Project description
Enhancing citizen observatories for sustainable cities
Citizen observatories are community-based environmental monitoring initiatives and platforms that engage multiple stakeholders, including citizens, community groups and civil society organisations. In general, they gather data and share observations. The EU-funded CitiObs project will work with key stakeholder groups to enhance existing and new citizen observatories. It will formalise, valorise and legitimise the role of citizen observations in order to engage citizens and marginalised communities and increase citizen observations of the urban environment. This will be part of the existing in situ Earth observation systems. The project will advance the efforts needed to assist cities in speeding up the process of emissions reduction from pollutants and greenhouse gases. The actions needed include both technological development and social transformations.
Objective
CitiObs will consolidate and apply tools and practice-based knowledge for co-creating data, knowledge and local action via Citizen Observatories (COs): these tools will enhance existing and new citizen observatories to engage citizens and marginalised communities, add value to environmental observations in the urban context, increase and validate citizen observations of the urban environment as part of the existing in-situ Earth Observation systems, co-create inclusive local actions for sustainability and ensure that CO data contributes to research and policy development towards the objectives of the European Green Deal. To ensure broad use, the CitiObs tools and approaches will be developed in co-creation with COs in 5 Frontrunner cities, finetuned with 30 Implementer cities and showcased to 50 Fellow cities.
The pressure on cities to speed up the process of emissions reduction from pollutants and climate gases is overwhelming. The required measures are likely to be found not only in technological development but also in the required social transformations. Theseis transformations includes increasing citizen involvement and engagement with science and policy, increasing awareness of the underlying issues and promoting societal actions to protect the urban environment. Technological innovations need to be considered within the context of multi-level vertical and horizontal governance structures where citizen participation is recognized and included. CitiObs will support citizen observatories in distinct cities to create/enhance/or scale up inclusive and diverse citizen observatories, fostering in particular an active role of citizens in the observation of the urban environment using low-cost sensor technologies and wearables, with a particular focus on air quality and related environmental measures. CitiObs will formalise, valorise and legitimise the role of citizen observations.
Fields of science
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringair pollution engineering
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensors
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical policiescivil society
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicssustainable economy
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-IA - HORIZON Innovation ActionsCoordinator
2027 Kjeller
Norway