Engaging Citizens in Environmental Monitoring via Gaming

Citizen science is quickly becoming one of the most effective tools for the rapid and low-cost collection of environmental information, filling a long recognized gap in in-situ data. Incentivizing citizens to participate, however, remains a challenge, with gaming being widely recognized as an effective solution to overcome the participation barrier. Building upon well-known gaming mechanics, games provide the user with a competitive and fun environment. This paper presents three different applications that employ game mechanics and have generated useful information for environmental science. Furthermore, it describes the lessons learnt from this process to guide future efforts

The Playful Citizen

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies

Involving Citizen Scientists in Biodiversity Observation

The involvement of non-professionals in scientific research and environmental monitoring, termed Citizen Science (CS), has now become a mainstream approach for collecting data on earth processes, ecosystems and biodiversity. This chapter examines how CS might contribute to ongoing efforts in biodiversity monitoring, enhancing observation and recording of key species and systems in a standardised manner, thereby supporting data relevant to the Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), as well as reaching key constituencies who would benefit Biodiversity Observation Networks (BONs). The design of successful monitoring or observation networks that rely on citizen observers requires a careful balancing of the two primary user groups, namely data users and data contributors (i.e., citizen scientists). To this end, this chapter identifies examples of successful CS programs as well as considering practical issues such as the reliability of the data, participant recruitment and motivation, and the use of emerging technologies

A GAMIFICATION FRAMEWORK FOR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABLE WATER USAGE PROMOTION

The recent advent of smart meters to increase the effectiveness of urban Water Demand Management Strategies (WDM) has allowed water utilities to gather quasi real-time consumption data to monitor the network status and load and useful to develop models of consumers' behavior. At the same time, the consumption information can warn users about their habits in a fine-grained way. In principle, the feedback alone could stimulate increased awareness on water usage, but the motivations and individual attitudes of consumers are mostly hidden. Moreover, the same sustainable behavior should be incentivized also for households in which smart metering solutions are not present, but for which data gathering becomes a challenge. Modifying users' behavior by means of software is a tough task, due to the difficulty in designing an effective application able to maintain the behavioral changes in the long term. Gamification, the use of game design techniques and game mechanics to enhance traditional applications and drive behaviors of its users, has been proven successful in tackling with the problem. In this work, we propose a gamified application to enhance users' participation and data gathering in a real WDM scenario, by describing the designing principles and the architecture of the envisioned solution. An integrated approach exploiting both board and digital games to incentivize users to submit meaningful data for water utilities and change their long-term behavior is also detailed. The work is part of the SmartH2O project, which aims at creating an ICT platform to raise customers' awareness about their consumption and pursue water savings in the residential sector

The Playful Citizen

This edited volume collects current research by academics and practitioners on playful citizen participation through digital media technologies

Self-tracking modes: reflexive self-monitoring and data practices

The concept of ‘self-tracking’ (also referred to as life-logging, the quantified self, personal analytics and personal informatics) has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can voluntarily monitor and record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies. There is evidence that the personal data that are derived from individuals engaging in such reflexive self-monitoring are now beginning to be used by actors, agencies and organisations beyond the personal and privatised realm. Self-tracking rationales and sites are proliferating as part of a ‘function creep’ of the technology and ethos of self-tracking. The detail offered by these data on individuals and the growing commodification and commercial value of digital data have led government, managerial and commercial enterprises to explore ways of appropriating self-tracking for their own purposes. In some contexts people are encouraged, ‘nudged’, obliged or coerced into using digital devices to produce personal data which are then used by others. This paper examines these issues, outlining five modes of self-tracking that have emerged: private, communal, pushed, imposed and exploited. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives on concepts of selfhood, citizenship, biopolitics and data practices and assemblages in discussing the wider sociocultural implications of the emergence and development of these modes of self-tracking

Geosciences didactic experiences as a key component in Education for Sustainable Development.

This research project aims to contribute to the dissemination of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development topics among pupils and all school communities. Since Geosciences intersect most of the Agenda 2030 Goals, Sustainable Development has become one of the core subjects of this discipline, as well as teaching Geoscience represents a key aspect of Education for Sustainability. Several Geoscience topics, such as natural resources exploitation, responsible consumption, ecological and water footprint, circular economy and waste reduction are the main subjects addressed in this work. The choice of these research topics arises from both the many connections between Sustainability and everyday lifestyles and from their several linkages with different matters. This interdisciplinarity is in line with the Italian School Citizenship education guidelines about Sustainable Development and UNESCO key-competencies for Sustainability. In fact, Education for Sustainability is one of the three main components of Citizenship Education that has become mandatory for all Italian schools in the last two years. Moreover, the Italian School Department established that Citizenship Education has to be addressed using multidisciplinary approaches, involving all school’s teachers. For this reason and in order to support educators in developing interdisciplinary didactic pathways on Sustainability, I implemented some didactic activities with comprehensive ready-to-use tools that make them easily replicable. Moreover, starting from Geoscience educational experiences, like laboratorial activities about the water and ecological footprint topics, teachers could approach socio-economic issues both globally and locally with a contextualization in their own territory. The study has been proposed with the dual purpose of spreading Earth Sciences topics among k6-k8 students and of using them as interdisciplinary vectors in order to promote eco-friendly behaviours. Understanding how to improve pupils' ability to establish and justify the relationships between humans and the environment is essential to make the younger generation become conscious and responsible towards the environment itself. The topics developed in this research project are, in detail: 1- The ecological footprint and ecological rucksack of everyday life simple actions (like washing, eating, dressing...), with a special focus on natural resources exploitation (water, soil), waste production and the responsible actions of reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling. Team work and hands-on activities were carried out in order to improve students’ awareness about these Sustainability subjects, linking them to pupils’ real life. 2- Responsible food consumption and the ecological footprint of foods. Pupils were engaged in a team-challenge game, to discuss and think critically about the environmental impact of their daily diet, due to food production, transport, distribution and packaging. Topics like water, carbon and ecological footprint were developed, as well as agriculture and farming stress on our planet's health. 3- Agenda 2030 Goals (SDGs) and its call for immediate action towards responsible lifestyles. The several interconnections between Geosciences and the SDGs are deeply discussed with pupils and teachers, in order to highlight the key-role of this discipline in Education for Sustainability. Agenda 2030 is the core issue of all the activities realized for this research. Moreover, an educational game was developed, completely dedicated to this UN plan of action. It is a cardboard Game, called Sustainable City Game (S-City Game), planned in an interdisciplinary manner, that proposes topics related to Agenda 2030 and Sustainability (like SDGs and targets, circular economy, natural resources exploitation ...). Several school matters, such as Science, Math, Geography, Technology, History and Citizenship were involved in this game. As a follow-up work, a digital version of the S-City Game was developed, in order to involve teachers and pupils from home, during COVID-19 lockdown. Learning-by-doing, cooperative learning and learning-by-gaming are the methodological approaches used for the activities tested. In order to involve pupils in an active way and to make them think about simple responsible behaviours, manipulation, team-work and gaming have proven to be very useful educational tools to vehicle Sustainability topics. The experimentation was carried out with k6-k8 students from different Italian schools. The first segment of the project was tested through activities in presence, while the second one was experimented through distance learning, because of the COVID- 19 crisis. In fact, the activities in presence are based on practical and hands-on experiences, besides an educational cardboard game, called S-city game. As a follow- up work, the digital version of S-city game, included in a virtual environment, was implemented, in order to face the pandemic emergency that could stop the research experimentation. On the contrary, the use of virtual environments and digital gaming allowed us not only to reach students and teachers from different Italian regions, but also to obtain good results in terms of learning and satisfaction. Nevertheless the distance mode, the laboratorial didactic approach based on constructivism, continued to characterize this research. Thanks to the data collected during this PhD project experimentation, we can positively evaluate the didactic activities tested that constitute effective educational pathways for improving pupils' awareness towards eco-friendly and responsible lifestyles

Towards a global participatory platform: Democratising open data, complexity science and collective intelligence

The FuturICT project seeks to use the power of big data, analytic models grounded in complexity science, and the collective intelligence they yield for societal benefit. Accordingly, this paper argues that these new tools should not remain the preserve of restricted government, scientific or corporate élites, but be opened up for societal engagement and critique. To democratise such assets as a public good, requires a sustainable ecosystem enabling different kinds of stakeholder in society, including but not limited to, citizens and advocacy groups, school and university students, policy analysts, scientists, software developers, journalists and politicians. Our working name for envisioning a sociotechnical infrastructure capable of engaging such a wide constituency is the Global Participatory Platform (GPP). We consider what it means to develop a GPP at the different levels of data, models and deliberation, motivating a framework for different stakeholders to find their ecological niches at different levels within the system, serving the functions of (i) sensing the environment in order to pool data, (ii) mining the resulting data for patterns in order to model the past/present/future, and (iii) sharing and contesting possible interpretations of what those models might mean, and in a policy context, possible decisions. A research objective is also to apply the concepts and tools of complexity science and social science to the project's own work. We therefore conceive the global participatory platform as a resilient, epistemic ecosystem, whose design will make it capable of self-organization and adaptation to a dynamic environment, and whose structure and contributions are themselves networks of stakeholders, challenges, issues, ideas and arguments whose structure and dynamics can be modelled and analysed. Graphical abstrac

Stakeholder engagement in water governance as social learning: lessons from practice

The OECD Principles on Water Governance set out various requirements for stakeholder engagement. Coupled with conceptualizations of social learning, this article asks how we define and enact stakeholder engagement and explores the actual practice of engagement of stakeholders in three fields of water governance. The results suggest that a key consideration is the purpose of the stakeholder engagement, requiring consideration of its ethics, process, roles and expected outcomes. While facilitators cannot be held accountable if stakeholder engagement ‘fails’ in terms of social learning, they are responsible for ensuring that the enabling conditions for social learning are met