• Developing improved strategies by understanding stakeholders' needs and climate change risks; over 50 cross-disciplinary stakeholders, including followers from non-Pilot countries like Portugal, are interested in applying the lessons learned;
• Empowering local communities through societal transformation; it assesses learning tool needs, hosts workshops on pressing issues, and creates digital tools like a Digital Agora, two digital Academies, and an App – a challenging game for simultaneous entertainment and learning;
• Evaluating climate change policies in different countries and designing adaptation strategies using participatory democratic.

In the last year, various activities took place in the four AGORA pilot regions, including inception workshops aimed at bringing together different stakeholders on climate adaptation. These workshops specifically focused on identifying vulnerability, risk drivers, and gaps in local adaptive capacity. The goal was to assess vulnerabilities to expected climate hazards, aligning adaptation priorities with the needs of local communities and fostering community strengthening.

Regarding the city of Rome, the inception workshop aligned with the development activities of the city’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. The event aimed to foster a fruitful discussion among various local stakeholders regarding adaptation to the anticipated impacts of climate change across multiple sectors (Water - encompassing resource management, drought, and impacts related to precipitation; urban settlements; networks and infrastructure; cultural heritage; health; socioeconomic system; marine and coastal system; agricultural and livestock system; biodiversity and ecosystems). These sectors were identified as key areas most susceptible to risk during the formulation of the Climate Change Adaptation Strategy. The objective was to define the main socioeconomic, structural, and environmental vulnerabilities, as well as the primary needs and critical issues related to the adaptive capacity of the territory and its citizens for each sector under examination.

Through a multidisciplinary, integrated approach, AGORA is a growing, dynamic, pan-European community that creates and shares advanced digital tools to enhance awareness. Informed citizens can actively participate and contribute to ensure safe and sustainable development. Hence the project is the meeting point where citizens share knowledge, practices, expertise and needs, interacting with sciences to design and build a more resilient Europe through a living dialogue between local communities.

How to cite: Reder, A., Adinolfi, M., Ellena, M., Mattera, M., Mercogliano, P., and Zanchini Di Castiglionchio, E.: AGORA as the bridge between local actors and communities: objectives and experiences in the Italian Pilot (the city of Rome), EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-15308, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-15308, 2024.

Climate change poses a significant threat to the well-being of humanity, territories, and resources. In the city of Bologna, Italy, environmental, societal, and digital challenges mirror those experienced globally in urban spaces such as air pollution, and intense urban mobility stemming from escalating urbanization. Addressing these issues, the H2020 I-CHANGE project,  "Individual Change of HAbits Needed for Green European transition," aims to demonstrate the potential for collective behavioral change by actively engaging civil society in innovative citizen science initiatives (Goudeseune et al., 2020; Vohland, 2021). University of Bologna established the Bologna Living Lab, involving a broad network of stakeholders based on the Quintuple Helix of Innovation (Carayannis et al., 2012), to enhance awareness of climate change impacts in urban areas and encourage behavioral shifts toward more socially and environmentally sustainable lifestyles.

How to cite: Carlone, T. and Tondini, S.: Game-Changing Cities: Toward Sustainable Transportation with Citizen Science in Bologna’s Living Lab , EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-1681, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-1681, 2024.

The AGORA (https://adaptationagora.eu/) project aims to support communities and regions exploiting a broad range of approaches, mechanisms and initiatives to meaningfully and effectively engage citizens, civil society organisations, academics, experts, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, marginalities and other relevant actors in all the transformation steps towards a climate-resilient Europe. Beyond the state-of-the-art, AGORA aims to promote societal transformational processes through transdisciplinary tools and approaches in different social, economic and political contexts.  The ambition is to accelerate and enhance the adaptation process by sharing innovative problem-oriented climate adaptation solutions that could be widely adopted across Europe, considering societal transformations and the awareness that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. A set of pilot regions in Italy, Sweden, Germany, and Spain constitutes the co-production arena to co-design, co-develop, and co-implement climate adaptation solutions through specific-context in-person activities (for engagement, capacity building, governance and tackling disinformation). Regions and Communities joining the Mission on Adaptation will also be involved as followers feeding and learning from the AGORA initiative. A roadmap for transformative change and large-scale citizen engagement will be developed to transfer effective policy instruments and ensure a long-term legacy, promoting climate justice, gender equality and equity. AGORA's legacy will be to increase citizens' adaptive capacity and empowerment to proactively support decision-making processes and transformative potential to anticipate innovative behaviour. The pillar of the AGORA project consists in the Digital AGORA, an online space that supports citizens, local government, municipal services and networks, and communities to play a relevant and conscious role in co-developed decision-making processes. It will host two Digital Academies that will aspire to guide and support the targeted audiences to access and use Climate Data and to monitor Climate Risks, and to oppose Climate Change Disinformation. The main goal of the former Digital Academy is to facilitate access and usage of high quality, open source Climate Data as well as Climate Risks Data. The goal is achieved by mapping existing data, sources and platforms that will be gathered in “ad hoc built” inventories on climate data, adaptation and climate risk hubs. The second goal is to empower citizens, stakeholders and policy makers through technical reports and training documents on how to access and use climate data for adaptation. In this perspective, the Digital Academy is based on courses with key scientific information on the usage of climate data at different level of knowledge (entry, base and advanced level). The last goal is to promote information and initiatives fostering climate adaptation supported by citizen science activities. The Digital Academy to access and use Climate Data and to monitor Climate Risks is co-designed and co-developed in different public events, as ECCA (www.ecca2023.eu) and SISC conference 2023 (www.sisclima.it). Such events allowed to connect climate adaptation practitioners with the scientific community, to gather the users’ requirements and provide suggestions and ideas for the advancements in the building up of the Digital Academy.

How to cite: Adinolfi, M., Reder, A., Mercogliano, P., Hoy, A., Milelli, M., and Biondi, R.: Building up a Digital Academy in AGORA project to aware citizens, improve access to and use of climate data supporting adaptation, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-19094, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19094, 2024.

The city of Barcelona, like many urban centres, deals with the multifaceted challenges posed by air pollution. This abstract enlightens the pivotal role of citizen engagement and citizen science initiatives in catalysing awareness, understanding, and action against air pollution while addressing the broader context of climate change mitigation.

Barcelona's air quality is significantly impacted by anthropogenic activities. In 2022, population exposure to PM_2.5 and NO₂ tripled the health protection guidelines set by the WHO. Particulate matter concentrations returned to pre-pandemic levels and NO₂ exceeded the legal limits in one district, averaging 42 µg/m³ annually (Rico et al., 2023). Long-term exposure to those levels is estimated to cause 1,500 deaths, 900 new childhood asthma cases, and 130 new lung cancer cases annually, with associate social costs over 1 billion and healthcare over 5 million euros. These pollutants not only pose immediate health risks but also contribute to the exacerbation of climate change. Urgent and stronger action is needed to reduce air pollution and safeguard public health.

Citizens, as stakeholders, are pivotal agents in effecting meaningful change. Citizen science initiatives, such as participatory monitoring networks and collaborative research endeavours, empower individuals to actively engage in collecting data, analysing trends, and disseminating information on air quality. This engagement not only fosters a deeper understanding of the intricacies of air pollution but also cultivates a sense of ownership and responsibility among citizens towards their environment. This is the goal of I-CHANGE Living Labs, to encourage behavioural changes and promote eco-friendly practices in everyday life, as individual actions to combat climate change and towards more sustainable patterns.

The Barcelona Living Lab on Extreme Events has partnered with schools of different socioeconomic backgrounds in Barcelona (as stakeholders and citizen scientists) to deploy six low-cost air quality sensors (Smart Citizen Kits) and five meteorological stations. This campaign has consisted of several implementation phases where the sensors were installed, teachers were trained, and workshops were carried out to develop curricular material for different primary and secondary school grades. Students work on projects to understand how the sensors work and the collected data. Within these projects, data is gathered for specific days when variations in pollution levels are observed. Differences between various neighbourhoods and districts (whit sensors) are compared. Students use this information to create hypotheses about potential causes and then try to verify them. Then they are encouraged to understand how air quality affects their daily life and what they and their families can do to improve it and become more resilient to climate change. This contribution shows the methodology followed to develop this collaboration and the different campaigns, the difficulties that had been overcame, and the potential of the co-creative process with schools

The I-CHANGE project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement 101037193.

References:

Rico M, Font L, Arimon J, Gómez A, Realp E. Avaluació de la qualitat de l'aire a la ciutat de Barcelona 2022. Barcelona: Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona; 2023 (Catalan).

How to cite: Esbri, L., Sola, Y., Barrera Bohórquez, P., Marcos, R., Llasat-Botija, M., Ceraldi, L., and Llasat, M. C.: Citizen science in schools to take climate action: uneven air pollution concentrations in Barcelona, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-7305, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-7305, 2024.

Floods pose significant challenges to communities worldwide, necessitating effective hazard management strategies. Citizen science here emerges as a pivotal tool in amassing critical knowledge and experiences from local communities, offering an invaluable resource to bolster flood hazard management initiatives. It is able to serve as a conduit for integrating diverse local perspectives and experiences. Harnessing the collective wisdom of community members, who intimately understand the dynamics of their surroundings, becomes instrumental in comprehending flood patterns, vulnerabilities, and impacts and is able to enrich the database for hydrological and hydraulic modelling in the flood context. Nowadays, the advent of citizen science apps represents a paradigm shift in engaging and mobilizing local communities to actively participate in flood hazard management.

Within the framework of the BMBF R&D – Project “Urban Flood Resilience – Smart Tools (FloReST)” one tool developed was a SmartApp engaging local communities in the collection of flash flood related data and experiences. After the definition of the user requirements in collaboration with the local stakeholders, a first prototype was developed, engaging the citizens in the reference municipalities of the FloReST-project to organize App-Journeys collecting data in the field. Beside a description of the problem to be choosen from a predefined list of flood related grievances (e.g. drain blockages, faulty rakes, building activities changing the draining system), the Geolocation of the position, additional textual information, up to three images and a time stamp is collected and send via the smartphone to a Gesoserver at the Backend. There – located ideally at the responsible organizational unit for flood related activities, e.g. the building or the environmental authority- the incoming messages are stored in a database and visualized on a risk-map with different graphical signatures depending on the category of the problem reported. After having received the report, a notice confirming the reception of the message is automatically send back to the client. The SmartApp now is able to facilitate the data collection on flood occurrences, affected areas, and vulnerabilities. Integration of such data with existing models enhances the accuracy and precision of flood risk assessments, enabling authorities to develop targeted mitigation and response plans.

But, the idea behind this SmartApp is not only the collection of flood related local knowledge, moreover, this citizen science initiative intends to promote community engagement and empowerment, fostering a sense of responsibility among residents towards flood resilience.

However, several challenges exist in the implementation of citizen science for flood hazard management: Quality assurance and data reliability remain concerns, necessitating robust protocols for data validation and verification. In addition, the responsible authorities we discussed with were not very happy with that type of citizen science tools for deficiency reporting, because this will force them to action often not possible in a short time because of a lack in resources.

How to cite: Fischer-Stabel, P. and Nau, S.: Leveraging Citizen Science for Flood Hazard Management: Harnessing Local Knowledge and Experience, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-1526, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-1526, 2024.

RiverSnap is a citizen science project as part of the joint project “Zukunftslabor Wasser” that transforms smartphones into measuring instruments for monitoring and analyzing river parameters, responsive to water level changes, natural hazards (e.g., floods), and anthropogenic-induced alterations. A robust stainless-steel smartphone frame is strategically located on or near a bridge for convenient public access to capture river images. This frame facilitates precise image positioning, enabling the capture of river scene images of a predefined and referenced river area that can be uploaded to a centralized database, shared on social media, or sent via email. This collaborative endeavor establishes a community-driven repository documenting river changes over time. Due to water's dynamic nature and structural and sky reflections in close-range images, the RiverSnap project utilizes and develops novel Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to extract and predict hydrologic parameters and features.

These advanced algorithms are crucial in detecting water lines, determining positions, and mapping various riverine features with scientific precision. Through this sophisticated technology, RiverSnap transforms community snapshots and additional measurements into a valuable resource for scientifically assessing and understanding alterations in the river environment. As the AI models are data-hungry, RiverSnap is diligently creating benchmark datasets for river water, facilitating the development and training of robust machine learning algorithms. These datasets serve as comprehensive references, allowing the AI models to enhance their understanding of various hydrological patterns, ultimately improving the accuracy and effectiveness of river parameter predictions and feature extractions.

Established in 2023 in Hannover, Germany, the RiverSnap station network has observed significant growth, now covering four monitoring locations around Hannover. Recognizing the pivotal role of detecting the water surface area in approximating riverine parameters, we have developed and implemented various advanced Deep Learning (DL) models for water body segmentation. As part of this initiative, a novel river water dataset named RiverSnap.v1, including 1092 images, has been introduced and is constantly updated. Additionally, various methods have been investigated to geo-reference the analyzed results. In a straightforward approach, artificial or natural markers, such as specific locations of objects around the river or on bridges, were measured with geomatics tools like GNSS receivers and total stations. The DL-extracted water surface was then georeferenced based on these markers to obtain results like the water level. A 3D terrain model derived from LiDAR data or photogrammetric techniques like Structure from Motion (SfM) can be utilized for Geo-referencing parameters and results in more advanced scenarios. This allows for automatically assigning absolute coordinates to each image and subsequent camera pose estimation.

Examples of practical applications of RiverSnap include monitoring high-frequency water level and water line changes and morphological changes in rivers, lakes, wetlands, and urban areas. Additionally, RiverSnap is instrumental in monitoring extended flood areas and observing the time sequence of a flooding event, as demonstrated in data of a German flood of 01/2024.

Funding: This study was performed as part of the joint research project „Zukunftslabor Wasser“ funded by the Lower-Saxon Ministry of Research and Culture (FKZ: 11-76251-1873/2022 (ZN3994))

How to cite: Moghimi, A. and Welzel, M.: RiverSnap: A citizen science project to monitor and Analyse riverine hydrological parameters from close-range remote sensing images, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-16082, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-16082, 2024.

Meteorology and climatology have their foundations in the observation of the main meteorological variables. They constitute an essential tool for understanding the meteorological situation in operational forecasting activity, for the construction of the initial conditions for numerical integration in both deterministic and probabilistic models, as well as for the construction of time series for climate analysis.

Moreover, the assimilation of local meteorological observations to the global observational network, plays a crucial role in refining meteorological predictions.

I-CHANGE project offers an in-depth exploration of Citizen Science, emphasizing the use of innovative instrumentation to actively engage citizens in collecting meteorological data. Through the use of advanced sensors, mobile apps, and emerging technologies such as Meteotracker, our project aims to transform individuals into true "citizen scientists," making a significant contribution to the understanding of atmospheric phenomena.

We present a case study illustrating the integration of state-of-the-art instrumentation with community participation in Living Labs, highlighting how Citizen Science can enrich meteorological research. We discuss the challenges and opportunities of this approach, emphasizing the validity of community-collected data and its impact on the accuracy of local weather forecasts.

How to cite: Loglisci, N., Galizia, A., Parodi, A., Galia, T., Iurato, J., and Monni, R.: Citizen Science in Meteorology: Enhancing weather understanding through innovative instrumentation and community engagement, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-20151, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-20151, 2024.

River pollution is a global challenge recognized as unacceptable by citizens. Despite increasing awareness and investment in river water quality monitoring worldwide, current monitoring strategies fail to well characterise river health. In particular, the spatial and temporal resolution at which river health is currently monitored is insufficient and falls short to identify e.g., pollution spikes and point pollution sources. At the same time, the rise in citizen engagement in river monitoring, driven by increased awareness and widespread availability of smart phones and other monitoring technologies, has generated opportunities to overcome current monitoring barriers. 

In this paper, we share our experience collaborating with the community group Friends of Bradford’s Becks (FoBB, UK) to use citizen-collected photos for AI-based detection of health indicators, leading to enhanced river health management. More specifically, FoBB has collected around 100,000 photos of the streams that flow through and under Bradford. These images offer insights into the health of the becks, including specific pollution issues such as discharging overflows, sewage litter, discolouration, amongst other things, as well as how pollution has changed in time and space. The number of photos makes analysis challenging. In this project, we used AI models for automatic image labelling and prototyped several landing solutions for embedding the labelling model into a tool usable by citizens.

The project was initially set up in a Hackathon, funded by Natural England, and aimed to develop solutions using AI models. The landing solutions employed classification and object detection deep learning models to assist citizens by offering automatic detection of river health indicators. This not only reduces the cost of reporting but also improves the quality of reporting with comprehensive labels. Through community engagement, high spatio-temporal resolution data can be collected from citizens to fill the data gaps, including pollution levels, natural habitat conditions, and biodiversity. Additionally, while collecting the data, the deep learning models can be further fine-tuned to better assist citizens and managers in river health assessment and management. In summary, the project presents a holistic approach to river health management, combining the strengths of AI with the insights and engagement of local communities. The success of this approach in Bradford offers a template for similar initiatives globally, marking a step towards more informed and responsive river health management strategies.

How to cite: Hung, H. T., Pearce, D., Wang, L.-P., Ochoa-Rodriguez, S., and Jones, A.: Eyes on the Water: Leveraging Citizen Photos and AI for River Health Assessment and Management, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-19298, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-19298, 2024.