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Short Abstract

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.