Ground Truth 2.0 – A bottom-up, citizen-focused approach to environmental monitoring

We get to experience the impact of climate change on our local environment first-hand. This is true in heavily impacted regions such as Africa, and also in Europe. As storms Ciara and Dennis hit Western Europe two weekends in a row in February 2020, we got our latest reminder that climate change will leave no region unaffected.

Perhaps the real question is: How can this first-hand knowledge contribute to better decision-making? Members of the Ground Truth 2.0 (Environmental knowledge discovery of human sensed data) consortium have their thoughts on the matter: citizens are willing and able to generate and share data and knowledge about issues impacting them. They just need the technology to do it.

“Our overarching objective was to implement sustainable citizen observatories and demonstrate their societal and economic benefits. In the end, we successfully demonstrated and validated six scaled up citizen observatories in real operational conditions, both in the EU and in Africa,” says Ground Truth coordinator Uta Wehn from IHE Delft Institute for Water Education.

Citizen observatories are commonly defined as community-based environmental monitoring and information systems inviting individuals to share observations. With Ground Truth 2.0 citizens came together to discuss the specific data they were interested in, and the project helped them generate data on the likes of water quality and quantity, air quality, heat stress, local weather conditions and wildlife reporting.Johan Vanbrabant is one of these citizens. He participated in Meet Mee Mechelen, one of the project’s citizen observatories in Belgium. “A neighbour asked me to join him and ride my bike while measuring air quality. I thought it was a nice idea that could be helpful in knowing about air pollution in our city. I decided to attend a presentation of the project’s carbon-detecting sniffer device coupled with a GPS, and next thing you know we started biking in turns, twice a day for 2 weeks during every season.”

Once this serious game experience was completed, the project team processed the data and created maps of each seasonal measurement. The maps gave a clear indication of pollution and showed an obvious relation with traffic density, as confirmed by a parallel project organised by the University of Antwerp and measuring another pollutant. “This was pure coincidence for both studies to be presented at the same time, but their results confirmed ours and vice versa,” Vanbrabant explains.

Other European observatories were set up in the Netherlands (flooding), Spain (observation of seasonal changes in plants and animals) and Sweden (water quality management).

Meanwhile, pilots were also set up in Africa. In Kenya, the Maasai Mara Citizen Observatory aimed to balance the conservation of biodiversity with sustainable livelihoods. In Zambia, the National CBNRM Observatory Zambia supports existing initiatives and a community-based approach to the management of natural resources.

“Our interdisciplinary team of researchers, technology providers and NGOs had to work in distinctly different environments and contexts, from a geographic, socio-economic, language and cultural point of view. Not only have we succeeded as a team, but we have developed a co-design methodology that is flexible enough to allow for adjustments to local circumstances. Our method provides structure and guidance to achieve tangible results in terms of vision, mission and objectives defined by the observatory. It also delivers tailored citizen platforms, apps and other data collection tools,” Wehn notes.

Whilst Ground Truth 2.0 research is now completed, the consortium is focusing on ‘packaging’ its approach for future grassroots initiatives to use, along with training kits and other educational material.

Eventually, Wehn hopes that the project will have helped citizens see the value of combining Earth Observation with their own ‘ground truth’ observations, to be able to advocate changes in policy or lifestyle. Judging by Vanbrabant’s current preoccupations, it would seem that they hit the mark: “I now bike even more, and I purchased an electric scooter that I combine with public transport instead of using my hybrid car. I am still involved in Meet Mee Mechelen, and after air measurements we have decided to focus on noise,” he concludes.