Green Deal project SOCIO-BEE ambitions the scalable activation of changes in citizens’ behaviour in support of pro-environmental action, that may involve citizens, action groups, local sponsors, academia and policy makers in cities. The project focuses on the Air Quality (AQ) in the urban environment in Europe. Αir pollution is one of the key threats for the inhabitants of many European cities, which constitute the home of 75% of the European population i.e. a total of approximately 340 million people.
The main drivers behind air pollution is energy demand and mobility. An indicative example of the relation between mobility and pollution have been offered during the COVID-19 crisis. The forced behavioural change due to COVID-19 pandemic, showed a change in energy demand patterns and a 17% drop in CO2 emissions during the lockdown due to the reduced surface transport. Such cases provide strong indications that policy measures and human action have great potential on emission reduction.
Reducing air pollution requires technological innovation and a behavioural shift. Such changes in order to be effective on a long-term basis should rely on the collaboration between citizens and stakeholders such as businesses, volunteers and decision makers.
SOCIO-BEE is a Citizen Science project, not a project about bees. It adopts the metaphor of beehives to shape its Citizen Science approach i.e. the methodology to engage and organize all interested parties. Through an example taken from nature, the project builds on the metaphor of bee colonies to develop effective behavioural and engagement strategies with a wide range of different roles of the participants and stakeholders, namely, Queen Bees, Drone Bees, Worker Bees, and Bears, and to co-create through Citizen Hives long-lasting solutions against urban air pollution supported by emerging new technologies such as drones or wearables.
The SOCIO-BEE hives tested in three pilot sites in the cities of Zaragoza, Ancona and Maroussi, with different target population and different behavioural change challenges.
The main objectives of the project are:
1. To support air pollution reduction initiatives in cities through citizen involvement that will create long lasting effects and behavioural change.
2. Development of a low-cost wearable hardware and a Citizen Science-based web platform to allow CS Hives in the active collection of environmental data
4. To establish an open and sustainable decision-making process with a data analysis platform for the overall CS process.
5. To bridge the gaps in pollution understanding in urban environmental monitoring and remediation actions.
6. To address the data protection and privacy and other legal, ethical and societal concerns related to wearable-based air quality monitoring
7. To develop sustainable exploitation models around the SOCIO-BEE platform to ensure economic and environmental feasibility and sustainability of the overall CS platform.
