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The rise of advanced ICT technologies has made it possible to apply low-cost sensor systems for measuring air quality in citizen science projects, including education. High school students in Norway used these sensor systems in a citizen science project to design, carry out, and evaluate their own research projects on air quality. An impact assessm...
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Biological recording is a prominent and widely practised form of citizen science, but few studies explore long-term demographic trends in participation and knowledge production. We studied long-term demographic trends of age and gender of participants reporting to a large online citizen science multi-taxon biodiversity platform (www.artportalen.se)...
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... While our own sensory system can detect many atmospheric properties such as rain, wind and temperature that is not the case for air quality. Therefore, low-cost monitoring devices empower citizens to monitor the air quality in their area and can positively influence societal behavior towards environmental issues, such as promoting active and sustainable transport (Grossberndt et al., 2021, van Brussel and Huyse, 2018, Varaden, Leidland, Lim and Barratt, 2021. It also provides valuable datasets which can provide a more accurate representation of the spatial variability of air pollution levels across a study domain playing a crucial role in policy formation. ...
... Por ejemplo, en este nivel encontramos la iniciativa Urban bird feeding experiment por (Soanes et al., 2020) donde el alumnado, con la estrecha colaboración de una persona que se dedica profesionalmente a la ciencia, a partir de una pregunta de investigación dada, pensaba su hipótesis, decidía la estrategia de muestreo y la llevaba a cabo. Así, llevado al extremo dónde el alumnado contribuye en la mayoría de las fases de la investigación encontramos en el Nivel 3 el 11% de las iniciativas, por ejemplo en la iniciativa Air quality measurements in high schools por Grossberndt et al. (2021) dónde el alumnado diseña y lleva a cabo una investigación sobre la calidad del aire. Finalmente, aquellas iniciativas que no destacan ningún objetivo relacionado con el desarrollo del conocimiento científico (7%) tampoco explicitan la contribución del alumnado. ...
... En el caso de los recursos relacionados con la misión científica, el 61% de las iniciativas se sitúa en el Nivel 2, es decir, que los recursos promueven alguno de los tres factores investigados (colaboración, formación o recursos materiales). Por ejemplo, en la iniciativa First small plastic debris sampling on Chilean beaches por Hidalgo-Ruz y Thiel (2013), el equipo científico supervisa la recogida de datos; la iniciativa Air quality measurements in high schools por Grossberndt et al. (2021) ofrece formación al profesorado sobre aspectos científicos relacionados con la contaminación y la interpretación de datos; o la iniciativa eMammal por Schuttler et al. (2019) forma al profesorado sobre protocolos para tomar fotos con cámaras trampa. En el Nivel 3 encontramos el 30% de las iniciativas, donde se incluyen todos los recursos y soportes en los tres ámbitos destacados anteriormente, como el caso de la iniciativa GET WET! por Thornton y Leahy (2012) donde facilitadores colaboran con el alumnado para la recogida de muestras, se ofrece formación al profesorado y recursos para aplicar los parámetros de la calidad del agua a las muestras recogidas por el alumnado. ...
Las iniciativas de ciencia ciudadana, donde la población no profesional contribuye al desarrollo de la ciencia, ha ido en aumento en los últimos años, entrando también en las aulas de escuelas e institutos. Esta colaboración no está exenta de retos, puesto que a menudo los objetivos de la ciencia profesional no están alineados con los objetivos educativos. En este artículo se investiga cuál es la calidad de las iniciativas que se han llevado a cabo en contexto escolar. Para ello se ha elaborado una herramienta que pretende caracterizar y valorar las dimensiones clave identificadas. Esta se ha aplicado a un conjunto de 46 iniciativas seleccionadas a partir de una revisión sistemática de la literatura. El análisis nos permite apuntar algunas reflexiones sobre cuál es la calidad y qué aspectos se deberían tener en cuenta para su diseño en las aulas escolares.
... Grossberndt et al. [31] coordinated CS projects in two Norwegian high schools, where students were asked to develop their own research project on the topic of air quality. Low-cost sensors were used to measure air pollutants in different urban spots, in the neighbourhood of the school, and also indoors; • Varaden et al. [32] describe a CS initiative that took place in five London primary schools. ...
Indoor air quality (IAQ) problems in school environments are very common and have significant impacts on students’ performance, development and health. Indoor air conditions depend on the adopted ventilation practices, which in Mediterranean countries are essentially based on natural ventilation controlled through manual window opening. Citizen science projects directed to school communities are effective strategies to promote awareness and knowledge acquirement on IAQ and adequate ventilation management. Our multidisciplinary research team has developed a framework—SchoolAIR—based on low-cost sensors and a scalable IoT system architecture to support the improvement of IAQ in schools. The SchoolAIR framework is based on do-it-yourself sensors that continuously monitor air temperature, relative humidity, concentrations of carbon dioxide and particulate matter in school environments. The framework was tested in the classrooms of University Fernando Pessoa, and its deployment and proof of concept took place in a high school in the north of Portugal. The results obtained reveal that CO2 concentrations frequently exceed reference values during classes, and that higher concentrations of particulate matter in the outdoor air affect IAQ. These results highlight the importance of real-time monitoring of IAQ and outdoor air pollution levels to support decision-making in ventilation management and assure adequate IAQ. The proposed approach encourages the transfer of scientific knowledge from universities to society in a dynamic and active process of social responsibility based on a citizen science approach, promoting scientific literacy of the younger generation and enhancing healthier, resilient and sustainable indoor environments.
... Other projects have used paper and petroleum jelly to trap dust and visually show this form of pollution . Grossberndt et al. (2021) describe how pupils in three Norwegian schools designed their own air quality monitoring projects, gained knowledge about air pollution, and developed skills, including how to build sensors and to conduct data analysis. The team had hoped that behavioural changes would follow from knowledge acquisition, but this was not the case, and the authors suggested teachers should facilitate space for group discussion to support this . ...
... Air quality is an exemplary case of sustainability and an important indicator of healthy cities, and it offers a focal point for people-centred urban transformation (Grossberndt et al. 2021). Air quality can be this be considered as a working object or as an agent of urban change the consideration of which can provide specific solutions. ...
Discussions on Urban Living Labs (ULLs) have been diffused in the last decade, especially concerning the issues of sustainability transition. In the EU, ULLs have been mainly conceptualized as niche innovations to develop various types of local networks, knowledge, products, services, capacities, and capabilities. ULLs represent a lower form of institutionalization, as they often do not show the capacity to align with—or have a real impact on—existing planning processes. This chapter reviews the various ways to conceptualize Urban Living Labs and develops a viable approach for aligning understandings across an international interdisciplinary research team of Nordic researchers. The NordicPATH’s model is based on the co-creation of mechanisms of knowledge generation for planning healthy and people-centered urban environments in four Nordic cities through science–policy interactions applied in urban contexts (Aalborg, Gothenburg, Kristiansand, Lappeenranta). The NordicPATH’s model has been advanced and performed since March 2020, in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, during forced isolation and periods of social distancing. The chapter highlights how the pandemic conditions may have strengthened researchers’ interdisciplinary process through digital connectivity and forced slowdown in outward activities with a potential for a resilient governance model.KeywordsCo-productionKnowledgeTransitionInclusionAir quality
... One of the most frequent aims of environmental CS projects is to initiate pro-environmental behavior or community actions that contribute to environmental conservation or to sustainable transformation (e.g., Bela et al. 2016;Grossberndt et al. 2021;Haywood et al. 2016;Jordan et al. 2011). In our study, nearly 60% of the citizen scientists (many of whom participated in environment-related CS projects) declared planning to take action in the field of their CS project. ...
Citizen science (CS) can foster transformative impact for science, citizen empowerment and socio-political processes. To unleash this impact, a clearer understanding of its current status and challenges for its development is needed. Using quantitative indicators developed in a collaborative stakeholder process, our study provides a comprehensive overview of the current status of CS in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Our online survey with 340 responses focused on CS impact through (1) scientific practices, (2) participant learning and empowerment, and (3) socio-political processes. With regard to scientific impact, we found that data quality control is an established component of CS practice, while publication of CS data and results has not yet been achieved by all project coordinators (55%). Key benefits for citizen scientists were the experience of collective impact (“making a difference together with others”) as well as gaining new knowledge. For the citizen scientists’ learning outcomes, different forms of social learning, such as systematic feedback or personal mentoring, were essential. While the majority of respondents attributed an important value to CS for decision-making, only few were confident that CS data were indeed utilized as evidence by decision-makers. Based on these results, we recommend (1) that project coordinators and researchers strengthen scientific impact by fostering data management and publications, (2) that project coordinators and citizen scientists enhance participant impact by promoting social learning opportunities and (3) that project initiators and CS networks foster socio-political impact through early engagement with decision-makers and alignment with ongoing policy processes. In this way, CS can evolve its transformative impact.
... Citizen science supports a conceptualisation of science that can be responsive to the concerns of citizens and can legitimately engage them with scientific knowledge production. Due to this, citizen science is framed by academics and practitioners as a participatory approach that can, through the production of new knowledge, transform conservation management into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic processes (Couvet and Prevot, 2015;Grossberndt et al., 2021;Loos et al., 2015;Peters and Besley, 2019). In marine governance, where decision-makers are often guided by hegemonic agendas (Tafon, 2018) and informed by the knowledge of dominant stakeholders (Said and Trouillet, 2020), citizen science has been suggested as a potentially transformational solution to unjust and undemocratic processes (McAteer and Flannery, 2022). ...
By increasing monitoring efforts and empowering members of the public to take political action to protect the oceans, citizen science is a potentially transformative practice. However, the impact of government agencies shifting from end-users of citizen science data to co-producers of initiatives raises questions about the transformative capacity of citizen science. Drawing on a survey of citizen science volunteers and interviews with practitioners and government actors, this chapter illustrates how the professionalisation of citizen science is narrowing the scope of what projects can achieve and how volunteers can challenge neoliberal marine governance. Although government support may appear to create partnerships between policy, non-governmental organisations and their volunteers, it may also limit the radical potential of citizen science knowledge production by turning projects and volunteers into both objects and subjects of government control. We argue that this control partly manifests itself within a professionalisation governmentality. This professionalisation reduces the capacity of citizen science projects to empower local knowledge and to transform marine management processes.
... In the case of the ACTION pilots, it provides a set of intuitive, easy-to-use online widgets for different types of indicators, including socio-economic information, number of records gathered and validated, publication, events, etc. Besides infographics, impact assessment results can be described in ad hoc reports such as those included in the ACTION final impact assessment (Passani et al. 2022) or scientific papers (Grossberndt et al., 2021). ...
The ACTION toolkit is the ultimate resource collection for everyone interested in doing citizen science the ACTION way. The toolkit draws on expertise in citizen science, participatory design, social innovation, socio-economic studies, pollution, open science, social computing, open data and software development in the ACTION team, to ensure it suits the requirements of citizen science projects, addressing the practical problems that they face throughout the different stages of each project.
The toolkit is meant for pollution-focused citizen science projects of all kinds, and everyone who wishes to apply citizen science methods. While some of the aspects we discuss may be less relevant for non-pollution focused projects, such projects may still benefit from the insights and resources provided. The toolkit can be used by citizen volunteers, local communities interested in starting a citizen science project, researchers wishing to engage with citizens in their work, or public authorities interacting with citizens or working on policies where citizen science insights are relevant. We hope it will help them to plan, create, improve, and maximise the impact of their projects.
The toolkit follows the participatory science lifecycle. The lifecycle helps to orient your project through three stages: problem framing, research implementation, and legacy, which each include a number of steps that projects can take. The framework aims to provide guidance on what a CS project could do, and a potential order of things; it helps to break down the steps, and provides a structure that is broadly applicable to all participatory science endeavours. Both the stages and the individual steps will look different for each project, and the persons and groups involved in each of the phases may differ.
While the layout of the lifecycle may suggest a neat sequence, in practice projects will find that there are feedback loops and iterations, and that some steps will have to be taken multiple times, while others can be skipped altogether. Looking at the lifecycle as a tool in its own right will help projects understand what they have to do and consider in future, supporting their awareness and planning in earlier stages.
The objective of the first stage, problem framing, is to define the basic project design, engage relevant stakeholders, and consider the ethics of the planned project. In this phase, the whole project lifecycle should be considered to set appropriate goals for the project and consider details such as the impact it aims to achieve and how it is to be maintained and financed.
In the second stage, research implementation, the citizen science project is implemented. This encompasses three phases:
During the design phase, projects define their methodology, create tasks for participants, and select or develop appropriate data gathering instruments.
In the data phase, projects acquire, curate, process, and analyse their data.
In the results phase, projects summarise, publish and disseminate their findings for different stakeholder groups, and assess their impact on both the issues they are trying to address, and society, including their own participants.
Citizen engagement, while often focused in the research implementation phase, should ideally happen throughout the entire project lifecycle.
In the third stage, Legacy, projects find and use routes for policy agenda setting, help formulate policies, influence decision-making and the implementation of policies. They also work towards sustainability of their community and finances.
The toolkit offers an introductory overview and guidance, a selection of tools, guidelines and recommendations, and case studies for each phase and stage, to help CS projects understand and replicate best practice.
Users of the toolkit should consider which of the CS project types they are closest to, noting that it may be multiple. The typology will help them to position their project in the context of the resources and case studies we discuss. We will come back to them as we move through the participatory life cycle.
The toolkit cannot and does not want to be exhaustive. It is based on the collective experience and expertise in the ACTION accelerator, as well as the wider citizen science community. It includes tools and resources developed by ACTION and others that we have found useful in practice. We will keep adding to it beyond the lifetime of the ACTION project. You can send suggestions to info@actionproject.eu.
... Community science has been advanced as a cost-effective means of producing knowledge to inform marine policy (Hyder et al., 2015;Schläppy et al., 2017), to broaden the engagement of communities with governance processes (Turrini et al., 2018) and to instil scientific and environmental learning amongst participants (Haywood, 2016). Due to this, community science is framed by academics and practitioners as a participatory approach that can, through the production of new knowledge, transform conservation management into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic processes (Couvet and Prevot, 2015;Grossberndt et al., 2021;Loos et al., 2015;Peters and Besley, 2019). In marine governance, where decision-makers are often guided by hegemonic agendas (Tafon, 2018) and informed by the knowledge of dominant stakeholders (Said and Trouillet, 2020), community science has been suggested as a potentially transformative solution to unjust and undemocratic processes (Flannery et al., 2019). ...
Community science has gained momentum as a participatory knowledge production approach that can transform governance into more transparent, socially relevant, and democratic endeavours. In the marine context, where the rationalisation of economic knowledge and the marginalisation of local communities are growing concerns, community science is advanced as a potential solution to environmental governance challenges. By increasing monitoring efforts and empowering members of the public to take political action to protect the oceans, community science has helped to transform marine management to address issues, such as, sea-level rise, overfishing, and ocean acidification. However, many community science projects do not realise their transformative potential and, instead, contribute toward reinforcing the status quo of governance, meaning that management challenges remain unsolved. To understand how the full potential of community science can be achieved, research must reframe what transformation is and assess why projects often fail to instigate change. Within community science research, there is an under-appreciation of how transformational change must involve actions that challenge prevailing power relations. We seek to address this gap by initiating a discussion on the political and power dimensions of community science. Drawing on the broader field of co-production, we argue that community science has been depoliticised to reinforce, as opposed to alleviate, unequal arrangements of power that inhibit societal transformation. To combat this, we suggest that community science must develop a more explicit comprehension of power and how it relates to the use and production of knowledge. Informed by the Foucauldian concept of power/knowledge, we argue for a politicised paradigm of community science that recognises how transformation requires pluralism, the contestation of knowledge, and learning amongst all community science actors. This review concludes by considering how transformative community science could introduce new ways of knowing to marine governance and facilitate more active community participation.
... The paramount importance of the sampling time resolution has already been recognized [19]. Other works focused on very specific activity or groups of persons, such as road traffic [12,20] or children [18,[21][22][23]. On the other hand, the number of volunteers carrying the sensors and the duration of the campaigns was sometimes low: three volunteers for 2-h trips [12], or only one volunteer for successive 24-h measurements [24], or only a proof-of-concept of a few hours [25]. ...
... Some works [13] rely only on following the known procedures (manufacturer manual and statistical treatment), other studies assess the sensors versus reference instruments [30,31], and others even apply a correction on the sensors [32]. Regarding citizens science, several published works document the best practices and errors to be avoided [22,23,33]. ...
