| Summary: |
Urban citizens continually make a multitude of decisions related to climate-related risks that affect their safety, health and wellbeing, e.g. how to respond to unusual events, stormwater flow, flooding, high levels of suspended dust. CitiSense aims to co-develop a participatory risk management system (PRMS) with citizens, local authorities and organizations which enables them to contribute to advanced climate services and enhanced urban climate resilience as well as receive recommendations that support their security. It employs citizen sensing, which is citizens acting as sensors to collect and send information and also novel means of citizen-technology interaction. Citizens, besides sending images, videos and texts will also interact with wireless sensor systems through a specially-designed app on their smart phones to upload and send monitored key climate variables to a project database. This allows a large amount of site-specific data on emerging risks to be rapidly collected. A web-based interface will display and visualize the data and information. When critical loads of selected parameters or identified number of posts are foreseen to be exceeded, or long-term trends are detected, site-specific recommendations to guide citizen responses will be sent through the CitiSense app and placed on the web portal. These can link to and inform existing guidelines and recommendations in existing climate-related risk management and adaptation plans. This platform also allows citizens and authorities to explore the available data collected by other citizens in other parts of the city. The co-development of the PRMS with citizen groups helps ensure that it addresses their demands for preparedness to take appropriate risk management actions.
The project has two objectives: (1) to develop a Participatory Risk Management System that incorporates place-specific information, links to existing guidelines on urban climate risk management and adaptation, and functions as an in  |
Summary
Urban citizens continually make a multitude of decisions related to climate-related risks that affect their safety, health and wellbeing, e.g. how to respond to unusual events, stormwater flow, flooding, high levels of suspended dust. CitiSense aims to co-develop a participatory risk management system (PRMS) with citizens, local authorities and organizations which enables them to contribute to advanced climate services and enhanced urban climate resilience as well as receive recommendations that support their security. It employs citizen sensing, which is citizens acting as sensors to collect and send information and also novel means of citizen-technology interaction. Citizens, besides sending images, videos and texts will also interact with wireless sensor systems through a specially-designed app on their smart phones to upload and send monitored key climate variables to a project database. This allows a large amount of site-specific data on emerging risks to be rapidly collected. A web-based interface will display and visualize the data and information. When critical loads of selected parameters or identified number of posts are foreseen to be exceeded, or long-term trends are detected, site-specific recommendations to guide citizen responses will be sent through the CitiSense app and placed on the web portal. These can link to and inform existing guidelines and recommendations in existing climate-related risk management and adaptation plans. This platform also allows citizens and authorities to explore the available data collected by other citizens in other parts of the city. The co-development of the PRMS with citizen groups helps ensure that it addresses their demands for preparedness to take appropriate risk management actions.
The project has two objectives: (1) to develop a Participatory Risk Management System that incorporates place-specific information, links to existing guidelines on urban climate risk management and adaptation, and functions as an integrative platform for citizens and relevant organizations at different scales, (2) to analyse if, how and to what extent the PRMS has potential to increase preparedness and appropriate responses by citizens and authorities to increase urban climate resilience in different European and climate contexts.
CitiSense contains four Work Packages (WPs). WP 1 concerns project management, communication and process synthesis; WP 2 focuses on stakeholder interaction and engagement among targeted citizen groups and authorities in the co-development of the PRMS design, implementation and evaluation; WP 3 focuses on developing the phone app, with interface adaptations for the different pilots to respond to stakeholder demands and requests, and the web portal, including visualizations of collected data and recommended response actions and the project database, with image, video and text input and uploaded sensor data on identified climate-related parameters. WP 4 develops, installs and tests the wireless sensor network in a lab environment and field site setting. As such, WP 3 and 4 work for the integration of data and database management. Both will regularly communicate and engage in the stakeholder workshop sessions in WP 2 to enable and inform the co-development and evaluation processes. WP 2-4 are each led by two researchers to ensure a broad involvement of all partner organizations in the project leadership, as well as to ensure the integration of different scientific disciplines and practical experience in the project.
End-user involvement is an integral part of CitiSense. The project |