Mapping Participatory Sensing and Community-led Environmental Monitoring Initiatives: Making Sense H2020 CAPS Project

This report presents a summary of the state of the art in urban participatory sensing and community-led environmental monitoring, the types of engagement approaches typically followed, contextual examples of current developments in this field, and current challenges and opportunities for successful interventions. The goal is to better understand the field and possible options for reflection and action around it, in order to better inform future conceptual and practical developments inside and outside the Making Sense project.JRC.I.2-Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Polic

When Concerned People Produce Environmental Information: A Need to Re-Think Existing Legal Frameworks and Governance Models?

When faced with an environmental problem, locals are often among the first to act. Citizen science is increasingly one of the forms of participation in which people take action to help solve environmental problems that concern them. This implies, for example, using methods and instruments with scientific validity to collect and analyse data and evidence to understand the problem and its causes. Can the contribution of environmental data by citizens be articulated as a right? In this article, we explore these forms of productive engagement with a local matter of concern, focussing on their potential to challenge traditional allocations of responsibilities. Taking mostly the perspective of the European legal context, we identify an existing gap between the right to obtain environmental information, granted at present by the Aarhus Convention, and “a right to contribute information” and have that information considered by appointed institutions. We also explore what would be required to effectively practise this right in terms of legal and governance processes, capacities, and infrastructures, and we propose a flexible framework to implement it. Situated at the intersection of legal and governance studies, this article builds on existing literature on environmental citizen science, and on its interplay with law and governance. Our methodological approach combines literature review with legal analysis of the relevant conventions and national rules. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of our analysis, and on the benefits of this legal innovation, potentially fostering data altruism and an active citizenship, and shielding ordinary people against possible legal risks

The Promise of Participation and Decision-Making Power in Citizen Science

Citizen science is challenging professional researchers and their organizations to rethink the way they do science and connect with society. In any citizen science project, professional researchers are “making a promise” to the public about the level of participation and power in decision making that they are willing to provide to citizen scientists. Researchers should set expectations explicitly to ensure informed participation, trust, and motivation. Also, the design of tools for informed consent, information sharing, recognition, and privacy has to be adapted to the new power relations and distributed knowledge production. Based on fieldwork experiences and literature review about environmental and biomedical citizen science, this article examines the challenges and proposes solutions for: 1) setting expectations for informed participation; 2) addressing privacy concerns and adapting informed consent to evolving interests and networked environments; and 3) promoting citizen governance of research data. Citizen science has the potential to both increase scientific literacy and counteract mistrust and skepticism about scientific evidence of global problems (such as climate change) that need to be addressed. However, there are still many challenges to fulfilling the promise of citizen science – for example, empowering people and gaining trust. A few inspiring initiatives help us reflect on a facilitation model for engagement and informed participation; privacy by design; and new governance models for research data provided by citizen scientists

Maker Movements, Do-It-Yourself Cultures and Participatory Design: Implications for HCI Research

Falling costs and the wider availability of computational components, platforms and ecosystems have enabled the expansion of maker movements and DIY cultures. This can be considered as a form of democratization of technology systems design, in alignment with the aims of Participatory Design approaches. However, this landscape is constantly evolving, and long-term implications for the HCI community are far from clear. The organizers of this one-day workshop invite participants to present their case studies, experiences and perspectives on the topic with the goal of increasing understanding within this area of research. The outcomes of the workshop will include the articulation of future research directions with the purpose of informing a research agenda, as well as the establishment of new collaborations and networks

Investigating the process of ethical approval in citizen science research: The case of Public Health

Undertaking citizen science research in Public Health involving human subjects poses significant challenges concerning the traditional process of ethical approval. It requires an extension of the ethics of protection of research subjects in order to include the empowerment of citizens as citizen scientists. This paper investigates these challenges and illustrates the ethical framework and the strategies developed within the CitieS-Health project. It also proposes first recommendations generated from the experiences of five citizen science pilot studies in environmental epidemiology within this project.publishedVersio

Interdependence in Action: People with Visual Impairments and their Guides Co-constituting Common Spaces

Prior work on AI-enabled assistive technology (AT) for people with visual impairments (VI) has treated navigation largely as an independent activity. Consequently, much effort has focused on providing individual users with wayfinding details about the environment, including information on distances, proximity, obstacles, and landmarks. However, independence is also achieved by people with VI through interacting with others, such as in collaboration with sighted guides. Drawing on the concept of interdependence, this research presents a systematic analysis of sighted guiding partnerships. Using interaction analysis as our primary mode of data analysis, we conducted an empirical, qualitative study with 4 couples, each made up of person with a vision impairment and their sighted guide. Our results show how pairs used interactional resources such as turn-taking and body movements to both co-constitute a common space for navigation, and repair moments of rupture to this space. This work is used to present an exemplary case of interdependence and draws out implications for designing AI-enabled AT that shifts the emphasis away from independent navigation, and towards the carefully coordinated actions between people navigating togethe