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Citizen Observatories empower citizens to co-create, share, and validate data, supporting the Green Deal’s goals on climate, energy, and sustainability. By blending sensing, IoT, and participatory methods, they foster democratic, evidence-based decisions for urban resilience and inclusiveness.

Abstract

The European Green Deal sets ambitious objectives for addressing climate change, environmental sustainability, and energy transition. Achieving these goals requires not only technological innovation but also new forms of citizen engagement in data-driven governance. Citizen Observatories (COs) represent a powerful paradigm for promoting democratic participation by empowering citizens to contribute, share, and validate environmental and social data. By leveraging pervasive sensing, mobile devices, social platforms, and co-creation methodologies, COs enable communities to actively monitor their environment, generate trusted data, and influence evidence-based policymaking. This presentation explores the role of Citizen Observatories in supporting Green Deal priorities, particularly in areas such as air quality, energy efficiency, sustainable mobility, and urban resilience. Drawing from recent European projects such as SOCIO-BEE, GREENGAGE, and HARMONIE, we highlight methodologies for engaging diverse communities, integrating citizen-generated data with official sources, and ensuring interoperability through Semantic Web and IoT technologies. Furthermore, we discuss challenges related to data quality, inclusiveness, governance models, and long-term sustainability of CO initiatives. By combining scientific excellence with participatory approaches, Citizen Observatories can foster more democratic, transparent, and effective decision-making processes. Ultimately, they provide a pathway for aligning citizen contributions with institutional strategies, ensuring that the Green Deal evolves as a truly collective effort.

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This talk synthesizes two complementary studies, a taxonomic framework of citizen science platforms and a conceptual exploration of citizen observatories, examining their sociotechnical complexity and role as living architectures for participatory action.

Abstract

This talk brings together insights from two complementary research studies to understand citizen observatories within the evolving landscape of participatory science infrastructures.

Our first study systematically reviewed 474 publications on citizen science platforms, uncovering significant terminological fragmentation with 98 unique terms describing similar technologies. This analysis produced a purpose-based taxonomy identifying nine functional platform categories. Within this taxonomy, citizen observatories emerge primarily as onsite data collection infrastructures, though many integrate multiple functionalities across the broader ecosystem.

The second study explores citizen observatories through three analytical lenses. Descriptively, we examine them as sociotechnical systems where digital technologies, collaborative practices, scientific protocols, and organizational processes converge. Instrumentally, we analyze how they function as research infrastructures providing services, tools, and standards that sustain participatory projects over time. Normatively, we investigate their orientation toward collective action, environmental justice, and knowledge democratization.

Integrating these perspectives evidence the essential functions allowing citizen observatories to operate as infrastructures, from technical capabilities like interoperability and data quality assurance to social dimensions including community building, capacity development, and inclusive governance. We present a typology contrasting "tailored" observatories designed for specific contexts with "open" observatories serving multiple initiatives, examining their distinct sustainability challenges and complementary roles.

Citizen observatories constitute complex sociotechnical assemblages requiring sustained institutional support and appropriate governance. Rather than temporary tools or finite projects, they represent public systems of information and participation essential for articulating science, society, and policy, demanding recognition as legitimate research infrastructures within open science ecosystems.

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Waag promotes sustainable societies through citizen science, emphasizing collaboration among citizens, governments and researchers. The Smart Citizens Lab addresses challenges like differing timelines, data quality and action gaps, and explores action perspectives each party has to overcome these.

Abstract

Waag Futurelab is a research organisation that works on the development of a sustainable and just society. Waag uses public research methods to collaborate with citizens, governments, designers, artists and scientists.

Challenges we see:

• Divergent Timelines and Language: Citizens and government entities often operate on different timelines and use distinct terminologies, creating barriers to effective collaboration.

• Data Quality Perception: Citizen science data is frequently viewed as insufficiently rigorous for policymaking, limiting its influence on decision-making processes.

• Action Gap: While policymakers express interest in supporting citizen science initiatives, translating knowledge into actionable steps remains a significant hurdle.

Our approach focuses on building reciprocal public-civic collaborations. Waag recognizes a growing phenomenon in the Netherlands: "participation tiredness", where citizens feel their contributions lack real impact. To combat this in the project Hollandse Luchten, we are implementing shared measurement plans that ensure citizen involvement in data collection, fostering a sense of ownership and accountability. We actively engage municipalities in the research process, aligning citizen concerns with governmental priorities to create a shared action plan. Additionally, we employ various tools and methods for shared data interpretation, allowing both citizens and policymakers to analyze data collaboratively.

We explore action perspectives for different stakeholders and how they can strengthen one another. We see transparency in expectations as fundamental, from the notion that ‘no one measures, just to measure’. A crucial next step is for governments to go from supporting citizens to be able to do their research, to become active participants in the research.

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The Wildfires Citizen Observatory enables Sicilian citizens and municipalities to co-create the Wildfire Registry, enhancing data literacy and legal compliance. This participatory platform allows citizens to gather wildfire data, strengthening legal compliance and fostering participatory governance.

Abstract

Sicily faces an escalating wildfire crisis, with incidents and burned land vastly exceeding comparable Mediterranean regions. Over two-thirds of wildfires are intentional and human-induced, highlighting the urgent need for prevention, environmental compliance, and overall improved governance. The association Fenice Verde has established the Wildfires Citizen Observatory, with the support of Sicily Environment Fund, to fill a gap in operational tools with an interactive and participatory platform that supports public administrations and local communities in monitoring, preventing, and managing intentional fires (osservatorioincendi.org).

The Observatory enables communities to report fires and possible outbreaks, contributing data that can be used by municipalities to compile the Wildfire Registry annually, as demanded by Italian Law 353/2000. Despite its pivotal role in regulating post-fire land exploitation, around 70% of Sicilian municipalities fail to compile the Registry annually due to a lack of capacity.

In 2025, the framework was piloted in collaboration with two municipalities. Citizens reported 122 wildfires, and 11 associations joined the Observatory, establishing a network. The project is part of the EU Citizen Observatories network under the EU-funded CitiObs Horizon project, promoting equitable access to environmental data and integration of participatory science into policy implementation.

By aligning citizen-generated data with municipal responsibilities, the project demonstrates how Citizen Observatories can reinforce environmental governance, foster community resilience, and contribute to wildfire prevention across the Mediterranean. This model strengthens both data literacy and institutional accountability by linking public participation with enforceable legal outcomes. Its innovative approach transforms citizen awareness into actionable policy engagement, bridging the citizen–policy–research interface.

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Urban ReLeaf brings together citizens, researchers, and city authorities to collect and apply environmental data to tackle heat, pollution, and greenspace challenges. Case insights from Athens, Cascais, and Utrecht show strategies for inclusive data engagement that enhance policy responsiveness.

Abstract

Urban ReLeaf explores how citizens, researchers, and municipal authorities can collaborate to collect, interpret, and apply environmental data for urban climate adaptation. The project investigates how local actors navigate barriers in data-intensive participatory processes while co-creating inclusive approaches to environmental monitoring and utility. Key challenges include inclusive recruitment and engagement, the difficulty of combining subjective perceptions with technical datasets, data literacy and analysis, and ensuring that citizen contributions and evidence are trusted, integrated, and acted upon by municipal authorities.

In this panel session we will share three of Urban ReLeaf’s six city pilot campaigns that illustrate strategies to overcome these challenges. In Athens, municipal street cleaners and residents collect microclimate data using wearable sensors and a tree registry app, embedding data collection into daily routines while strengthening institutional uptake by linking results to climate adaptation strategies. In Cascais, diverse participants combine sensor data with thermal comfort perceptions in urban park settings, supported by youth volunteers, showing how inclusive engagement can make technical processes accessible and directly relevant to policy. In Utrecht, residents’ survey and sensor inputs feed into a Digital Twin model and inform local policies, highlighting both the challenges of integrating diverse citizen voices into planning tools and the potential for co-created data to inform multiple urban policies.

These cases show how inclusive, data-driven methods can bridge lived experience with technical evidence, creating actionable models for participatory urban climate governance.

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Citizen Observatories are infrastructures for participatory environmental governance. The talk will focus on how we can support collaboration across all stages of the data cycle and foster institutional responsiveness to citizen evidence.

Abstract

The Horizon Europe project CitiObs (citiobs.eu) advances the idea of Citizen Observatories as living infrastructures for participatory environmental governance. At its core, CitiObs works to strengthen the mutual data literacy of citizens, researchers, and policymakers , ensuring that citizen-generated data not only informs but also shapes local environmental action.

CitiObs develops and tests a set of toolkits and co-creation methods that help local actors work together across the full data cycle: co-defining questions, co-designing sampling strategies, interpreting data in context, and reflecting how this data can contribute to environmental policy. These tools aim to bridge fragmented data competencies and to foster trust, shared understanding, and accountability between community actors and institutions.

In CitiObs we explore how collaborating with creative practitioners and incorporating creative practices has the possibility of transforming data collection into shared processes of interpretation, communication, and action. CitiObs has developed the Citizen-led Action Toolkit, providing practical guidance for finding, engaging, and collaborating with creative practitioners, integrating artistic practices and creative thinking into co-creation processes. The toolkit provides inspiration for individuals and communities that are motivated to take action in the context of environmental protection. It outlines tools such as open calls, co-design assemblies, skill mapping, and joint planning strategies aimed at facilitating meaningful collaboration between citizens and creatives from early project planning to action and reflection.

Through practical cases , this talk explores how such tools can enhance mutual data awareness, support inclusive environmental monitoring, and embed citizen evidence into urban policy processes. An example is the CitiObs case in Barcelona, where citizens used environmental monitors to monitor noise. In collaboration with local creatives, they co-designed Rut, an interactive AI chatbot reflecting community voices. Posters with QR codes invited passersby to chat with Rut on Telegram, where it answered noise-related questions and shared resident stories.