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Short Abstract

The session explores how citizen science can help monitor transformational adaptation by linking local risk perception, sense of place, and participation to tangible indicators of social and institutional change.

Abstract

Transformational adaptation extends beyond technical fixes, it involves shifts in how communities construct and interpret risks, relate to places, and act collectively. These social, cognitive and emotional dynamics often determine whether adaptation remains incremental or becomes genuinely transformative. Yet, they are rarely observed, leveraged, or monitored systematically. This contribution proposes an interactive session to explore how citizen science can help make these processes visible and measurable. Participants will examine three interconnected levers - risk perception, sense of place and participation - as both drivers and indicators of transformation. Using facilitation techniques such as the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) and Think-Pair-Share, adapted to group size, the session will combine short provocations, paired exchanges and collective synthesis. Participants will co-create a simple “matrix of transformation”, identifying criteria and examples that reflect real shifts in perception, belonging, and agency. Through narrative prompts and collaborative mapping to elicit diverse perspectives, particularly from peripheral or climatically exposed urban contexts. By treating citizen science as both a data practice and a reflective space, the workshop explores how people imagine, contest, and reconfigure their relationship with place and risk. In doing so, citizen scientists not only observe and monitor change but also transform the site itself and their own connection to it, fostering mutual and symbolic re-configuration.