The step project:societal and political engagement of young people in environmental issues

Decisions on environmental topics taken today are going to have long-term consequences that will affect future generations. Young people will have to live with the consequences of these decisions and undertake special responsibilities. Moreover, as tomorrow’s decision makers, they themselves should learn how to negotiate and debate issues before final decisions are made. Therefore, any participation they can have in environmental decision making processes will prove essential in developing a sustainable future for the community.However, recent data indicate that the young distance themselves from community affairs, mainly because the procedures involved are ‘wooden’, politicians’ discourse alienates the young and the whole experience is too formalized to them. Authorities are aware of this fact and try to establish communication channels to ensure transparency and use a language that speaks to new generations of citizens. This is where STEP project comes in.STEP (www.step4youth.eu) is a digital Platform (web/mobile) enabling youth Societal and Political e-Participation in decision-making procedures concerning environmental issues. STEP is enhanced with web/social media mining, gamification, machine translation, and visualisation features.Six pilots in real contexts are being organised for the deployment of the STEP solution in 4 European Countries: Italy, Spain, Greece, and Turkey. Pilots are implemented with the direct participation of one regional authority, four municipalities, and one association of municipalities, and include decision-making procedures on significant environmental questions.</p

Public Perception of Urban Air Quality Using Volunteered Geographic Information Services

Investigating perceived air quality (AQ) in urban areas is a rather new topic of interest. Papers presenting results from studies on perception of AQ have thus far focused on the individual characteristics leading to a certain AQ perception or have compared personal perception with on-site measurements. Here we present a novel approach, namely applying volunteered geographic information (VGI) technologies in urban AQ monitoring. We present two smartphone applications that have been developed and applied in two EU projects (FP7 CITI-SENSE and H2020 hackAIR) to obtain citizens’ perception of AQ. We focus on observations reported through the smartphone apps for the greater Oslo area in Norway. In order to evaluate whether the reports on perceived AQ contain information about the actual spatial patterns of AQ, we carried out a comparison of the perception data against the output from the high-resolution urban AQ model EPISODE. The results indicate an association between modelled annual average pollutant concentrations and the provided perception reports. This demonstrates that the spatial patterns of perceived AQ are not entirely random but follow to some extent what would be expected due to proximity of emission sources and transport. This information shows that VGI about citizens’ perception of AQ has the potential to identify areas with low environmental quality for urban development

D1.6: Minutes of 3rd Advisory Board meeting

<p>The current deliverable is the third report on the activities of the STEP project’s External Expert Advisory Board (EEAB). The members of the EEAB were contacted either through physical meetings or via Internet using WebEx. This deliverable summarizes the recommendations that these experts have provided to the project consortium from M15 (August 2016) until M22 (March 2017). During the previous months of the project’s implementation, several activities with the members of the EEAB have been organized and the feedback gained was reported in the deliverables D1.2 and D1.5.</p

D7.2: Dissemination Pack

<p>Deliverable D7.2 “Dissemination pack” provides an overview of the STEP project website, the first leaflet of the project, the first issue of the project newsletter, and a promotional video. It also provides a “snapshot” of the website at the time of writing this document (November 2015).</p

D1.4: 2nd Data Management Plan

<p>The purpose of the current deliverable is to present the second version of the STEP project Data management plan. The deliverable includes all the significant changes such as new data sets, changes in consortium policies and any external factors that may have influenced data management in STEP project. It is submitted on Month 12 as a Mid-Term review of the STEP Data Management Plan.</p

Developing an intelligent ICT system for environmentally optimized irrigation management in agriculture

Globally, agriculture makes use of 70% of all water withdrawn from aquifers, streams and lakes. Agriculture accounts for 22% of freshwater abstraction in Europe, outnumbered only by freshwater abstraction for cooling in energy production (45%). In the light of the real need to practically improve the environmental performance of irrigation systems and prevent the misuse of water, the ENORASIS project was established aimed to develop an intelligent, integrated Decision Support System (ENORASIS Service Platform and Components) for environmentally optimized and thus, sustainable irrigation management to be used by farmers and water management organizations. To achieve so, the ENORASIS project developed and integrated a bouquet of advanced technologies, methodologies and models in the fields of: (i) weather prediction systems that exploit satellite observations; (ii) irrigation optimization techniques and (iii) smart irrigation systems; and (iv) wireless sensor networks (functioning with solar energy) as key enabling technology for field measurements and monitoring conditions.The system was tested in 5 pilot locations in Poland, Serbia, Cyprus and Turkey, providing large savings in water use as comparted to other irrigation practices while not compromising crop yields. The highest savings were observed in raspberry and potato plantations in Poland, reaching 90%and 59% respectively

D1.5: Minutes of 2nd Advisory Board meetings

<p>The purpose of the current deliverable is to document the liaison that has taken place with the STEP External Expert Advisory Board (EEAB) and the recommendations that these experts have provided to the project consortium from M4 until M14. The first meeting with the EEAB was held in M3, while the most important points discussed during this meeting were reported in D1.2-Minutes of 1st Advisory Board meeting.</p

Public Perception of Urban Air Quality Using Volunteered GeographicInformation Services

Investigating perceived air quality (AQ) in urban areas is a rather new topic of interest. Papers presenting results from studies on perception of AQ have thus far focused on the individual characteristics leading to a certain AQ perception or have compared personal perception with on-site measurements. Here we present a novel approach, namely applying volunteered geographic information (VGI) technologies in urban AQ monitoring. We present two smartphone applications that have been developed and applied in two EU projects (FP7 CITI-SENSE and H2020 hackAIR) to obtain citizens’ perception of AQ. We focus on observations reported through the smartphone apps for the greater Oslo area in Norway. In order to evaluate whether the reports on perceived AQ contain information about the actual spatial patterns of AQ, we carried out a comparison of the perception data against the output from the high-resolution urban AQ model EPISODE. The results indicate an association between modelled annual average pollutant concentrations and the provided perception reports. This demonstrates that the spatial patterns of perceived AQ are not entirely random but follow to some extent what would be expected due to proximity of emission sources and transport. This information shows that VGI about citizens’ perception of AQ has the potential to identify areas with low environmental quality for urban development

hackAIR: Towards Raising Awareness about Air Quality in Europe by Developing a Collective Online Platform

Although air pollution is one of the most significant environmental factors posing a threat to human health worldwide, air quality data are scarce or not easily accessible in most European countries. The current work aims to develop a centralized air quality data hub that enables citizens to contribute to air quality monitoring. In this work, data from official air quality monitoring stations are combined with air pollution estimates from sky-depicting photos and from low-cost sensing devices that citizens build on their own so that citizens receive improved information about the quality of the air they breathe. Additionally, a data fusion algorithm merges air quality information from various sources to provide information in areas where no air quality measurements exist