From Citizens to Science: Tools Driving Climate Action

On April 28, 2025, during the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna, the H2020 I-CHANGE project will hold its final scientific event titled “From Citizens to Science: Tools Driving Climate Action” Over the past four year, I-CHANGE has worked to place citizens at the core of climate action, demonstrating that informed, empowered communities are essential for achieving behavioural change. By combining active citizen participation, innovative technologies, and scientific collaboration, the project has fostered behavioural transformations towards more sustainable living. This closing event will present the outcomes of I-CHANGE, showcasing results from its eight Living Labs across Europe and beyond. These Living Labs served as active hubs for environmental monitoring, and community engagement, emphasizing how citizens can observe and reduce their own environmental impacts. The event will feature the presentation of the project’s final results, including scientific findings, technological and engaging activities that have been implemented to raise climate change awareness and foster participatory science. It will also include talks from sister projects involved in citizen science initiatives related to climate change, and offer reflections on how citizen-generated data can complement scientific observations and help shape a more sustainable future. In addition, on May 1, 2025, key I-CHANGE results will be featured during the EGU session titled “Engaging Citizens in Understanding Urban Climate and Climate Change Risks through Participatory Science.” This session invites contributions that explore citizen participation, crowdsourced data collection, and effective practices for integrating the public into climate adaptation efforts across Europe. For more information, please visit here

Changing Habits in a Changing Climate - Discussing theories of change and understanding the role of citizen science in breaking societal patterns

During the past few years, the EU-funded project, I-CHANGE, has facilitated eight living labs in- and outside the EU. We’ve done so to work with citizen science in monitoring environmental risks related to our changing climate. The hope of this project is that we, by helping citizens better understand the scientific links between behaviour, climate change, and risks, push toward societal change for new patterns of behaviour. In this interactive digital event, we will be discussing our learnings and ask you to reflect upon them with us: Does knowledge change behaviour? How do we make for a more just transition? What are alternative ways of understanding and creating change? The event is open for everyone, and you will be able to speak and listen in your native language. By partaking in this event, you consent to let us document the event proceedings by taking notes and screenshots of the online meeting.

Life in a Changing Climate - How citizen science helps us understand environmental changes and risks

During the past few years, the EU-funded project, I-CHANGE, has facilitated eight living labs in- and outside the EU. We’ve done so to work with citizen science to deepen our understanding of environmental monitoring, and strengthening the climate perception of all citizens. In this interactive digital event, we will be discussing our learnings and ask you to reflect upon them with us: What’s the value of citizen science compared to regular environmental monitoring? Are there environmental areas, where we should advocate for a stronger connection between citizens and science? Does citizen science have any limitations? The event is open for everyone, and you will be able to speak and listen in your native language. By partaking in this event, you consent to let us document the event proceedings by taking notes and screenshots of the online meeting.

YouCount: Save the dates for Final Conference 4-5 December 2023

Youth Citizen Social Science contributing to social inclusion How can we shape an inclusive society for young people at risk of exclusion in Europe? What role can Citizen Science play in this endeavour? The Horizon 2020 research and innovation project YouCount explored these questions through co-creative research with youth and local stakeholders in nine countries across ten cases. After two years of hands-on Youth Citizen Social Science work, YouCount will share experiences and look ahead to discuss findings and potential impacts on EU policies and beyond. Program: The first day includes a seminar focusing on hands-on Youth Citizen Social Science and a welcome reception. The final conference takes place on the second day where we will discuss implications of key findings with stakeholders and policymakers. On both days, the voices of our young co-researchers will be amplified during presentations, interactive sessions, round table discussions and an exhibition. The event will be free of charge and partly hybrid. Event location: DECEMBER 4, 2023 | 14.00-17.00 & 18.00-20.30 | Nordic House, Rue du Luxembourg 3/5 DECEMBER 5, 2023 | 09.00-17.00 | Hotel NH Brussels EU Berlaymont, Bd Charlemagne 11/19 - tagg "YouCount"

ECSA 2022 Conference: Citizen Science for Planetary Health

Why “Citizen Science for Planetary Health”? Because the health of our planet is at risk. To preserve and support the well-being of all life on Earth, we need the commitment and efforts of everyone – policy makers, the public, business, science and research. Citizen science offers effective and innovative ways to do transdisciplinary research and influence decision-making in multiple areas and ways. Citizen science is particularly suited to connect diverse fields and diverse actors in the common endeavour of collaborating in research. The concept of planetary health is based on the understanding that human health and human civilization depend on thriving natural systems and the sustainable stewardship of those natural systems. This demands not only knowledge, commitment and engagement of health and environmental sciences, but inter- and transdisciplinary efforts from all research fields and societal and political actors. The ECSA 2022 Conference invites researchers from all disciplines, civil society actors, citizen scientists, policy decision-makers and all interested in the topic in Europe and worldwide to reflect, discuss and network around the topic of “Citizen Science for Planetary Health”.

ECSA & EU-Citizen.Science webinar: Introducing new citizen science projects launching in 2021

Our webinar on the 26th May 2021 (14.00-15.30 CEST) will highlight new citizen science projects starting in 2021, with short talks from three early career researchers: – Famke Mölenberg (she/her/hers) (Erasmus MC, Netherlands) is an epidemiologist working on SEEDS, which aims to engage teenagers from Spain, the Netherlands, Greece and the United Kingdom in their health education and science literacy by directly empowering through citizen science. She tweets as @FamkeMolenberg. – Dr Cristina Zaga (she/her/hers) (University of Twente, Netherlands) is assistant professor in human-centred design working on Incentive, which links project partners and citizen science to co-create sustainable transdisciplinary hubs for stimulating and supporting excellent citizen science and responsible research and innovation (RRI). She tweets as @Zaga_daga. – Isabelle Freiling (she/her/hers) (University of Vienna, Austria) is a communication scientist working in the YouCount project, which aims to identify positive drivers for social inclusion of youth at risk of exclusion, and cocreate innovations and policymaking using cocreative youth citizen social science. She tweets as @isa_freiling. The webinar will finish with a Q&A and discussion. The event will be in English with a live transcript and you can register for free via the website.

How to use cosmic rays in the study of geosciences and archaeology

The technology developed to study fundamental physics can be applied to the development of frameworks that may have a significant impact on society. The Atmospheric Muons have unique potential to probe structures and provide insight in a series of issues, ranging from volcano live monitoring to applications in archaeology or use for non- invasive and non-destructive control processes in the industry. Muography is an innovative technique using secondary cosmic rays produced in the atmosphere, the most energetic of which have the property to cross ordinary matter over relevant distances (from meters to kilometers). The detection of those particles after any type of target allows therefore the characterization of the distribution and the density of the matter inside the target, as it is done for instance in medical imaging with X-rays. There is a strong societal impact of this technique, which is mostly passive and therefore adapted to any field of investigation: controls, risks assessment, hazards management. In the framework of REINFORCE, citizens will be provided with open data detected with distributed networks of cosmic ray detectors and will contribute in performing inquiries at the interplay between cosmic ray research and its applications. The webinar aims to give an overview of the Cosmic Muons Images Large Scale Citizen Science demonstrator and how it will be implemented in order to engage citizens in the scientific research, showcasing the tasks that citizens will be asked to perform and how their input will be fundamental to study geological phenomena and archaeology research by using Cosmic Rays. REGISTER HERE: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wGB-afBLR5O9qkIYDhn72Q

Citizen science: an approach to promote Planetary Health - 2021 PHAM

We live today in a risky society, which imposes on the current and future generations the need to know how to deal with uncertainties and the complexities of the environmental, social, political and economic systems that lead to the threat to the continuity of the human species on the planet. These uncertainties can directly affect individual and collective health, making it imperative that individuals understand the causes and consequences of global changes so that they can not only reflect, but also act individually and demand action from their representatives in the government based on that understanding and on evidence. Citizen science offers the opportunity for social participation in the generation of scientific knowledge and, at the same time, can empower individuals towards change. To discuss this issue, three distinguished guests were invited to the panel "Citizen science: an approach to promote Planetary Health": - Dr. Alan Irwin - "Citizen Science: a new knowledge politics?" - Dr. Andrea Grover – “Citizen Science for Community Resilience" - Dr. Uta When - Facilitating the co-design of purpose-driven Citizen Science for Planetary Health

Policy options for the ethical governance of disruptive technologies

In view of the upcoming legislative proposal on ΑΙ and its ethical aspects, the event will seek to identify which issues and challenges of AI are in need of particular attention. It will also discuss ways to address those challenges and build on what was learned through the AI debate to better prepare for the next wave of scientific and technological advances, and ensure that these are beneficial to society and their risks are addressed early. Three major EU-funded projects, SIENNA, SHERPA and PANELFIT, representing a €10m investment in research from the European Commission to develop governance structures sensitive to ethical and human rights concerns in relation to emerging technologies, are coming together to discuss their findings and provide the context for a discussion on the policy options for the ethical governance of disruptive technologies. A full draft programme is available on the website below. The event is due to run from 13.00-18.30.