Participatory environmental science
Luigi Ceccaroni, Barcelona Digital Technology Centre
Laia Subirats, Barcelona Digital Technology Centre
Jaume Piera, CSIC
Dick M.A. Schaap, MARIS
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Citclops project’s challenges and expected final
outcomes
• Optical monitoring (color, transparency and fluorescence) – but
better
– Challenges:
• Use of optical monitoring to interpret seascapes
• Combination and interpretation of data collected by:
• A distributed group of people (Citclops’s participatory environmental science)
• Publicly available data:
– GEOSS
– Satellites
– Standard maps
• other sources (to be defined)
– Expected final outcomes:
• To re-design current monitoring
• To reveal aspects/details of the environment people can’t normally see
2
How Citclops is engaged with GEO and the
implementation of GEOSS
• Active working-group/task (WA-01) on Integrated Water
Information (incl. Floods and Droughts) within GEO and
GEOSS frameworks
– The WA-01-C4: Global Water Quality Products and Services
component identifies the following needs:
• “Monitoring water quality using remote sensing, in conjunction with
strategic in-situ sampling, is needed to determine the current status of
water quality conditions and to help anticipate, mitigate, and even
avoid future water catastrophes.”
• “Systematic investments in an inland and near-coastal water quality
information system are required.”
– The GEO Inland and Near-Coastal Water Quality Working Group
aims to develop international operational water quality
information systems based on Earth observation.
– It also requires support by dedicated in-situ sampling.
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How Citclops is engaged with GEO and the
implementation of GEOSS
• Projects like Citclops bridge the gap between the local
sampling experience and satellite information.
• Making the connection between the citizen observatory
and satellite-based information will:
– Commit the users to the water quality field
– Give support to the innovation in space-based research and
services
• Citclops results and experience will be directly linked to
GEO:
– One of the partners (Hans van der Woerd from VU-VUmc
together with Gordon Campbell from ESA) directly involved in
the information component that will make the Earthobservation products better accessible for the public and the
local managers.
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Participatory environmental science
• Citizens as environmental data consumers
• Monitoring tackled by scientists or policy makers alone
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Expensive
Hard to use technology
Quantity, coverage?
High quality
Sustainable?
• Citizens as environmental data creators and consumers
• Monitoring tackled by scientists, policy makers and citizens
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Low cost
Easy to use technology
Quantity, coverage?
Quality?
Sustainable
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The convergence of two trends
• Commonplace objects understanding what we do with
them
–Thanks to the proliferation of cheap, powerful sensors
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The convergence of two trends
• Our personal identities firmly connected to our profiles on
social networks
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Interaction made “social”
• How to create peer pressure?
• Recycle and impress your (Facebook) friends, or don't recycle
and risk incurring their wrath
• Share your weight with your Twitter followers; it will help you to
stick to a diet
• Monitor the environment and impress your friends, or don't
monitor the environment and…???
• Like a videogame, with points for doing good?
• Why create peer pressure?
• We are not mere automatons who assist big data in asking
and answering questions. Well, we shouldn’t be…
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The social-engineering context
• Social engineering disguised as product engineering
• From smart cars to smart sensors, "smart" as the shorthand for
transforming present-day social reality
• Smart technologies becoming more intrusive
• Risk of undermining our autonomy by supporting behaviors that
someone somewhere has deemed desirable:
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Smart forks informing us that we are eating too fast
Smart toothbrushes urging us to spend more time brushing our teeth
Smart sensors in our cars telling us we drive too fast
Smartphones telling us which beach is better for us
• Devices giving us useful feedback
• But also sharing everything they know about our habits with
institutions whose interests may be different from our own
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Applications
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Applications
• Smartphones, water color and Forel-Ule
(images courtesy of Marcel Wernand, NIOZ)
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Applications, applications
•Improvement of scuba-diving activities
•Ranking the best beaches
•Early-warning systems for HABs and bio-chemical hazards
•Monitoring swell and length of waves
•Water transparency via phone pictures and Secchi disc
•Retrieval of sensor measurements from low-cost moorings
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From current monitoring to
"participatory environmental science"
•Monitoring and…
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Mobile devices as sensor platforms
Georeferencing
Education through citizens’ effective participation
Community involvement
Internet-distribution and social platforms to observe and
then share:
• Photos (ocean color, transparency)
• Oil spills
• Algal blooms
• Recommendation
• Decision support
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Information acquisition
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Information delivery
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Information delivery
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Information delivery
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Information processing
•Standardization, interoperability
•GIS and satellite-data processing, integration and
interpretation
•Data-quality validation in real-time
• Taking into account position, orientation and weather conditions
•Context-awareness
• Data provided in a more or less voluntary, active or conscious
way
• Metadata and context data: time, location, name, instrument
•Personalisation
• Location
• Social environment
• Profile and personal history
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Acquisition, processing, delivery: a new way
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Resources
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