Project Description

To[RV1]  date, the majority of European-funded projects have aimed to make citizens co-protagonists of the ecological and energy transition by enabling and training them in the collection of various types of data (e.g., WeCount, ). These projects have typically resulted in the production of policy briefs and roadmaps for public administrations (e.g. XX), which are undoubtedly useful, but have rarely been able to bring about a substantial change in planning approaches and practices within public administrations. As a result, citizen science—and its high potential—has largely remained external to administrative workflows and has not been structurally integrated into public planning processes over the long term.

Urban planning, as currently implemented by public authorities, does not adequately embrace ecosystem-based urbanism, nor does it adequately address the widespread environmental injustice affecting the majority of cities worldwide, despite the growing availability of citizen-generated environmental knowledge, due to: 

  1. limited knowledge of ecological dynamics and lack of a transdisciplinary vision capable of guiding planning processes (XX); 
  2. the lack of awareness that limited access to green spaces results in environmental injustice, as well as the absence of data and methodological tools for their systematic mapping at neighborhood scale; 
  3. the recognition that, given the current morphology of most cities worldwide, urban strategies must not only prioritize the creation of new green spaces in areas undergoing regeneration, but also place equal emphasis on improving the ecological quality of existing green spaces combined with a lack of operational knowledge and planning tools to effectively implement such strategies (XX); 
  4. the absence of data that are both understandable and readily usable by public administrations (XX); 
  5. the high costs and practical difficulties associated with implementing long-term biodiversity monitoring campaigns in a consistent manner, limiting the availability of up-to-date data to inform planning policies and practices(XX).

To address the above-mentioned challenges, the project aims to: 

  1. to provide, through dedicated training modules, the ecological foundations and transdisciplinary perspective necessary for urban planning, to be shared with professionals and practitioners in the field; 
  2. translate established concepts of spatial and environmental injustice into practical, GIS-based tools that can be directly used by public administrations for neighbourhood-scale planning and decision-making; 
  3. co-develop, test and demonstrate participatory, citizen-driven methodologies in operational urban contexts, ensuring their robustness, scalability and transferability across different European cities; 
  4. move beyond the conventional use of citizen science as a supplementary data source for expert-led assessments, and instead demonstrate and validate citizen action as an operational, decision-support mechanism embedded in real-world urban planning processes; 
  5. engage not only citizens who are already environmentally aware (as is typically the case in citizen science and living lab initiatives) but also leverage the project as a catalyst for societal change by actively reaching and involving citizens who are currently less interested or engaged in environmental issues.

The SME partner will act as a deployment and scaling enabler. It will adapt project methodologies into standardised, service-oriented workflows compatible with public administrations’ existing planning and GIS systems, support their application in real-world urban pilots, and contribute to transforming project outputs into replicable service models. This will demonstrate how citizen-driven biodiversity and environmental justice assessments can be sustainably taken up by public authorities and urban stakeholders beyond the project duration.

The project builds on existing, well-established tools, data sources and practices that are currently validated in relevant environments (TRL 4–5) and aims to demonstrate, integrate and scale them up to operational urban planning contexts, reaching TRL 7–8 by the end of the project. By advancing existing tools and practices from TRL 4–5 to TRL 7–8 through real-world urban piloting and institutional uptake, the project will enable the emergence of new service-based business models in the fields of urban biodiversity assessment, citizen-driven monitoring and nature restoration planning.

 [RV1]To be addressed: link to EU and international policies; link to already founded EU projects and related outcomes (e.g. BioBlitz within City Nature Challenge network)

 

Impact Assessment Tools: Measure the impact of this project
Impact Assesment Tools
Current Project Impact

The following scores were calculated using a statistically-driven machine-learning approach, a type of AI that learns to perform a task by analysing patterns in data. This is an experimental approach to citizen-science impact assessment, and the exact reasoning behind the scores is not explainable. The scores represent a best guess of the impact the project is having in each domain. Scores are recalculated and updated when “View impact report” is clicked.

Society 11 Society 11 Governance 6 Governance 6 Economy 11 Economy 11 Environment 24 Environment 24 Science 6 Science 6 max. 42
Total Score 12/42
Domain Progress

Proportion of questions answered in each domain.

  • 100% General (13/13)
  • 0% Economy (0/31)
  • 0% Environment (0/30)
  • 0% Governance (0/43)
  • 0% Science and technology (0/39)
  • 0% Society (0/67)