Participation in flood risk management and the potential of citizen observatories: A governance analysis

The implementation of the European Flood Directive 2007/60/EC requires the establishment of public participation mechanisms to ensure citizens’ involvement in the flood management cycle. This raises questions on how to achieve this goal and successfully translate the directive into meaningful and effective participation. Innovative means, such as citizen observatories enabled by information and communication technologies, have the potential to provide citizens with a substantially new role in decision-making. In this paper, we present a framework developed for analysing the potential for participation via ICT-enabled citizen observatories and undertake a comparative analysis of the UK, the Netherlands and Italy. Expository and qualitative research was undertaken in the three case study areas, with the aim of identifying and comparing the transposition of the EU Flood directive and the mechanisms in place for citizens’ participation during different phases of the disaster cycle (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery). Our analysis of the transposition of legal obligations for citizen participation shows that implementation is limited when examining both the respective roles and types of interactions between citizen and authorities and the impact of citizen participation on decision-making. Different authorities have differing perceptions of citizen participation in flood risk managementin terms of their roles and influence. Our results also indicate that these perceptions are related to the importance that the authorities place on the different stages of the disaster cycle. This understanding is crucial for identifying the potential of citizen observatories to foster greater citizen engagement and participation

Citizen Science and Smart Cities

The report summarizes the presentations, discussions, and conclusions of the Citizen Science and Smart Cities Summit organised by the European Commission Joint Research Centre on 5-7th February 2014. In the context of the Summit, the label Citizen Science was used to include both citizen science projects, and others that are about user-generated content, not necessarily addressing a scientific process or issues. The evidence presented by 27 different projects shows the vitality and diversity of the field but also a number of critical points: • Citizen science project are more than collecting data: they are about raising awareness, building capacity, and strengthening communities. • Likewise, smart cities are not only about ICT, energy and transport infrastructures: Smart cities are about smart citizens, who participate in their city’s daily governance, are concerned about increasing the quality of life of their fellow-citizens, and about protecting their environment. Technology may facilitate, but is no solution per se. • Unfortunately to date there seems to be little synergy between citizen science and smart cities initiatives, and there is little interoperability and reusability of the data, apps, and services developed in each project. • It is difficult to compare the results among citizen science, and smart cities projects or translate from one context to another. • The ephemeral nature of much of the data, which disappear short after the end of the projects, means lack of reproducibility of results and longitudinal analysis of time series challenging, if not impossible. • There are also new challenges with respect to the analytical methods needed to integrate quantitative and qualitative data from heterogeneous sources that need further research. • Building and maintaining trust are key points of any citizen science or smart city project. There is a need to work with the community and not just for, or on, the community. It is critical not just to take (data, information, knowledge) but to give back something that is valued by the community itself. The development of citizen science associations in Europe and the US are important developments that may address some of the points above. There are also actions through which the European Commission Joint Research Centre can make an important contribution: • Map citizen science and smart cities projects, and generate a semantic network of concepts between the projects to facilitate search of related activities, and community building. • Provide a repository for citizen science and smart cities data (anonymised and aggregated), software, services, and applications so that they are maintained beyond the life of the projects they originate from, and made shareable and reusable. • Develop regional test beds for the analysis and integration of social and environmental data from heterogeneous sources, with a focus on quality of life and well-being. • Undertake comparative studies, and analyse issues related to scaling up to the European dimension. • Support citizen science and smart cities projects with the JRC knowledge on semantic interoperability, data models, and interoperability arrangements. • Partner with the European Citizen Science Association, and contribute to its interoperability activities. • Work towards making the JRC, and the European Commission, a champion of citizen participation in European science.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

Citizen observatory based soil moisture monitoring – The GROW example

GROW Observatory is a project funded under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. Its aim is to establish a large scale (more than 20,000 participants), resilient and integrated ‘Citizen Observatory’ (CO) and community for environmental monitoring that is self-sustaining beyond the life of the project. This article describes how the initial framework and tools were developed to evolve, bring together and train such a community; raising interest, engaging participants, and educating to support reliable observations, measurements and documentation, and considerations with a special focus on the reliability of the resulting dataset for scientific purposes. The scientific purposes of GROW observatory are to test the data quality and the spatial representativity of a citizen engagement driven spatial distribution as reliably inputs for soil moisture monitoring and to create timely series of gridded soil moisture products based on citizens’ observations using low cost soil moisture (SM) sensors, and to provide an extensive dataset of in situ soil moisture observations which can serve as a reference to validate satellite-based SM products and support the Copernicus in situ component. This article aims to showcase the initial steps of setting up such a monitoring network that has been reached at the mid-way point of the project’s funded period, focusing mainly on the design and development of the CO monitoring network

Mapping and the Citizen Sensor

Maps are a fundamental resource in a diverse array of applications ranging from everyday activities, such as route planning through the legal demarcation of space to scientific studies, such as those seeking to understand biodiversity and inform the design of nature reserves for species conservation. For a map to have value, it should provide an accurate and timely representation of the phenomenon depicted and this can be a challenge in a dynamic world. Fortunately, mapping activities have benefitted greatly from recent advances in geoinformation technologies. Satellite remote sensing, for example, now offers unparalleled data acquisition and authoritative mapping agencies have developed systems for the routine production of maps in accordance with strict standards. Until recently, much mapping activity was in the exclusive realm of authoritative agencies but technological development has also allowed the rise of the amateur mapping community. The proliferation of inexpensive and highly mobile and location aware devices together with Web 2.0 technology have fostered the emergence of the citizen as a source of data. Mapping presently benefits from vast amounts of spatial data as well as people able to provide observations of geographic phenomena, which can inform map production, revision and evaluation. The great potential of these developments is, however, often limited by concerns. The latter span issues from the nature of the citizens through the way data are collected and shared to the quality and trustworthiness of the data. This book reports on some of the key issues connected with the use of citizen sensors in mapping. It arises from a European Co-operation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which explored issues linked to topics ranging from citizen motivation, data acquisition, data quality and the use of citizen derived data in the production of maps that rival, and sometimes surpass, maps arising from authoritative agencies

Machine Learning and Social Media in Crisis Management: Agility vs Ethics

One of the most used sources of information for fast and flexible crisis information is social media or crowdsourced data, as the information is rapidly disseminated, can reach a large amount of target audience and covers a wide variety of topics. However, the agility that these new methodologies enable comes at a price: ethics and privacy. This paper presents an analysis of the ethical risks and implications of using automated system that learn from social media data to provide intelligence in crisis management. The paper presents a short overview on the use of social media data in crisis management to then highlight ethical implication of machine learning and social media data using an example scenario. In conclusion general mitigation strategies and specific implementation guidelines for the scenario under analysis are presented